I use a computer based calendar (Outlook 2007) and find that it does everything I could want it to do. I asked her why she used both when the computer options are free and come with a number of features a paper diary can’t offer. After listing a few of the advantages, I thought it would be wise to do a bit of a comparison.

This article will look at paper diaries vs computer based calendars. I am strongly leaning towards the computer based diaries as being a better option. The only way a paper diary can win this is to bypass all the benefits and answer “I simply prefer paper diaries!”

Benefits of computer based diaries:

• Not limited to one year: Most paper diaries are limited to just one year of data whereas in a computer based system, you can keep data from years back and years ahead. 
• No transition time: When one year is up and another begins, you don’t need to run two paper diaries in parallel as the computer based system is continuous.
• Easily backed up: Most computer based calendars are either backed up by the company supplying the calendar, or can be easily backed up by the user.
• Accessible anywhere: Many computer based calendars can be accessed from any computer in the world, normally through a web browser.
• Syncable with phone: You can take all your dates with you on your mobile phone. This is much smaller than carrying a paper diary around.
• Recurring appointments: Instead of writing a date down for every fortnight or week, you can make recurring appointments which will automatically fill in future dates. This saves a huge amount of time.
• You can set up visual and audible alerts for important reminders.
• Address Book: The address book does not need to be written out each year, it continues on. There are no scribbled out names in the address book.
• Delegates: Using some advanced features of computer based calendars, you can see when other people are busy by looking at their calendar and book meetings accordingly.
• Typing data is quicker and easier to read: I can’t write very neatly or quickly so a computer based calendar is better for me.
• You don’t need to trek out to the shops to find one you like at the right price.

Benefits of paper based diaries:

• Looks professional: Opening up a paper based diary at a meeting looks good. It makes it look like you are organised.
• Writing is quicker: Some people can write quickly and neatly.
• The joy of making a hand-script tick as you complete your tasks.
• Habit: You might be used to a paper based calendar. Making the change to a computer based system may be a hassle.

Additional Points:

Portability: Depending on the size of the paper diary you use, it could fit into your handbag without too much weight, or it may end up being a pain to lug around. Likewise, your ability to reap the benefits of an electronic calendar largely depends on how easily you can access it through your mobile, laptop or another computer perhaps at work or uni. Many current phones do have sync and calendar functions built in.

Access: I spoke with a colleague about paper diaries and why he uses them. He is not completely comfortable with computers yet (even though he is in IT) but he had a valid point. He likes to access his diary when he wants to. He doesn’t want a computer based calendar to control his life and distract him with alarms constantly.

My wife would want to customise the colours, fonts and alerts in Outlook so she could enjoy using it, and feel like it was hers, so we are going to look into the colour options of Outlook in the coming days. More on that later.

Conclusion:

It has to come down to personal preference. The most I can suggest, if you have not yet tried electronic diaries is to give it a god for a month and see what you are missing out on. I doubt you will regret it.

As a result of writing this article, and sitting down with my wife to give her a quick run-down on Outlook, (after lots of oohs and aaahs) she has finally come around and now she enjoys using her new calendar, especially the recurring schedule function. The computer based system is a clear winner!

I hope you have enjoyed this article and found it useful. It can be hard to pick up new things, especially when there are so many features you won’t use that are available to you. 

Email servers often have spam protection built in. These cull the majority of spam, but they have to allow a fair chunk of spam through so as to not restrict legitimate emails. Sometimes if they are unsure, they may add a spam tag to the subject. It is scary looking at server stats, just how much is stopped at the server level.

In our email client we are able to setup rules to remove the majority of remaining spam from our Inbox. I regularly find myself doing this on computers where I work and have found this method to be very reliable.

This article will show you how to setup basic email rules which will check mail as it is received. The rules will look for keywords in the body and the subject of you emails to decide if they are spam or not. We are then able to move these filtered emails to a folder of our choice.

It is worth noting that you will still be receiving the same spam as you always have. What this article will help you achieve is automatic removal of it from your Inbox. There is no perfect solution to your spam problems, but this one comes pretty close. It is still necessary to look in junk email every now and again to see what has been wrongly tagged.

We have to be careful when we make our rules to keep legitimate email in our Inbox. We will also need to check our spam folder every so often to ensure legitimate email has not gone into it. On a good note though, we can keep tweaking the same rule to best suit our needs.

Introduction:

Outlook and many other email packages come with rules or filters that we can use to manage our email. With these rules we can check mail as it is received and automatically send the email to particular folders or send auto replies. These are normally things that we would do manually, but once rules are set, they can be our personal secretary.

