Ah - the world famous NIPCC tour! But surely it is in Osu? Well, up until now it always has been. But, please remember, in spite of the fact that we spend a lot of time in one room staring at a computer screen, we in the NIPCC really do believe in broadening people's horizons. Well, taking the club to computer shops on a Pacific atoll did sound quite interesting, but we knew that the members would have hated it, so we settled for the other side of Nagoya instead (Trust us - we know what's best :-) ). Recently there has been a big expansion of shops in the Mei Eki area, particularly with the Tsukumo chain now having two large stores opposite each other. Shopping in this part of town offers nearly as much selection as there is to be found in Osu, at the same prices, without the congestion and heat of the small cramped Osu environment. In fact, one of the Tsukumo shops even has a rest area where one can sit down and rest one's feet while mulling over whether or not to buy this, that or the other. Our meeting convened in the Cafe de Crie, with those members who arrived around 12:00 o-clock able to enjoy a drink and a chat about the forthcoming tour before we set off. This month saw several new faces - check out the tour photograph. As usual with the tour, there were some members with particular things on their mind that they hoped to be able to resolve with the combination of being able to peruse just what was available in the shop with being able at the same time to discuss pro's and con's with other club members. So, here is a mention of some of the results of those combined operations of browsing, asking, discussing, pondering, deciding and buying that comprised the Mei Eki tour for some of our members.
Rowane had been thinking about buying a CD writer for around four months. For file transfer and back up it can be a very cost effective removable media. For regular back ups, a re-writer is obviously the way to go to avoid having to bear the cost of a new (although admittedly not very expensive) CD-R each time. The latest CD recorders incorporate the latest burn-proof technology. This is a proprietary technology that helps to protect against buffer under run error. Click here to read more about it. At one time CD writers used to use principally SCSI interfaces. However it is the case that these days, probably due to improvements in the IDE interface, most internal drives use the IDE interface. This offers the advantages of not needing a SCSI card and being easier to set up. In fact, many modern peripherals using an IDE interface no longer need a special driver. External devices still offer the choice of SCSI or USB, but Rowane opted for an internal device with an IDE interface.
The model that Rowane chose was the Acer CD Rewriter CRW 1610a. Being sold at Tsukumo for 14,799 Yen, it represented the value for money and facilities that Rowane was looking for. With so many people with previous experience of buying, installing and using a CD recorder, she felt more confident in making her purchase than if she had been considering all matters by herself. This model is an internal drive with an IDE interface. Acer is a Taiwanese company and this yielded the benefit that a lot of the included software was international. This much was not immediately obvious, yet it was considered to be likely as there was so much English writing on the box. Inside, the software CD had Japanese text on, yet upon checking, Rowane found that the bundled version of Nero CD burning software included an English language version. Hooray!
The two main players in CD burning software these days are Nero and Easy CD. Cut down versions of one or the other are found in many CD writers. However, many CD writers sold in Japan will only include Japanese language software, such as 'B's' or a Japanese language only version of Easy CD creator. Don't let that trouble you too much. Basic CD burning software is easily available for download from the internet. And if you want more features, Nero is also available for download at a reasonable price. Easy CD creator, once the top of the pile, has had some bad press recently since the parent company was taken over. Problems have included bugs which demanded a re-install of the operating system.
As well as the CD writer, Rowane also bought some blank CD-Rs. These are available in different sizes these days. Rowane went for the basic 650 Mb size, but they are also available in 700 and above sizes as well. These larger sizes are sometimes useful if copying an audio CD, when a capacity of more than 650 Mb may be needed.
Just before the tour, Michael came back from a business trip to find his display in very poor order indeed. Strange horizontal bands across the monitor were definitely not the sort of thing that we want to see, so clearly something was amiss. Trying the monitor on another PC cleared that (shame really, Michael is sick of that great big CRT - he wants it to be broken so he can get a nice TFT monitor), and after removing and re-seating the video card in the AGP slot made no difference, it was clearly time to get another video card. But what to get? The amount of choice is almost overwhelming, even if one only looks at the offerings from Creative. One thing for sure was that the current AGP slot card would be replaced by another AGP slot card. Although for most applications outside gaming, the performance from a PCI slot graphics card is still adequate, the majority of good cards are now AGP type. Also, as the motherboard has an AGP slot, it clearly makes the most sense to use that and keep the maximum number of PCI slots free for other uses. Note that one should check that the speed of the AGP card is compatible with the speed of the AGP slot on the motherboard. Early motherboards just offered a 2 X AGP slot, later ones offer a 2 X / 4 X which may be set by jumpers to the required speed. The card that Michael got offers 2 X or 4 X AGP performance.
The card that Michael chose was the ATi Radeon VE. This card is not an all out gamer's card, because that is not what was wanted. However, it does offer AGP 2 X / 4 X performance, 32 Mb of DDR memory and support for dual monitor display. This makes it a good card for business use and with enough of a goody spec' to make it attractive for home use as well. For example, reviews of this card speak well of it's ability to play DVD's (it has a built in decoder), and all the software is in English.
Price in Tsukumo was 13,799 plus tax and now all is once again nice and presentable on the monitor.
A welcome guest to the club for the Mei Eki tour was Peter. He was looking for a cheap and cheerful digital camera. As always in the NIPCC, we emphasise matching what you want with what you need. Peter needed a camera to put his digital photographs into e-mail. He was not primarily concerned with producing high quality printed photographs. Therefore he bought a cheap and cheerful camera for approximately 12,000 Yen. Of course, there was no zoom facility, but it did have a built in flash. And with a resolution of 0.35 megapixels, it is capable of producing 640 X 480 pixel images for the web. Whilst we were looking at the cameras, it seemed to us that the most convenient format may well be cameras such as this one that use the Fujitsu memory card. These cards come in various memory sizes, such as 8 Mb or 16 Mb, and can be used like any other removable storage media. They were not very expensive, so with the little camera and a few of these memory sticks, it seemed that there would be plenty of capacity for a day of happy snapping. Transferring the images to the computer was by means of a USB, or else it is possible to buy a reader that will read the Fujitsu memory cards directly. I can't say whether the included software was up to much, but even if it isn't, just pop along to www.ulead.com and download some of their reasonably priced photo management software.
Finally, one of the tour members who arrived shortly after the start of the tour, told us that he was interested in a computer to edit his videos. Well, he would have done well to have been present at Reed's presentation of video on the PC back in April. He was at an advantage as he was going to buy a new camera and a new PC. The point was made that video editing demands as much memory as you can get, as much hard disk space as you can get, as much processing power as you can get and the fastest interface you can get. Martin drew attention to a Panasonic notebook on display that had a neat jog wheel to facilitate incremental frame movement to facilitate video editing. Having missed Reed's invaluable presentation, it would maybe be worthwhile to visit a site I stumbled upon whilst writing this summary: www.manifest-tech.com/media_pc/index.html - seemed quite useful to me.
So, there we are, then. We had a pretty good attendance for the tour, and we hope that everyone enjoyed the change of venue. Please be sure to let us have your feedback on whether you liked it or not. Next meeting is on the 18th of August. Be sure to check out the NIPCC web site on www.nipcc.org for the latest news and information. See you there!
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