Steve Litchfield

Twice a year, most countries in the world change all their clocks and confuse everybody. Why???? There are arguments about wanting to let people play cricket and tennis further into the summer evenings, but surely there are as many people with young families, cursing the lighter evenings because their little ones don't think it's night time and don't want to go to sleep? So, we have this ridiculous situation where people turn up an hour early or an hour late for everything for up to a day, plus we have to change most of the clocks on most of our appliances, risk upsetting computer software and generally endure chaos . In the name of what, exactly? Sheer madness.

Watching The Matrix Reloaded yesterday in the same week as I acquired a Windows Vista laptop was slightly surreal. After 4 days battle against 'helper' services and programs whose main purpose was to swallow processor cycles and RAM and generally get in the way, it was amusing to hear the 'Oracle' talking about programs that are written to do this and that and generally not be noticed. I'm sure Microsoft intended most Vista services to not be noticed, but in the real world on less than cutting edge hardware the constant hard disk access and processor/RAM hit is very noticeable. And now I've ended up with a Vista laptop that's configured like XP and runs only 20% or slow slower. Why didn't I get a XP-running laptop in the first place? Because you can't buy these for love nor money.... Sigh. On the bright side, Vista's device discovery and driver installation has been great. No printer driver CDs or trying to find CDs for every other accessory acqu...

Like thousands of others, I've just paid a few pounds to download the new Radiohead album directly from the band at their In Rainbows site . Essentially they leave it up to you, the listener/fan to set the price for the music. Some people will opt to pay £2, some £5, some £10 perhaps. But the point is that it ALL goes to the band themselves. No record label, no PR agencies, no shops with pile carpets, no poster campaigns to fund, just music direct to the fans and with almost no overheads. Isn't that the way bands SHOULD distribute their music in this Internet age?

Re: the latest iPhone hack . It's a serious question. I know you're going to say "Because they can, and to show that they're really cool and clever". But Apple can update all iPhones remotely and there's certainly no shortage of functionality that they err... haven't got round to implementing yet. So with every update they're going to close the loopholes and exploits used by the current generation of hacks. And so the cycle will continue. In the meantime, all the hackers have got to show for their efforts are a few bricked iPhones and lots of geek kudos and glory - maybe that's enough for them? If you're a regular iPhone user, of course, just stay well away. Why risk bricking your iPhone for the chance to play with a few marginal third party applications for a few weeks until Apple closes the loop again?

Exemplary sound quality over its speakers is not an Apple iPhone trait, alas. But it seems that you can now build your own iPhone amplifier in 10 seconds and just for a few pence! Or just buy a Nokia N95 of course, and have really loud stereo speakers. Oh, and games, extra apps, 5mp camera, DVD video recording, TV out, etc.

OK, so I'm probably hopelessly naive, but taking an overview of strikes (thinking of the Royal Mail here), isn't it usually counter productive in the long run? OK, a one day strike is a useful tool to get management's attention over something, but going on strike for, say, 2 weeks, can only have the effect of hugely harming the company's business, making it less profitable and less trustworthy to customers, making it more likely that management will have to cut jobs and restrict pay raises? No company has infinite resources, so strikes do seem to be to be 'cutting off your nose to spite your face'. And an anachronism in 2007. What do you think?

Such a cool device, optimised for countries with blinding sunlight, plenty of dust and infrequent power. Here's David Pogue's review - he's as impressed as I am. If you're in the USA this November, get one for yourself and the company gives another one to a poor child in the Third World.

Interesting to see ex-Microsofter Johansson ditching a DRM-heavy Microsoft app in favour of a non-Windows DRM-free solution for playing back multimedia . Especially interesting since I'd been struggling to get anywhere with Microsoft Office 2007's stupid approach to first 'activation' of its own trial version and then unfriendly handling of legacy Office 2003 files. After my teacher wife and I had torn our hair out in frustration, I simply installed the free OpenOffice 2.3 and peace was restored, with files being opened and saved properly - and we also knew where to find most of the functions rather than playing the new Office 2007 guessing game.

And so yet another music service is to close ( Virgin Digital ), with customers being locked out of re-downloading music they've already paid for. Why do consumers put up with this? Just say no to DRM. Buy CDs and then keep them on your shelf, ripping them in iTunes or Media Player when you want to any portable device and carry on doing so for free until the end of time....

Well, that just about sums up the summer we've had (or rather haven't) in the UK. Looking down at my shorts next to the bed, I realised that I'd only worn them twice in the whole season. Surely, surely, this has to be the coolest and wettest summer since records began? Steve Litchfield (sent from a mobile device)

Great to see Google release the third component of their free online Office Suite - try it here . In my test, it opened a large test Powerpoint presentation perfectly: With Google also giving away StarOffice, and with OpenOffice itself, all free, who on earth wants to pay Microsoft hundreds of dollars/pounds any longer for their bloated Office suite?

Russ Beattie is a man I've always liked for telling it like it is. In other words, telling the absolute truth and not minding if it offends some mega-corporation. In this case, saying what an absolute crock the Microsoft Zune is . Yes, it's competent, but it doesn't sparkle, it doesn't attract, it doesn't glow, unlike the stellar and constantly evolving opposition from Apple (and now the likes of Nokia). Just scrap the Zune, Microsoft, and admit you were wrong again. While you're on his blog, here's a great tip about reading web pages with silly colour schemes (you know, pink on dark pink, etc)...

Heartening news to hear that the one OpenOffice-dismmissing IBM has signed up to help develop OpenOffice . I've always been a fan of OO and have hated the way Microsoft make it so expensive for ordinary folk to do basic word processing and spreadsheets and with horrendous activation schemes. And now OO looks set to go from strength to strength.

I've lost count of the number of commercial sites I've visited, upon which I want to purchase something simple, something small - and, when I get to fill in my credit card details, they also want me to create an account on their system, complete with user name, password, full address (again) and so on. Look, I just want to buy something, OK, I won't be coming back, don't take it personally, it's just that you've only got the one thing I want. So WHY DO I HAVE TO CREATE AN ACCOUNT? And have to remember (/write-down and keep safe) one MORE username and password. Usually, I just turn back at this point and go to another site, if possible, which doesn't have the same system. What sparked this off? I wanted to use a particular piece of royalty-free ambient music in my video podcast , so I clicked through the relevant site to the 'Ask us for a quote' section. All I wanted was a price, like "$10" or "$100". Instead I was presented with a...