So, he bought a Sony Mini DVD camcorder.
I looked at it and it does appear to be a great little machine. I don’t like the idea of Mini-DVD AT ALL so that’s a problem for me. Anyway, We took the finalised DVD from the camcorder and placed it into the PC. Sony’s software powers up, so I close it, annoying thing it is.

I run the DVD player software on the PC, and it crashes.
I run Media player, and it crashes.
I download and install VLC, and it crashes.
I download GSpot, and it says “DVD is fine, no problems.”

I run the Sony software and play the DVD just fine.
I “Import” the DVD to MPG’s via the Sony software just fine.
I run Media player, and it crashes.
I run VLC, and it crashes.
I download Virtual Dub, and it crashes with “Illegal format.”

I re-run the Sony software and choose to “Import and convert” each MPG file.
Only now do the programs all run the MPG’s just fine.

So, Sony, your DVD as recorder on the camera will play on a DVD player, but not a PC.
Your imported MPG’s are in a crap format that only your player can play.

The only way to get a usable file from their camera is to take the mini DVD and import and convert the thing. Their software now creates an file that is usable, but the quality stinks.
We don’t have the choice to run any better ripping software. We don’t have access to the original DVD media in any other software.

Sony? Can I say “Screw you!”? I will not actively do whatever I can to ensure your Camera’s are NOT bought by anyone who asks my opinion. You are going out of your way to stop people editing their own media. Your only conversion utility stinks and create low quality files.

My feelings on camcorders hasn’t changed in years. Buy a Mini-DV camcorder. The data can be imported by many software applications without problem. The file format is generally standard.
Sure, it takes longer to import the video, but a hell of a lot less time to get it into the editing suite.

Oh and another thing Sony,
Mini DVD recorders? 14 minutes per disk? What is the point?
Batteries. The stock battery lasts for 25 minutes. Not even two full disks.
We had to cancel our testing and tuition setting, as the battery WAS HOPELESS!
Batteries (again!) Please, Sony, £70 for a battery that lasts 40 minutes?
Charger. No charger supplied. We can only charge on the camera. This gives us the ability to take 15 minute trips away from the power socket! Woo. Great holday camera huh? After 15 minutes you are then tied to the power outlet for 2 HOURS while the battery recharges.

Instead of spending £70 on a Sony battery, we got onto Ebay. We purchased a higher capacity battery AND charger with mains and car charging capability. How much? £18, delivered.

Can I repeat, “Sony, Screw you!”?

Today, I was asked to help organise a printer for someone. We headed out to get a cheap, basic laser printer for home use. Sure, no problem. We checked PCworld’s website and spotted a simple Samsung 1640. On visiting the local shop we found “they don’t stock it.” Ok, We’ll look at another, “How about the little Canon there?…” Erm, no, “We’ve only got display stock. Maybe try Comet.” I have to say that the shop looked pretty badly stocked in every department. I overheard a couple of staff chatting to potential customers, and they were general very negative about stock levels. So, Comet. We arrive and find only one brand of laser printer. It’s priced cheap but comes with a very low yeild toner cartridge. “How much is a replacement toner?” I ask, “£55 for a 1500 page cartridge.” WHAT? No bloody way.

What a disappointing day. Stock, just wasn’t and customer service, just didn’t.

After doing the usual shop crawl. I suggested, “Let’s just try Big W” (The Woolworths store) Nothing. Not a PC or anything in sight, except for a Wii. Lot’s of those. One thing that did catch my eye was the barricade over half of the shop and the place looking like a car boot sale.

“How about Asda?” Well, No laser printers and plenty of over-priced Inkjets.

While in Asda, I actually spotted a nice little laptop they’re selling for £249. Windows Vista laptop too. The problem? (there has to be one!) It comes with 512MB of RAM. Excuse me? Does Vista even boot with 512MB of RAM? Ok, I know it does, but seriously, do they expect this machine to be more than a paper-weight with 512MB of RAM? I didn’t really spend time looking over the specifications on the machine after seeing that. The machine looked fine, but Asda, please get some common sense. All you will do, by selling this machine, is piss off your customers who will immediately need to upgrade the RAM. RAM can be bought fairly cheaply, if you know where you are looking, but how many people will know where to look. Maybe PCWorld? Hell no, have you seen their prices and stock levels?

So, previously I mentioned a job that involved a new PC. When I arrived on site at the clients location, I checked the situation and quickly found out the PC had no Internet access. It wasn’t receiving an IP address from the router. Funny that, everything was configured properly and the PC was plugged into the first port on the router.

I plugged in my laptop, and set it for DHCP. Everything worked for me at IP level, but I had no internet connection. I moved the clients CAT5 cable to another port on the router and it instantly got an IP.

Hmm. The WAN connection was up on the external modem and it was plugged into the WAN port on the router. Everything should be OK. I tried the clients laptop and it connected to the router just fine wirelessly but agiin, no internet.

I checked the cables and they were all fine. At this point the client noticed the cables and commented that they were the wrong way around. I swapped them out of curiosity and the network kicked it complete with broadband. Wait a minute, what just happened?

Checking the router again I see that the WAN connection to the internet was connected to PORT1 on the LAN side and the new PC was conencted to the WAN port on the router! This isn’t right! That can’t happen! But it did.

I cannot explain, to this day, how this worked. The router must have been scrambled or had a bad firmware, or something. There’s no way this should have worked but it did. We decided not to diagnose this any further and got on with the jobs at hand. Whatever that D-Link router was up to I don’t know, I wish I knew as this one will spin in my head for some time to come!

We got a call to a job the other day. A client had just bought a new PC to be delivered by PC World. The old machine had died at boot up, something about the drive being corrupt. Anyway, we got the call to visit and configure their new machine. PC World were late ordering the replacement PC so after delays getting the machine to the client, we were off!

On arrival at the site there were a wide range of tasks to complete. Installing three printer drivers on two machines, rebuilding the network (more on that later!), recovery of data and configuring remote desktop. Well, it turns out PC World did not return the data drive so data recovery was out. I set up the various printers (downloading all of the drivers, HP your site sucks!) We then configured XP Remote Desktop to allow the client to access their laptop from the new PC. Thankfully the client had the vision to search out a machine that still had XP on it, so this task was eased a little.

XP, yes XP on a new machine in August 2008. XP service pack 2 I might add. It’s not even a recent version! Updating to SP3 and adding the remaining updates completed the job, so far. We will return to this one when PC World recover the data on the old drive, or give up and return it.

Whatever happens I’m sure I’ll be running Spinrite past the drive and booting from Ubuntu to see what remains of the data.