As half the measure [...]]]> Last week I talked to you about Microsoft’s new Operating System ‘Windows Vista’ and discussed the functionality updates that have been introduced and how they could possibly benefit you. Those that missed my original article can check out www.computerarticles.co.uk to download a copy.

As half the measure of a good Operating System is determined by its applications I think we now need to focus on this particular aspect of Vista. I promised last week that we would look in to the bundled applications and as I see it the below points highlight the most significant developments in this particular area of Vista:

Windows Sidebar – This is a transparent panel anchored to the side of the screen which allows the user to place small applets (known as Desktop Gadgets) which are designed for a specific purpose such as displaying your instant messaging contacts or the day view from your calendar. You aren’t confined to just the gadgets that come with Vista either as new ones can be downloaded free of charge off the Internet.

Internet Explorer 7 – Whilst not necessarily a reason to upgrade to Windows Vista as this browser is available separately for Windows XP, it’s still nice to see a version of Windows bundled with a moderately advanced browser. I’m still a firm advocate of Firefox but no one can deny that IE7 is a big step up from insecure IE6 that ships with Windows XP.

Windows Mail – Although this is a replacement for Outlook Express, the two look so similar that I’m not entirely sure why Microsoft bothered with a name change. What this new application does offer however is greater stability along with a spam and phishing filter which was sadly missing from Outlook Express.

Windows Media Player 11 – This is a major revamp of the music and video player which includes a new interface, new sharing capabilities with Vista machines and Xbox 360 integration.

Windows Media Centre – Whilst not present in all versions of the new OS, Windows Media Centre is included in the Home Premium and Ultimate versions of Vista. This application is designed to allow your PC to serve as a home entertainment hub as with suitable hardware your PC can act as a high definition video recorder and player or a music jukebox.

Speech Recognition – This has been greatly improved when you compare it to the speech recognition present when you installed Office 2003 (reviewed several months back in Click) along with Windows XP as you can now control the entire OS by voice commands rather than just individual applications.

Backup and Restore Centre - This application gives users the ability to schedule periodic backups of the machines as well as restoring files from backup when required. Whilst tape support is no longer present it’s nice to see an easy to use and low maintenance backup application in a Microsoft Operating System.

Parental controls – I’m sure I don’t really need to go in to much detail here; the parental controls allow users with administrative privileges (parents) to control which websites, programs and games each standard user (kids) can have access too.

Improvements have also been made to the Windows Update tool, Calendar, Photo Gallery, DVD Maker along with dozens of other bundled applications and whilst I’m still sticking to my point that Vista is overpriced, overdue and in some cases resource hungry would I go back to Windows XP? Not a chance!

At last the beta version of Internet Explorer 7 is available for download, at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7/default.mspx – This [...]]]> This week I’ll be publishing a letter from one of my loyal readers regarding the new beta version of Internet Explorer that has just been published on the Microsoft website:

At last the beta version of Internet Explorer 7 is available for download, at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7/default.mspx – This will be the standard browser in Windows Vista when it is launched in September 2006.

The main emphasis of the new browser seems to be on simplicity, with the interface being considerably simpler than previous versions – This may not please the purists as some features are not now as easy to access as they were in the earlier versions. The main additions are tabbed browsing (which Firefox and Opera have offered for ages) and the built in RSS reader. RSS feeds with the orange RSS logo like this are becoming very common and for example they can be a much quicker way of reading the news headlines on the BBC’s website. IE7 can also display all of the currently open tabs as quick tabs, which is like a thumbnail image of all the open tabs.

Although there is nothing badly wrong with IE7, it is unlikely to bowl over the current enthusiasts of Firefox and Opera. Also worth a mention is the freeware Avant Browser which can be downloaded at www.snapfiles.com and is in my view a better all round browser and RSS feed reader than IE7. As ever Microsoft seems to be playing catch-up to newer and more flexible pieces of software, and nowadays I rarely use Windows Media Player because Winamp is so much better.

Having said the above, market research suggests that Internet Explorer has 90% of the market for web browsing, simply because many people do not get round to trying the alternatives like Firefox and Opera. This is a good time for people to look at the alternatives because frankly although it is okay, Internet Explorer 7 is not the best tabbed browser.

