TP fwiw - I have a intergral sd card reader and a free gift usb sd card reader. No problems with either on my ASUS. Sorry - no advice to offer.

Was anybody affected by an internet outage yesterday afternoon? My Sky broadband went down at 3:07pm and wasn't back until this morning. Dora from Delhi in Sky Technical Support claimed it was a global outage to do with the earthquake, but when I pointed out that the earthquake had happened over 12 hours before the service went down, she seemed pretty clueless.

Pipex at home Hil and NTL / Virgin at work, both fine throughout the whole period.

Thanks, Seymour. I asked the question because none of my friends or family had a problem and I couldn't find anything about a major outage on the internet.

Next question: Why do I hate Batty Bits in call centres?

hilary. My Sky broadband was ok all afternoon.
All my Sky contacts have always been in Glasgow, can't understand a word. Have they changed?

Bolshi,

The ones in Scotland are OK, but I seem to remember from when I moved to Sky that they also have call centres in Ireland and the Far East somewhere (Malaysia maybe???).

Yesterday I got the one in the Far East. They're as nice as pie out there, but about as much use as a pork sausage at a bar mitzvah. I normally ask them what the weather's like in London today.

hil,

"I normally ask them what the weather's like in London today. "

We got on well when we were just back from a holiday in Rajasthan. Lots of things to chat about when the help advice asked for an (inevitably slow) re-boot!

TP

I'm trying to send a screenshot and it seems I need Paint as part of the process. But I haven't Paint listed in my Accessories list. Any ideas anyone. I'm running
XP Pro. TIA

TOK

You should be able to get by with any graphics application, most of which are better than paint.

If you do need paint, Control Panel / Add or Remove Programs / Click the Add or Remove Windows components and drill down the Accessories where you will find it. Check its box and keep clicking OK.

Thanks Optimist. Going round and round in circles with adding Windows Components. Keep being told to insert the disc but it won't install paint.exe. Grrrr!!!

"Windows XP SP3 won't make any noticeable cosmetic changes to your operating system, but underneath the hood are several security improvements worth having.

In addition, one researcher claims Windows XP SP3 will slightly boost XP's speed as well.

Microsoft is using an interesting method to distribute Windows XP SP3. You don't download it as a separate .exe file - instead, you download a small executable file that, when run, changes your Registry so that Windows Update will download Windows XP SP3. If you are comfortable with editing the Registry, you can instead use a hack to tell your Registry to download SP3.

The actual download of Windows XP SP3 weighs in at 65.6MB. Once we downloaded it, it took about 30 minutes to install on a 1.83GHz Core Duo laptop with 1GB of RAM. Reboot after the install, and you're in business."

More at: Windows XP - SP3 Review

Get Windows XP SP3 Release Candidate 2 with a simple Registry hack:

Here's how to do it: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=1673&blogid=4

Windows XP - Latest News (for Bookmarking)

TOK

I'm not sure what the problem is, but your best bet is to Google for some free software that you can use to edit pictures. Paint is not a very good program.

TOK, Irfanview is one of the best graphics/video display applications and it has limited picture editing facilities.

For once in my life I've done the right thing. Infranview was the one I downloaded and a screenshot has been sent. I wonder why Paint wouldn't download from my XP disc? Corrupt disc, maybe? Who knows. (No, it's not from an ebay scally - it's validated authentic by Microsoft.)

Internet Explorer 8.0 beta: first review

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8.0 (IE 8.0) beta 1 today, available via a download page. This beta is aimed squarely at website developers, but on Microsoft's IE 8.0 blog, the company encourages anyone to try it out.

You might want to proceed with caution before trying IE 8.0, though. I forged ahead and installed the beta - and I experienced more browser crashes during my hands-on than ever before. Prior to installing the IE 8.0 beta, I had IE 7.0 happily running along.

So far, I think I've confirmed a known issue between my Google and Yahoo Toolbars and IE 8.0. My colleague, Harry McCracken, has also installed the IE 8.0 beta, and his only crashes came when he, too, installed the Google Toolbar. Stay tuned for further reports the more we at PC World use IE 8.0 - I'm personally looking forward to giving WebSlices a spin.

Internet Explorer 8.0 beta: First review:-

"Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8.0 (IE 8.0) beta 1 today, available via a download page. This beta is aimed squarely at website developers, but on Microsoft's IE 8.0 blog, the company encourages anyone to try it out.

You might want to proceed with caution before trying IE 8.0, though. I forged ahead and installed the beta - and I experienced more browser crashes during my hands-on than ever before. Prior to installing the IE 8.0 beta, I had IE 7.0 happily running along.

So far, I think I've confirmed a known issue between my Google and Yahoo Toolbars and IE 8.0. My colleague, Harry McCracken, has also installed the IE 8.0 beta, and his only crashes came when he, too, installed the Google Toolbar. Stay tuned for further reports the more we at PC World use IE 8.0 - I'm personally looking forward to giving WebSlices a spin."

More at: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/index.cfm?reviewid=1806

I've heard it causes double entries :-)

Does anyone know of a free firewall program (for use with XP) which works with Avast Anti-virus, please? I have checked on 'Computerdoctors' site, but the only freebie is ZoneAlarm which has known conflicts with Avast.

Harrycat

I think that extra software firewalls are unnecessary, over rated, resource hogs and in some cases a security risk.

The Win XP SP2 firewall is perfectly good for stopping incoming traffic and your external firewall router should be adequate when used with a good AV package. If youre still worried, most routers can be configured to further restrict outgoing traffic although some are easier to use than others.

If you are trying to connect to the Internet via a USB modem or public WiFi -DON'T!!