Laptop as desktop

I need to buy a new notebook or netbook (what's the difference?) to replace my ancient Windows 98 laptop, but I realise it wouldn't be suitable for work involving a lot of writing. Would it be practicable to use one with an external monitor and keyboard?

Pat Macneil

JS: Netbooks are generally smaller, lighter and cheaper – they tend to have 7in to 12in screens where notebooks have 12in to 17in screens. They also have better battery life, due to their use of Intel Atoms instead of Core 2 Duo chips. However, the Atom is less powerful, and not suitable for tasks that need processing power. It may not be able to play HD movies, or even HQ movies from YouTube, without dropping frames.

Most netbooks and notebooks can be used with a standalone screen, USB keyboard and mouse, and Windows lets you use two screens as standard. Right-click on the desktop, select Properties and click Settings. Read the notebook PC's specification to find out what type of video output port it offers, then buy a suitable cable and screen.

Some business notebooks have a port (or slot) on the bottom for connecting to a docking station. This lets you keep the keyboard, mouse, screen, printer and other peripherals connected to the docking station while simply docking the notebook when required. Small docking stations are usually called port replicators. If you want to take this route, port replicators and/or docking stations are available for IBM ThinkPads, Toshiba, Dell, Fujitsu Amio and Stylistic, HP/Compaq, Sony and some other notebook PCs. In general, I'd go for a notebook with a special slot, not one that connects to a docking station via a USB port.

A docking station adds to the cost, but in my experience, it's much cheaper than the physiotherapy you may need after spending too many hours writing on an unergonomic notebook.

Sticking with Delphi 7

I have used Delphi 7 for many years, but having bought a new machine with Windows Vista, I get lots of error messages and warnings and it is unstable in operation.

Alec Wiliams

JS: Delphi 7 is rather old so you might consider upgrading. However, someone asked the same question at the excellent Stack Overflow site, and the answer is that "Delphi 7 under Vista is no problem if you can turn UAC [User Account Control] off." Dr Bob also has a useful article about running Delphi on Windows Vista.

Fake update for Outlook Express

An email says an update of Outlook Express is essential. It looks official, but WebShield says it's a possible threat. How does one know what to believe?


JS: There's a fake email security alert going around at the moment, warning about KB910721. If you run the attachment, it will infect your PC with a trojan/spyware program. Usually these fakes are easy to spot because of internal errors, but Sophos comments that this one does look plausible: "the spelling and grammar are surprisingly correct, for malware authors". However, the fact is that Microsoft will never email you an update: it wants you either to turn on Auto Updates or visit Microsoft's web site for security patches. Also, Outlook Express became obsolete about three years ago, when it was replaced by Windows Live Mail.

Defaulting to IE

Every time I switch the computer on, I find that Microsoft has tried to force me to accept Live Search as the default search engine for IE. It may be good, but I don't want it.

Pablo Luis Gonzalez

JS: With the launch of Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft stopped having any default search engine at all, and it isn't trying to force you to adopt Live Search, which has recently been replaced by Bing. If you installed IE7 yourself, you would have got a prompt offering two choices: (1) Keep my current search provider, and (2) Let me select from a list of other search providers. (It would be nice to see more alternative browsers do the same.) It is possible that a default is being set by the PC supplier (they can do almost anything) or a toolbar or another application. However, if you go run IE7 and go to Tools, pick Internet Options and click the button for Change Search Defaults, you should be able to change it. If not, you'll have to use something like AnVir Task Manager Free to find out what's interfering, and block it from interfering again. If you are using IE8, click the down-arrow next to the search box to get a list of defaults that you can choose. If you want a different one, you can click Find More Providers or the last option, Manage Search Providers. If you are using IE6, this recently set Bing as a default. Microsoft said this was a programming error and it was fixed the next day (3 June). However, you should not be using IE6 if you're an individual user, though some slow-moving companies still insist on it.


I mentioned ISP contention ratios in a reply to Martin Saunders. Andrew Moore says "your figures are correct for the majority of ISPs" but "more modern providers such as O2 and any provider using the Cable & Wireless LLU network will connect to backhaul using gigabit Ethernet. While this doesn't eliminate contention entirely, it makes it less of a factor."