Ian MacMillan, via e-mail.

After downloading the latest version of Internet Explorer for myself I must side with Ian and say that I am somewhat disappointed with the modest improvements that Microsoft have made to the application in this latest incarnation. Rather than innovating in any shape or form they seem to have simply tried to make their browser more like Firefox and whilst imitation is the highest form of flattery I find it quite funny that such a large, expensive programming team should try to emulate a browser which was originally pioneered by a couple of bedroom programmers.

I don’t like the streamlined toolbar; it is missing a load of options that the average user requires and the new design is moving away from the standardised interface we are used to all Windows applications. I can see this leading to a fair amount of confusion as the fact there are no menus present for the ‘file’, ‘edit’ and ‘tools’ functions had me scratching my head for a minute.

The only truly unique feature I can see this application has having is the new ‘phishing filter’ which aims to protect you from websites that aim to gain personal details by deception. For example, a common problem at the moment is websites ripping off the designs of banking websites in an attempt to steal bank details off the unsuspecting. To be honest such a filter is long overdue in any browser as this problem has been around for a while now but quite how effective and up to date it’ll be remains to be seen.

It is also worth pointing out that as mentioned at the beginning of this article Internet Explorer 7 is still in beta format which essentially means it’s unfinished – We could see a fair few improvements before the final version is released and before it starts shipping with the new, unfinished Windows Operating System ‘Vista’. Personally I believe the improvements will be enough to stop many people moving to an alternative such as Firefox however those such as myself who are already using an alternative will have little incentive to switch back.

Hi Chris.

A couple of weeks ago I suggested that you download the fantastic Winamp 5 (www.winamp.com) as a possible alternative to Windows Media Player which is a program, although perfectly capable and indeed free, could do with some enhancing. For those of your with your heads thoroughly in the sand I [...]]]>

A couple of weeks ago I suggested that you download the fantastic Winamp 5 (www.winamp.com) as a possible alternative to Windows Media Player which is a program, although perfectly capable and indeed free, could do with some enhancing. For those of your with your heads thoroughly in the sand I should state that the core function of both the programs listed above is to allow you to play media (audio/visual) files on your PC.

What I didn’t realise until a reader Ian McMillan pointed it out to me was quite how many skins were available to customise the program to suit your particular taste. On further inspection I found a vast collection of visualisations and plug-ins which could be downloaded to further enhance this great little program and I thought it would be nice to spend this week introducing some of what is available.

Skins:

Skins are available to completely alter the look of the program; you can make it so that the player looks like an conventional Hi-Fi, an Apple iPod or even just to customise graphics of the player to reflect your favourite band. Essentially nothing is changed with the player as all of it is pretty much skin deep but those of you who like to customise everything they use should find this feature helpful.

Visualisations:

Again, no features as such as added to the player by the addition of visualisations but they do look cool. Sometimes when you like to unwind it is nice to start one of your favourite songs playing and then load up one of the Winamp visualisations so that you can actually see the graphics change with the music that you are listening to. For example, load up the ‘geiss’ visualisation, switch to full screen mode, put on a song and the visualisation will project psychedelic colourful patterns that change in time with the music.

Plug-ins

This is where things start to get a little bit interesting as you can download little programs called ‘plug-ins’ and integrate them into Winamp. At first I assumed that the range was extremely limited but ultimately I was surprised to find the lengths some people had gone to in order to add something to Winamp; most of these programmers are just members of the public doing everything off their own back for no financial reward which makes it even more impressive. Amongst my favourites that I found this evening include a program that ‘listens’ to your music collection to decide what type of music each song is that then arranges them into a little mix where each song follows on nicely from the one that immediately preceded it. There were a few plug-ins to allow you to manually mix MP3’s together much in the same way that a DJ would with two vinyl’s and of course there were a hundred and one plug-ins that allowed you to change the sound of the music as to speed up the tempo, increase the pitch, add additional base, make a standard MP3 into a surround sound MP3 and so on. The list is pretty extensive with plug-ins going as far as to allow you to control your PC’s TV tuner, play new music formats and even to play a few games from within Winamp.

