JUST THE TONIC

When mobile maladies and portable pains stop your laptop or PDA from working, there’s only one man who can help. They call him the Doctor, the Laptop Doctor

GAME CONCERN
There has been a great deal of discussion on the WL forum about the variety of laptop graphics cards, and it seems that most people are willing to wait for the ‘next big thing’, no matter what the wait and eventual cost is. What I want to know is whether or not there’s a difference between a DirectX 8 and DirectX 9 graphics card?

MICHAEL SHAW, VIA EMAIL

At its most basic, DirectX allows 3D graphics to run smoother on a Windows-based computer. It’s a suite of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) developed by Microsoft to enable software developers to make unified drivers that support an array of hardware configurations. As developers don’t know the configuration of all the systems their software will run on, the APIs used by DirectX act as a bridge to enable the hardware and software to communicate with each other, so there’s as little delay or drop in performance as possible.

DirectX 9.0b is the latest version and offers a host of improvements over the older DirectX 8 APIs. The graphics adapter in your laptop will be able to use any version of DirectX, but this doesn’t mean that it will be able to handle the latest advances in 3D design. Older adapters are limited by the hardware support for DirectX. Therefore, to make the most of DirectX 9.0b, you will need a laptop with the latest generation of graphics adapters, such as the ATi Mobility Radeon 9600 or nVidia GeForce FX Go 5700.

DEAD PIXELS
Please could you advise me on the issue of the ‘dead pixel policy’ for TFT screens? I’m wondering how you class such a fault, how individual manufacturers instigate a dead pixel policy and whether dead pixels can be repaired?

WAYNE HARBOUR, VIA EMAIL

This is a common question posed by users switching over from the glass of a CRT monitor to the thinner and lighter TFT technology. Before we explain the difference, it’s worth pointing out that the failure rate of TFT panels is less common than it was, due to improved manufacturing techniques. A laptop’s TFT screen is made up of individual pixels to create the images that you see. An electric pulse is sent to each one to switch it on and give it its colour. A dead pixel is one that’s no longer receiving a pulse, normally due to being burnt out. Repairing a blown pixel isn’t cost-effective as it’s often easier to merely replace the panel.

One dead pixel on a screen is not potentially a problem, unless it’s right in the middle of the panel. It will only become a problem when the display begins to suffer from multiple dropouts. Each laptop manufacturer will have different stipulations about the severity of the problem, but as a rule of thumb, most companies only accept returns on a panel that has more than 12 dead pixels. As already stated, such a problem typically will only be found on older displays.

QUICK TIP
If performance is more important than battery life then you can improve the overall speed of your laptop by going to Control Panel>System>AdvancedPerformance and click the Best for Performance icon from the available list. Windows will automatically configure the laptop to give you extra power.

LOST EXCEL FILE
I recently bought a Mitac 338 Pocket PC on sale or return. I particularly wanted to copy a Works Spreadsheet file (approx. 1.4MB) from my Desktop PC (Windows XP Home Edition Version 2002) to the Pocket PC, so that I could carry it around with me. I was advised that the Pocket PC had a version of Pocket Excel so the Works file had to be saved as an .XLS file in order to copy it to Pocket Excel.

The title of the file appeared in the document list on the Pocket PC, but when I tried to open it a note popped up saying that it wasn’t available. I took the PDA back to the supplier and explained what had happened. They also tried that same procedure on their own set-up, but that didn’t work either. Naturally, I’m very disappointed and I would still like to purchase one, provided, of course, it’s possible to copy my file to it, but I can’t find anyone to advise me. Please can you help?

JULIAN SHEPHERD, DORSET

This is a problem that’s becoming increasingly common due to many laptop vendors supplying Microsoft Works free with the purchase of a laptop. It seems that the way the software saves its files is not currently compatible with Pocket Excel. Microsoft is aware of this fault, but is yet to create an update patch for it. ActiveSync’s Options menu give you the choice of transferring Excel files to your Pocket PC in their native format (.XLS) or automatically converting them to Pocket Excel files (.PXL).

If your spreadsheet was originally created in Microsoft Excel, it will work on your Pocket PC whether it’s converted or not. A spreadsheet created in Works can be saved as an Excel 97-2000 file and read by the Excel desktop application. However, it won’t work when transferred to a Pocket PC, even if it’s converted to a Pocket Excel file by ActiveSync. Clearly, Works must be doing something unusual or non-standard when saving .XLS files.

TREO TROUBLE
I was very interested to read your article on smartphones in the February issue of WL, especially the Treo 600. I was delighted when they brought it out as I still had the original Palm M100, so an upgrade was sorely needed.

However, there seems to be a problem with the MMS facility and I’m now on my fifth phone. While it works perfectly well when I have no data, when I synchronise the phone and try to use MMS, the handheld reboots itself, rendering this facility useless. This is very frustrating. I’m now just about ready to give up on the whole phone.

JUDITH SMALLPEICE, VIA EMAIL

The Treo 600 is an excellent hybrid PDA and phone, but it seems that there have been a number of problems with the device resetting itself at odd times. We have heard that some users have had the device rebooting after sending SMS texts, but nothing related to the MMS feature of the Treo. The best solution to this problem is to upgrade the device’s firmware to Version 2.09. This free upgrade can be downloaded from http://perso.wanadoo.fr/fmol/
Treo60...INT_Updater.prc.

Before installing any upgrade to your device, we recommend that you backup all your data either to a memory card or to your desktop computer.
This will ensure that you won’t lose any of your important data. While you are downloading the latest upgrades, it’s worth checking other updates for the Treo 600 from www.handspring.co.uk/support/software.asp.