Starting off with Vista; those of you with this Operating System would be advised to download the Service Pack from www.microsoft.com or via Windows Update as along with fixing hundreds of little bugs [...]]]> We have two things to discuss today; Vista Service Pack 2 and cheap broadband.

Starting off with Vista; those of you with this Operating System would be advised to download the Service Pack from www.microsoft.com or via Windows Update as along with fixing hundreds of little bugs and glitches it also adds a number of new features. Most notable changes include support for Via Technologies new Nano 64-Bit CPU, support for Bluetooth 2.1, BluRay writing directly from the Operating System and improved performance for WiFi connections.

This update is 348mb in size meaning that you would really need to be on a broadband connection to consider the download; this leads me neatly on to my next point.

I was contacted this week by a reader who was still using a dial up connection. I had assumed that this hardcore group of users had disbanded and joined the 21^st century but it appears that I was mistaken. Try as I might, I cannot rationalise in my own head why someone would still be using dial-up; it’s slow, temperamental, ties up your phone line, and if you use it for more than a handful of minutes a week it can actually work out quite costly.

In order to reach out to these users (and indeed anyone currently on an overpriced broadband package) I thought it prudent to overview the cheapest broadband packages on the market; these represent a perfect stepping stone from dial-up. The following recommendations are suited primarily to light Internet users and as such I would not recommend them for intensive use such as gaming or heavy downloading.

Sky TV – Sky TV customers can get free 2Mbps Broadband with a 2GB usage limit when they also subscribe to Sky Talk (the most basic of which is free) for the phone calls. Of course you still have to pay your line rental to BT, as you would with dial up. While 2GB isn’t a particularly large bandwidth limit it will satisfy most home users and is in excess of what could be feasibly downloaded via dial-up in a month.

Talk Talk – Talk Talk is £6.49 a month in addition to your usual line rental and includes 8GB Broadband, a 40GB usage limit, free local calls and free national weekend and evening calls. The company has had a fair amount of bad press over the last couple of years mainly due to its unprecedented growth since its incorporation in 2003 but things seemed to have improved of late. If the planned merger with Tiscali goes ahead, Talk Talk will have become the largest residential broadband provider in the UK.

Tiscali – For £14.99 a month including your monthly line rental you can get up to 8GB broadband and unlimited free weekend calls. As BT would usually charge you around £12 for your line rental you are essentially getting a capable broadband package for less than £3 a month.

PlusNet – If you don’t fancy the idea of having your telephone calls handled by your broadband provider, the PlusNet Value package at £5.99 a month is an extremely competitive standalone package. With speeds up to 8Mbps, a 10GB daily download limit and an unlimited evening download limit the PlusNet deal is also surprisingly fully featured.

Before committing to a broadband package it might be an idea to first check out www.moneysupermarket.com to compare a number of other deals on the market. Most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) don’t levy a set of charge all of them will provide the equipment you require and many of them will even chuck in a free wireless router; there really is no reason to stick with dial-up.

I’m a student doing art studies and also a regular reader of your column ‘Click’ in the Heard Express. To assist me with my course I’m currently [...]]]> This week I’ll once again take the time to answer a question recently sent to me by a Click reader.

I’m a student doing art studies and also a regular reader of your column ‘Click’ in the Heard Express. To assist me with my course I’m currently looking for a good quality colouring program that I can download for free. Whilst I have downloaded programs in the past which were excellent they are all limited by 30 day trials and as a schoolgirl I don’t have enough money to buy to buy the full versions.

I was wondering if you would be able to recommend a good program that is available free of charge?

Lisa Penny, Torquay

When you say ‘colouring program’ I’m assuming that you’re after a drawing package which is capable of handling basic functions such as line, text and fill tools as well as more advanced features such as layering and if this is the case then there are two programs that I can confidently recommend. They are both completely free of charge and are very compact in size which will result in you having to spend little time on the Internet downloading them.

The first application goes under the name of GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) which I actually reviewed a couple of months back so won’t go into great detail here but to summerise my previous review, GIMP is quite a capable drawing program which is completely free of charge. It can be easily downloaded by heading to http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html and remember that if you do happen to miss any of my Click articles they can always be read online at www.computerarticles.co.uk

An alternative I discovered just recently is Inkscape which again can be downloaded free of charge from www.inkscape.org. The application, like GIMP is open source meaning that members of the public rather than big companies are responsible for its development and for adding new features

The first thing that you notice about Inkscape is the user interface which is very well laid out making the program extremely easy to use. When you first start up the program it looks very much different to the standard Windows application with many icons unique to Inkscape and they are used to great effect to clearly indicate their respective functions and the relation to similar functions present in the application. The user interface also relies a great deal on you learning keyboard and mouse combinations which whilst making the process of using the application faster also results in a fairly steep learning curve.