As those who know me will testify, I’m always the fan of the underdog – If there are two companies developing products then you’ll always see me routing for the smaller of the two for several reasons. I believe that as long as you have two serious competitors then a [...]]]>

As those who know me will testify, I’m always the fan of the underdog – If there are two companies developing products then you’ll always see me routing for the smaller of the two for several reasons. I believe that as long as you have two serious competitors then a market will never become stagnant as there’ll always be someone upping the ante. In the business world a monopoly is a very dangerous thing for a company to hold and when I hear about a smaller company biting at the heals of a larger counterpart it brings a smile to my face.

This is especially true of Microsoft as although I will openly admit to using their products on a daily basis, I always want there to be someone to challenge them in everything that they do. This is why I want Sony to do well with the Playstation as then they will keep improving the Xbox, this is why I want Opera to keep developing their browser as then Internet Explorer will continue to grow and also why I want Linux to continue to evolve so they won’t be able to slow down on developing Windows.

It is because of this philosophy that I was glad to see a new version of WinAmp released as this is direct alternative to Windows Media Player which is the music player that’s installed as part of Windows. In contrast to the massive budgets that Microsoft put aside of Media Player, WinAmp has been put together by a handful of people and I don’t know if it’s just because I’m looking too hard but I actually feel that the authors have a sense of pride when they put the software together rather than it just being for money.

Anyway, enough of my anti monopoly ramblings, what can WinAmp offer you over Media Player which you will all have on your computer anyway? I’ll start by mentioning first of all that it’s completely free of charge as I realise that many of my readers stop reading unless I make this point abundantly clear!

First and foremost, is the Internet TV feature which I like…. Very much. Of course streaming video on the Internet is nothing new but Windows Media Player doesn’t have a feature as standard that allows you to view Internet TV channels directly from within the software. By clicking on Internet TV you are presented with a list of channels that are currently broadcasting and although some of it is absolute drivel (public access TV for example) there are some decent ones which I feel may be helping me through my working day from now on. So far this evening I’ve already seen a complete catalogue of Radiohead videos and the REM Unplugged sessions – Good stuff.

We also have inbuilt CD Ripping which allows you to copy any album that you legitimately own onto your harddisk with MP3 encoding as standard (Windows Media Player only lets you store files in their own WMA format).

Everything else is pretty similar to Media Player except just, in my opinion a little better and a little faster. We have visualisations, customisable skins, an equaliser, playlist editor and media library as well as all other features that you would expect a music/video player to have.

The program is, as mentioned above completely free of charge and you can choose which version you want to download with the lite version of the program only 0.6mg in size to download although this does have limited functionality so you may as well wait to download the full version which is 4mg in size. Visit www.winamp.com to get going and whilst you’re there you should also take the time to download some cool visualisations and skins to add to your player.

Whilst I was at Cardiff University last year, one of the only things that kept me sane whilst I sat in the computer room finishing of assignments was the good quality Welsh radio stations such as Galaxy and Red Dragon which I’d listen to constantly to keep me amused as [...]]]>

Whilst I was at Cardiff University last year, one of the only things that kept me sane whilst I sat in the computer room finishing of assignments was the good quality Welsh radio stations such as Galaxy and Red Dragon which I’d listen to constantly to keep me amused as well as a selection of songs stored on my laptop.

Now that I’m back in Paignton I miss these radio stations and so was pleasantly surprised when, upon visiting their respective websites I discovered that they offer the ability for you to tune in via the Internet to listen in live. Listening to the radio online is one area that I can see excelling when high speed Internet access becomes more widespread; rather than just listening to the limited number of channels in your local area you could tune in to a station based in New York and listen to their selection of music free of charge.

Just to give you an example, head towards www.reddragonfm.co.uk and click on the ‘Listen Live’ link at the top right of the page. This will launch a small window and after around 30 seconds of loading you’ll be able to hear the music several thousand Welsh residents are listening to now live. This requires no additional software and is just one method of listening to music across the Internet – It’s just a case of going to a search engine such as Google (www.google.co.uk), typing in the name of the station whose website you want to visit and then looking for a link on their page to allow you to listen live – even our very own Gemini FM (www.koko.com) offers this facility.

