Readers’ comments
Your views and feedback from email and the web
Laptop lite
I’ve never understood why nobody sold a laptop without a screen or a battery, especially in days gone by when even simple laptops cost a couple of thousand pounds. The battery and screen were two of the most expensive items on a laptop, and if you asked most people they only ever used their machine at either work or at home – and then they plugged them into the mains and attached them to a desktop monitor.
With that in mind, manufacturers could have put the mains adapter in the battery space, which could have reduced the price by around £1,000. Even now I think the idea applies: few people seem to use a laptop without being in easy reach of a mains socket, and with screen casting technology now available any laptop could be wirelessly connected to a cheap smart TV, significantly reducing the price and weight of a laptop. Michael Albin
Editor-in-chief Tim Danton replies: You’re definitely going against the modern trend of more displays rather than none (see my reviews of the ThinkPad X1 Fold, p58, Asus Zenbook Duo, p60, and even Honor’s Magic V2 phone on p70), but it’s an interesting question. And almost a philosophical one: at what point is a laptop a laptop? Moving rapidly on, one project I’m watching with a tingle of cynicism but also some interest is Spacetop ( sightful.com), which went on sale in the US only in January. It’s a $2,150 laptop without a screen, using AR to display a 100in screen instead. Let’s see if it ever makes it to the UK.
Recurring nightmare
I read Lee Grant’s article ( see issue 354, p113) in which he mentions recurring subscriptions, and I would like to add a footnote. I recently received an email from McAfee telling me my antivirus subscription was due for renewal on my Toshiba PC and that would be £79.95 please.
I now use an LG laptop and before that it was an HP. As I remember, the McAfee came installed on the Toshiba when I bought it. I used the “lost password” prompt and logged in to the account to cancel the subscription, only to find out that the payment had also been set to recurring on PayPal, to a closed McAfee account. The renewal email said I would receive a refund if cancelled within 14 days, but the PayPal payment may have complicated things a little.
A very different experience from Microsoft when it came to my Office 365 renewal, which asked me if my payment method was still relevant and required confirmation in my online banking app. Michael G Magee
Missing MX Linux
I enjoyed Nik Rawlinson’s Linux Distros article ( see issue 354, p78) but was surprised that MX Linux wasn’t mentioned. This is the most popular Linux distro according to Distro Watch and I have found it to be excellent. Simon Unwin
Nik Rawlinson replies: Glad you enjoyed the Labs! MX Linux was on our original list (and we covered it in the previous Linux Labs) but as mentioned in the introduction we had to make some hard decisions when whittling down to a practical number. And, as MX Linux is one of many Debian-based contenders, we decided to make room for a couple of the less familiar entries and distributions with alternative roots.
Farewell to HP
At long last I’ve taken my HP all-inone printer to the skip and replaced it with an Epson. I had become very disillusioned with HP over the years with its overpriced cartridges and attempts to convert to a subscription ink model, which wouldn’t suit me. On top of that, it forced me to sign up to its phone app so that I could use the scanner on the printer. It even remotely changed the printer to stop me doing double-sided colour copies; something it used to do and now said it couldn’t!
The final straw was it complaining that an ink cartridge was not able to do “Continuous Printing” – whatever that means. Good riddance to it! Paul Girdham
Editor-in-chief Tim Danton replies: One of the reasons why we’re such fans of ink tank printers is that it moves away from these shenanigans, which are basically about printer manufacturers pushing people to their own cartridges rather than cheaper third-party alternatives.
(Note that we offered HP the chance to reply to this particular query, but it chose not to respond.)
Big-sheet printing
It’s obvious that both hardware and software have improved in speed and (perhaps hopefully) quality over time. However, back in the day I wrote a piece of software that would print a banner on an Epson 80-column dot matrix printer, controlling each dot as required. That was for a family tree printout as a seven-metre banner (it took about five hours to print). I seem to remember that there was a paper roller attachment to the printer, or else Z-fold paper could be used.
Nearly 40 years on, the family tree really could do with an update, but would you have any ideas for a banner style (or continuous roll) printer option these days? Ray Cramer
Contributing editor Jon Honeyball replies: Most roll-feed printers are big pro photo printers, like my old Epson Stylus Pro 4880, and if you have deep pockets there are professional Epson SureColor printers that I’m sure produce terrific results (but I haven’t tested them). More affordably, the sub-£300 Canon Pixma G4570 can do custom sizes up to 216mm wide and 1.2m long, and the sub-£150 Canon Pixma TS7750i can do the same.
Shop shock
Farley David ( see issue 354, p25) suggests that supermarkets may or should offer clever technical solutions to find the products you want quickly in their stores.
The cynic in me (and the realist in a capitalist system) says that these stores exist to make profits for their shareholders, not necessarily to make their customers’ lives easier. In this case it is probably better for the store to leave you to find your product by searching aisles, as you’re more likely to buy something in addition to what you’re looking for on impulse as you see it on your search.
The stores then increase this effect by reshuffling stock every now and then so even regulars don’t know where everything is.
Reinforcing this view is the fact that it’s been possible for a long time to offer this and many other types of smart help but, despite decades of retail refinement in supermarkets, none of them has done it. Peter Sherwood