Technology

Time to buy a new Dell, this time for my parents, whose clunky old laptop from early 2002 has finally been put to rest (I've been arguing for its destruction for some time). As per usual I'm given a budget (£300-£400 this time) and given the task of deciding what to go for. I managed to get an extra £30 out of them in order to ensure it had a decent graphics adapter - they might not care about graphics now, but they won't be saying that when they need the extra power....

I'm going to be posting about some of the software I use on my HTC HD2, there are a lot of Windows Mobile games out there, but what really works well on the HD2? Hopefully this will give you some ideas. Out are games like Wolf3D and Doom, games I've been playing on Windows Mobile phones for 6 or 7 years, they're just not fun trying to control with the on-screen controls....

In some rather good news, it seems Microsoft have backed the Web Open Font Format (WOFF). Previously Microsoft have supported Embedded OpenType (EOT), which they developed back in the 1990s, and was supported by Internet Explorer 4 onwards, although no other web browsers bothered implementing it. However back in those days adding an extra 100KB download was a heavy price to pay for embedding fonts into a website, and so it wasn't widely used....

Those trying to record on systems with 4GB or more of RAM with an Audigy 2 ZS, possibly X-Fi and other models too, have probably come across the problem with distortion, noise, or choppy sound (like talking through a fan). This affects the microphone, line-in and also 'what u hear', important for capturing audio that is currently being played. The trouble stems from Creative's drivers not being entirely 64-bit compatible, Creative have no date for any fix to be implemented, and haven't even announced if they're working on any such fix....

More than a few people seem to be struggling with this problem. I didn't have much difficulty deciding however, back in February I awaited the Mobile World Conference, a few hours after Microsoft's keynote I ordered the HD2. Don't get me wrong, the WP7S is nice. It does have some killer features, such as Xbox Live integration and Zune integration which hopefully will mean Zune Social and Zune Pass (fairly priced) will become available in the UK later this year as I've been whinging about lately....

Longtime readers will know I am a huge fan of WorldWide Telescope. To put it mildly, WorldWide Telescope is the best astronomy program ever. If I had this when I was a kid I would never turn it off, it would autostart with the computer and I would be constantly looking at everything. Anyway as you may recall a Silverlight based web version of WorldWide Telescope was released last year. It wasn't as well featured as the Windows client, nor anywhere near as fast....

There's a lot of confusion going on out there. Increasingly it's more and more about issues related to DirectX. So much so that now I'm writing an update to the article I wrote almost 3 years ago now. That article advised people to install the latest DirectX end-user runtime if they encountered errors like d3dx9.dll is missing or not installed. The confusion seems to stem from people running Windows Vista or Windows 7 and seeing that they have DirectX 10 or 11 installed, by way of the DirectX Diagnostic Tool....

So I've managed to sit down and use Apple's attempted copy of a Tablet PC for half an hour or so. Dubbed the iPad, the model number on the back reads TC1100, with a manufacturing date in 2003. Hmmm weird. Moving along. So what have we got in this machine? It comes with a 1Ghz processor (ouch Catherine's HTC HD2 mobile phone has a 1Ghz processor) and sports a 4:3 (no widescreen in this day and age, not good for media watching) that has a resolution of 1024x768....

So a new Zune update has just come down, it adds welcome support for Windows 7 libraries. Awesome. Now it behaves like it should, like Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center. You should have a single library for music that can span multiple locations and computers. No longer will the Zune want to put its music in Music\Zune, but rather it'll use the default folder that the Music Library specifies, and best of all no matter what application I use, Media Player or Zune I'll see the exact same content....

So Internet Explorer has been the media's main victim this past week. With stories about how it is completely unsecure. Of course having a vulnerability isn't a good thing, but why is this getting so much attention, especially considering it's not even being used to target individuals? Well I suppose the media have to knock Microsoft, it's about the only thing they can do when it comes to Microsoft so this will have to do....