If we look at the features of the application they include shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, patterns, and grouping. Whilst these are all fairly basic functions which are standard on most drawing applications, Inkscape sets itself apart from the competition by making them very easy to use and manipulate.

Inkscape is currently running at revision 0.43 and as this version number suggests is very much a work in progress application but nevertheless it is very capable and of course completely free of charge. Both applications I have mentioned here are extremely competent and as I am reluctant to recommend one over the other I would recommend that readers who have an interest in drawing should download them both and then pick the one that suits their particular needs best.

Last week I promised that I’d take a look at the new version of Windows that is currently under development, Windows Vista. Not wanting to disappoint, I will today be taking a look at the latest preview build (5231) that was released to beta testers a few days ago.

Windows Vista (formally codenamed ‘Longhorn’) was originally envisioned as a minor upgrade to Windows XP designed more as a stopgap although as work progressed on the Operating System it took the shape of an all encompassing major upgrade.

Let us take a look at some of the new features this Operating System will offer although please do bear in mind that the finished version is over a year away yet so obviously features are subject to change.

New look – Windows new look and feel is known as “Aero” which on suitably equipped machines will use the PC’s 3D accelerator to create a glass effect that will make the Windows visual experience deeper and more engaging. A downside to this effect is that it will require some pretty beefy hardware to create although on less powerful machines you will be able to go back to the classic Windows look.

Security – This is being touted as the big improvement over previous versions of Windows and Microsoft is confident that they have truly got it right this time around. Windows XP if you will remember was riddled with massive security vulnerabilities when it first released and it took the release of two service packs to get it up to anywhere near a decent standard. Obviously there is plenty happening behind the scenes to protect you from security vulnerabilities but since the majority won’t be aware of any of this background work we should focus on the things that will make a difference in the way you use the computer day to day.

Notable features include a firewall that will protect against unauthorised outbound activity in addition to the current ability to protect against inbound connections, parents will be able to set up parental controls to restrict what their children access and the OS should be able to prevent the installation of malicious software by using restricted access user accounts for day to day activities. The in-built e-mail client will provide anti-spam facilities as standard and Microsoft is planning to offer an anti-virus and anti-spyware subscription service although I would have personally liked to have seen this included as standard in the OS.

Internet Explorer – Windows Vista will include Internet Explorer 7 which is the replacement for the now four year old Internet Explorer 6. Although IE7 will be available for Windows XP eventually will be standard in Vista. As Microsoft is facing heavy competition from third party alternatives such as “Firefox” we should expect IE7 to be vast improvement although I think it is unlikely that they will think up anything original but just rip the best bits out of Firefox. For example, IE7 will support tabbed browsing and a built in RSS reader both of which Firefox has always included from the start. Security is again paramount in the new version of IE as it will include a protected mode to prevents Spyware and Malicious software from easily entering your system as well as a “phishing filter” which will protect you from fraudulent websites.

To summerise the new version of Windows looks as though it could be a worthy upgrade to the current Windows XP although we’ll have to wait until December 2006 to see everything that Microsoft has up their sleeves. Of course, there’s a lot more that I’d love to tell you about but unfortunately it’s difficult to cover an entirely new release of Windows in a 600 word article. For more information straight from the horses mouth visit www.microsoft.com/windowsvista

This week sees the release of Windows XP Service Pack 2; another monster update developed by Microsoft to close a number of holes in their Windows XP Operating System. Most of you will know the procedure by now – Go to the Microsoft website, download [...]]]>

This week sees the release of Windows XP Service Pack 2; another monster update developed by Microsoft to close a number of holes in their Windows XP Operating System. Most of you will know the procedure by now – Go to the Microsoft website, download a huge file, install it on your system and whilst the majority of users won’t see any visible change in the way you will be safe in the knowledge that your computer is more secure and stable than it was previously.

I can’t overemphasise how important this service pack is as only last week I was setting up a new system and before I had even finished setting it up it was infected with half a dozen viruses due to the large number of security holes present in the initial release of Windows XP. In addition to addressing these vulnerabilities this service includes a number of new features to make life a little easier and I will feature some of the better changes below.

- Enhanced Windows Firewall – Most importantly this is turned on by default unlike previous versions of Windows XP which required the user to manually enable it. Should you turn the firewall off it will start to nag you and warn that your system could be vulnerable although these warnings can be disabled.

