Tips for managing digital audio

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Paul Thurrott has just posted a useful article on the Connected Home Media site about acquiring digital media (the comments are worth a read too).

I use iTunes (only because I have an iPod – otherwise it would be far more convenient for me to use Windows Media Player) and have ripped all of my CDs to disk as 192-bit MP3s (I still need to rip the CD singles, the vinyl records, the compact cassettes, the MiniDiscs and the DVDs), but I do disagree with Paul on one point- I still buy music on CD. I do this for a number of reasons:

  • I own a legal copy of the music without any digital rights management (DRM).
  • I have a backup copy.
  • If I buy my CDs online (or from the supermarket), it generally costs the same (or less) as buying a whole album from iTunes.

Having said that, I did buy a couple of tracks from iTunes recently – single tracks when I didn’t want to pay an extortionate price for a CD single. I was concerned about DRM and the limitations of 128-bit AAC but using the iTunes Music Store is really easy.

Paul’s approach of burning the legal downloads to CD and then ripping them again is a great idea (accepting that there will be an inevitable loss in quality) – at least that way I have a non-DRM copy for use in years to come.

Finding the right memory for a PC upgrade

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Get more memory at Crucial.com!

Before installing Virtual Server 2005 R2 on my already overworked server (actually, its just a PC) which acts as a domain controller, DNS server, DHCP server, RIS server and handles a few file shares (admittedly on a small network – I’d never advise running a business on a single PC), I thought I’d better put some extra memory in it.

I find it impossible to keep up with PC hardware, and at the danger of turning this post into one large advert, I was really impressed with my experience at the website. In a few clicks, I was able to use the Crucial Memory Advisor Tool to identify the memory options for my aging Compaq Evo D500SFF and, although I didn’t use it at the time, they also have a system scanner which can be used to identify upgrades for a specific system (I’ve just run it now and it correctly identified the system which I’m using to write this post).

Another area of the Crucial site that really impressed me was the help text, which enabled me to understand the various memory types (so I could decide whether or not to simply swap some RAM around between my various systems).

To make this post a little more balanced, I should mention that Kingston Technology also have a memory search tool but my experience was that the Crucial version was faster to use and the prices were lower (I suspect this is because Crucial sell direct whereas Kingston redirected me to a third party to actually buy the RAM). Crucial also sell flash memory cards and readers, USB flash drives, graphics cards and printer memory,as well as offering free UK shipping by Royal Mail Special Delivery for orders over £25 and guaranteeing compatibility of the memory purchased (as long as you have used the Crucial Memory Advisor Tool).

Crucial, the memory experts

Money-grabbing telcos want to charge for their piece of the Internet

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Google is my search engine of choice, and Google AdSense is the main source of income for this site (still not quite breaking even though); however recently I have criticised the Internet search giant for their appalling Google Pack and also questioned (in not so many words) whether their rapid growth is starting to impinge on their “don’t be evil” informal corporate motto…

Whether Google are evil or not, I was appalled to hear on Slashdot Review that US telcos have criticised Google and other Internet giants for using their lines without paying extra fees and charges. According to the original Washington Post article, a Verizon executive said:

“The network builders are spending a fortune constructing and maintaining the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers.”

The way I see it is that I pay my Internet service provider (ISP) to provide an Internet service and Google pays their ISP to provide an Internet service whilst the ISPs pay the telcos for access to the carrier networks. So, the telcos are paid, not once, but twice to deliver Google’s data to my browser. Now they want to be paid again… hmm…

At the same time, the telcos are putting in place next generation networks that will allow them to prioritise traffic, effectively allowing them to marginalise “free” Internet users, giving access to those are prepared to pay more. As both a user and a content provider, I don’t like this one bit, and neither it seems does Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist, Vinton G. Cerf, who was partially responsible for the original creation of the Internet and was reported in the same article as saying:

“In the Internet world, both ends essentially pay for access to the Internet system, and so the providers of access get compensated by the users at each end… My big concern is that suddenly access providers want to step in the middle and create a toll road to limit customers’ ability to get access to services of their choice even though they have paid for access to the network in the first place.”

That just about sums it up to me. Verizon (AT&T, and the rest) – keep your hands off the Internet – I pay my ISP – how ISPs and telcos charge one another for access should not be my problem.

The IT Crowd

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I was pleased to read in IT Week that a new sitcom was about to air in the UK, based around an IT department (I even heard about it on US-based podcasts – largely because Slashdot picked up on it). Surely, I thought, there’s plenty of scope there for something funny – maybe even a twist on “The Office” bringing in the idiosyncrasies of end-user support.

Well, the first two episodes of Channel 4’s “The IT Crowd” hit our screens last weekend (I finally watched it last night) and I was sorely disappointed. It scored 10 out of 10 for attention to detail (office in the basement of a tower block, RTFM t-shirt, rows of defunct CRT monitors on the shelf with Post-it notes attached, Commodore PET and ZX81 proudly on display, IT Manager who knows nothing about IT, etc.) but laughs were few and far between (not counting the dubbed-on sitcom laughter), despite depicting the two techies (to support 34 floors of staff… first response to all support calls “have you turned it off and on again”) as social misfits.

Maybe working in IT is just not that funny.