Readers’ comments
Your views and feedback from email and the web
Key keyboard factor
I found your article on keyboards ( see issue 329, p36) fascinating; I had no idea there was quite so much variation in keyboard design. For me, though, it left out one important factor: can I even get the keyboard I want?
Up until the start of lockdown I’d muddled along with two keyboards in my home office: a Logitech illuminated wired keyboard for my desktop computer and a cheap cordless one for when I had my work laptop at home (using the same desk and screens).
Once my work laptop became a semi-permanent fixture, this became somewhat inconvenient. I decided that the best option would be a Bluetooth keyboard that would easily switch between the two computers. As a programmer who makes heavy use of the backslash key, though, I wanted to be able to access that without having to use a special key combination, and I also wanted separate cursor keys and ideally a number pad as well. You’d be surprised to find how hard it is to match those requirements, as most Bluetooth keyboards don’t seem to have a separate backslash key.
I tried out a cheap keyboard from Amazon that met all the requirements except that the backslash and pipe symbols were accessed using a function key, but even after a couple of months of heavy usage I just couldn’t get along with it.
In the end I found a Logitech K850 keyboard and M720 mouse combination that met all my requirements – a bit of a shame as I already had a M720 mouse. The K810 is a nice, solid semi-ergonomic keyboard with a decent feel to it.
It can attach up to three devices using either Bluetooth or a
Logitech unifying wireless receiver, so I can use Bluetooth for the office and home laptops and the wireless receiver for my desktop computer (likewise for the mouse). Out of curiosity, after reading the article, I looked through the keyboards offered by Razer and Das Keyboard and found that none of them met my needs.
John Gwatkin-Williams
In bed with Microsoft?
In common with most technical journalists, Darien Graham-Smith endorses Microsoft FUD by implying that the Windows 11 requirement for TPM 2 and for a recent processor are two separate things ( see issue 329, p26). As far as I can determine, most recent AMD and Intel processors include TPM 2 within the chip. I think there are probably few, if any, machines that would pass the processor requirement but fail on missing TPM.
The fly in this ointment is that for some obscure reason, most BIOS settings for desktop motherboards disable TPM by default. Before giving up on Windows 11, or hacking the Registry to force-install it, it’s well worth poking about in your BIOS settings to see if TPM 2 can be enabled on the hardware you already own!
I was only saved from an unnecessary purchase of a TPM module by the fact that, under pressure of Covid supply chain shortages and Microsoft-stimulated excess demand, they are currently impossible to obtain!
John Hind
Associate editor Darien Graham-Smith replies: It’s true, Windows 11 only supports CPUs with native TPM 2 capabilities – so if the installer complains that you don’t have a compatible TPM chip, it’s probably just disabled in the BIOS. You can normally fix this by toggling a single setting, but note that on some Intel motherboards the function you need might be referred to as PTT (Platform Trust Technology), while AMD boards may call it PSP (Platform Security Processor). Look out for a detailed guide to TPM in next month’s PC Pro.
Torrent of NFTs
Can I be the 94th person to point out that Geoff Huntley’s “torrent of NFTs” is actually 17 terabytes in size, and not 17 gigabytes as your article states ( see issue 329, p11)?
I’m not sure about the average
PC Pro reader who might have taken a butcher’s at the magnet link, but I certainly don’t have either 17TB of disk space currently doing nothing, or sufficient available VDSL bandwidth to grab the contents in anything under a very long time indeed.
I had fun reading the Twitter comments at pcpro.link/330nft,
mind. Lots of fungible fanboys having a mocking meltdown while missing the point. Mark Studden
Time portal
Please could you ask your distribution department to send me a copy of the Financial Times dated early March 2022? They clearly have a time portal to the future, as my March 2022 copy of PC Pro arrived on 6 January.
But seriously, why does PC Pro have such a bizarre cover dating policy? It really makes the magazine and its contributors appear very unprofessional. For example, Christmas gift ideas in February;
New Year predictions in February; software downloads that expire before the cover date.
Apart from this gripe, you produce an excellent magazine. Your article on upgrading old laptops convinced me to buy the Kingston 1TB upgrade kit and fit it to a 12-year-old Toshiba Satellite. After using the Acronis cloning software, changing the drive took less than three minutes from picking up the screwdriver to Windows 10 opening! The laptop now runs Windows 10 with no problems and opens Word and Excel instantly.
David Hodgkinson
Editor-in-chief Tim Danton replies: David, you win the prize for the most entertaining way to ask me this question, which lands in the PC Pro inbox every other month one way or another. The simple answer is that it’s a legacy from the days of 20 computer magazines on the newsagent shelf, all vying with one another to appear the most current.
I have tried many times over the years to persuade PC Pro’s owners to make the cover dates more sensible, but never with success because the switch poses risks of confusion (both for our distributors and those readers who are now conditioned to expect the March issue in January!). However, I pledge to keep fighting the battle to change the date to something more realistic.
Wish me luck!