- Security Centre Dashboard – This feature will pop up whenever Windows detects that your firewall, anti-virus or automatic updating is turned off, absent or out of date. This could be a very useful tool for many home users although you can ask it to go away and stop bugging you if you would rather take care of these things yourself.

- Pop-up stopper – Internet Explorer now blocks annoying pop-ups from displaying when you visit certain sites although this feature can of course be disabled.

- Improved Bluetooth support – Windows XP initially shipped without support for Bluetooth technology and whilst this has been gradually resolved with software updates, Service Pack 2 sees huge improvements in the way that Windows detects and interacts with this emerging technology.

- Enhanced Wireless Network capabilities – I wasn’t completely happy with the way that Windows handled wireless networks in the past as they were tricky to set up and very often insecure. This resulted in many people being hacked by their next door neighbour or businesses being attacked from someone parked outside their building with a wireless network enabled laptop. Windows XP Service Pack 2 includes a nice wizard to help you set up a secure wireless network on your PC and will then create a disk so that you can put these settings on any other PC’s that require use of the network.

Bottom line is that if you don’t install this update then you are either very brave or very stupid and more than likely it will be these very brave, stupid people that continue to e-mail me in months to come when their systems have been attacked. I must be honest in saying that the download is huge and so in a fantastic move of compassion Microsoft have agreed to send out a free CD to those who cannot get the update online which would be useful for those who don’t have access to a broadband connection.

In an ideal world our software would be safe and secure from day one and the people who search tirelessly for security vulnerabilities would have lives and not bother with trying to make life so difficult for the rest of us. Unfortunately we do not live in an ideal world so there really is no excuse for not taking steps today to protect your system for tomorrow so head to www.microsoft.com and either download the service pack or order the CD today.

I am still quite shocked at the number of people who don’t know about the existence of MSN Messenger which is built into many versions of Windows and also is freely available from http://messenger.msn.com. This handy little tool allows you to chat with people over the Internet, offering the spontaneity [...]]]>

I am still quite shocked at the number of people who don’t know about the existence of MSN Messenger which is built into many versions of Windows and also is freely available from http://messenger.msn.com. This handy little tool allows you to chat with people over the Internet, offering the spontaneity of a chat room crossed with the more personalised nature of e-mail. Once downloaded, you create a user name and password for yourself and then add other people to your list of ‘buddies’ who also have MSN Messenger so whenever they are connected to the Internet with the program running in the background then you can have a quick chat to them over the computer.

The latest incarnation of this little utility, version 6 was released not so long ago and so thought this would be the ideal time to cover not only the new features but what MSN can do for you if you’ve never used the program before in your life.

Okay, you’ve downloaded and installed MSN Messenger 6 from the address given above, signed up for your own free user name and password and also persuaded your friends with Internet access to do the same. MSN will now sit in the background and sign you in whenever you connect to the Internet unless you instruct it otherwise so when online you can now send and receive instant messages, pictures and files with other friends who happen to be on the Internet at the same time as you. Not only that but those with a webcam and a microphone attached to their PC can also see and hear the people they are communicating with over MSN; whether they are just down the road or half way across the world.

To be honest, it’s no where near as personal as talking over the phone but it isn’t meant to be; if I’m pulling a late shift or even working throughout the day then it is often nice for people to pop up every now and again who’ll entertain me whilst I’m working. You can still get along with your work at the same time which is something you can’t do if you have to hold a mobile in one hand giving someone your undivided attention. Of course if you’re busy or don’t want to be distracted then you can always sign out of MSN Messenger which makes it impossible for people to contact you in this fashion.

For those of you who were familiar with the older versions of MSN then you’ll probably want to know what’s changed in the latest release and would it be worthwhile you upgrading. The main difference is the user interface; it looks a lot more slick than previous versions, is much more customisable and allows you to select your own picture that others will be able to see whilst typing messages to you.

Emoticons (smiling faces and the such that are used to convey emotions in text only conversions) are now customizable and there is a greater selection of standard and animated ones built in, the background of your conversation is also customisable and can be shared with the person you are chatting too. You can also play simple multiplayer games if the mood takes your fancy, along with the other interactive accessories that were available in the previous versions such as ‘whiteboard’ which allows you to share the application ‘paint’ with a number of other people simultaneously.

Along with a number of other small modifications, it all sounds like pretty irreverent stuff that doesn’t warrant an upgrade but you would be surprised by the difference between this and previous versions. For those of you who already have MSN Messenger then download the latest update now (it will only take 20 minutes or so on a standard 56k connection) and those that don’t should consider doing so if any of the above appeals to them; after all it is free. Please note that version 6 is only compatible with Windows 98 and above so Windows 95 users will have to download the older version 5 from the same site.