The other method of searching for radio stations across the Internet is to use a dedicated player such as Windows Media Player. The latest versions of Windows Media Player give you the ability of search for particular genres of music across the Internet and to locate radio stations based in a particular country or county. Unless you’re using Windows XP I’d recommend that you upgrade to the latest version of Windows Media Player first by going to the website www.microsoft.com/mediaplayer in order to benefit from the additional features relating to Internet Radio Stations.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed the updated program just click on the ‘Radio Tuner’ button – this will allow you to search for and select radio stations to listen to. Typically, after discovering a radio station you’d like to listen to, just double click on it, wait around 30 seconds or so whilst Media Player creates a buffer of the music to be player to avoid it skipping if your Internet connection slows down for whatever reason and then the music will begin to play through your computer as if you were listening to a conventional radio.

In terms of sound quality, most Internet radio stations sound quite poor over a 56k modem connection as the sound data has to be very heavily compressed to allow you to download the music at the same speed that you need to listen to it at. If you have a faster connection such as ISDN, cable or ASDL then the is usually the option to download the music at a higher quality. If you’re on a slow connection then it is usually best to avoid using the Internet for any other purposes whilst listing to the radio as this will mean that there is less capacity for the sound data to be transmitted down your phone line meaning that the music may start to break up.

Give it a try, search for radio stations local to the town you were born in, those in a city that you’d like to visit or even just use it for listening to Gemini if you don’t happen to have a radio in the same room as your PC.

Having been using Windows XP for as long as I can remember, when I installed Windows 98 on an old machine the other day I noticed the complete lack of multimedia support provided by the software supplied with the Operating System – Windows Media Player.

Luckily, it [...]]]>

Having been using Windows XP for as long as I can remember, when I installed Windows 98 on an old machine the other day I noticed the complete lack of multimedia support provided by the software supplied with the Operating System – Windows Media Player.

Luckily, it doesn’t have to be this way since the update to Media Player is available for free from the Internet for all users of Windows 98, ME and 2000. Obviously the new features that you acquire via the upgrade vary depending on the version of media player that you’re upgrading from but this week I plan to show you the new features that you can expect to gain that make it worth the download.

By far the most improved feature is the ability to rip music straight off your audio CD’s and store it onto your hard disk in WMA format as well as then being able to burn it straight onto a blank CD, SmartMedia or CompactFlash cards via a compatible recorder without any additional software. You are also able to store onto other devices such as a variety of different Pocket PCs.

The encoder used to save to WMA has been vastly improved to deliver almost CD-quality audio using half the space of MP3 and the program also includes new effects and equaliser controls so that you can alter exactly how the music is reproduced. Video has also been given the same treatment, with support included for the MPEG-4 standards included.

The program allows you to choose from over 1500 Internet Radio Stations which means that as soon as you’re connected to the Internet you are able to tune into huge variety of shows from Country and Western in the United States to local music from the Czech Republic, all completely free of charge, excluding the cost of your Internet phone calls. This in itself is a very nice feature that I fully appreciate when using a fast connection. The new version of Media Player also allows you to access streaming data from sites such as www.skynews.co.uk and www.cnn.com which provide direct video and audio feeds on the latest news events or a variety of other sites such as www.vh1.com which offer music videos online.

The new Media Player is also a lot more customisable; you can download visualisations that play on your screen in time with the music you’re listening to as well as a host of new skins that allow you to change the way that the player looks to the user. These are all available free of charge off Microsoft or third party websites.

In terms of actually acquiring the product, if you head to www.microsoft.com/mediaplayer you are able to download the current version 7.1 or if you use Windows 95/NT then unfortunately the latest version you can use is version 6.4 which doesn’t contain many of the features I’ve listed above. You are also able to download versions for Apple Macs or a variety of different Pocket PC’s if needed.

To summarise, unless you have Windows XP which includes at least all the features above as standard, I would recommend that you take the time to update your version of Media Player, especially if you currently benefit from an Internet Service Provider which gives you 0800 access as this way the upgrade won’t cost you a penny.