I will be using Outlook 2003 in this article. To setup rules in Outlook 2007, the configuration is very similar.

Method:

In Outlook:

Click “Tools”

Click “Rules and Alerts”

You will be presented with a new screen showing you what rules you already have.

Click “New Rule…”

I like to start with a blank rule. This lets me configure every aspect of the rule to suit my needs.

Setup a new rule to “Apply this rule after the message arrives, with specific words in the subject or body.

Work your way through the wizard, keeping in mind the following points…

• If you click on “specific words”, you then get to enter in words that are normally associated with spam.
• Words like viagra, sex, Rolex, Nigeria, penis and possibly a few swear words should be in this list. It’s a good day to have tourettes.
• You want to be careful to choose the right words though because you may get rid of legitimate mail if you use incorrect words. Words like enlargement may stop legitimate email. Your friends might also send you emails with the odd naughty word.
• I like to add the word spam to my list. Be aware that some emails may legitimately say spam in them. You may want to create a new rule where the word spam only registers if it is in the subject, instead of both the subject and the body.
• You can have as many rules as you want. 

Click “Next”

Tell Outlook to move these flagged messages to a specified folder, in my case, Junk Email.

That is the end of the basics, but we can customise out rule a little further if you would like. Click “Finish” if you would like to end here, otherwise read on.

Click “Next”

Select “Except if from people or distribution list.” In here you can select your whole address book. This will make the rule void if the message is sent from somebody you know. This is a worthwhile step as you will still receive all the email from recognised contacts.

When you are done, click “Finish”

Please note that you may get into trouble by adding in too many variables. For example, if you create the one rule to filter messages with “spam” in the subject and “viagra” in the body, the rule will need to find both of these to be marked as junk. In this situation, it is best to make two rules. One for the emails body, and another for the emails subject.

You have a lot more options as to how you configure this. If you follow the last step, you can probably feel more free to add more keywords above. This will require a bit of tweaking. If you do get legitimate email in your spam folder, you can figure out why it was sent to this folder and change the rule to suit. If you get spam in your Inbox, you can add words to the rule so that they too will be flagged as spam.

You are able to run the rule immediately to clear out your current Inbox of spam. You also have control of turning the rule on and off. Either way, you should have greatly reduced your spam intake for all future emails.

Rules can be transferred from computer to computer, but they are so easy to make, you may as well start from scratch.

Conclusion:

You should now have much less spam in your Inbox. You can keep tweaking your new rule to work better for you over coming weeks. This method has never failed me and it is one of the first things I set up when I install Outlook.

Rules can also be a really fast way to tidy up an over cluttered Inbox. If you have 300 messages, the spam rule above and a few other rules specific to people or distribution lists, can really help you work through huge chunks of email quickly.

I hope you have enjoyed this article. Please stick around and check out some other articles at Inspect My Gadget.

However, Mac OS X also has its own distinct personality quirks & features. The current version of the operating system – 10.4, also known as “Tiger” – was released in April 2005. Its stand out features are listed here:

• Spotlight
• Dock
• Sidebar
• Smart Folders
• Expose
• Dashboard

This article, which I’ll be presenting in two parts, aims to cover most of Mac OS X’s unique features & methodology, and in particular how to use them to your advantage.

Part 1 which follows will cover Spotlight, the system-wide search feature, as well as the Dock & Sidebar. Part 2 will cover Smart Folders, Exposé and Dashboard.

Spotlight

Spotlight is the Mac’s system-wide Search feature, which created a b ig splash when Tiger was first released in 2005. With it, you can search not only for files or programs by name, but you can also search for almost anything else that has anything to do with that name, like Address Book contacts, Mail messages, iCal events and lots more.

Actually, there’s a bit of debate over who came up with the idea first – Apple & Microsoft were both working on the concept for their upcoming operating systems. Search exists on Vista as well as Tiger, and the feature works very well on both, but there’s no denying that Apple were first to the party.

To use Spotlight, you start by clicking on the blue magnifying glass in the top-right corner of your screen and start typing. Spotlight will immediately start returning search results as you type, sorting them by Kind. When you see your results appear, just highlight the one you want, or select “Show All” to see every result.

Spotlight technology permeates throughout the whole operating system. You’ll find that almost any window you open has a textbox in the top right corner with a little magnifying glass in it. Type your words here, and Spotlight will do its thing.

The Dock and Sidebar

The Dock in Mac OS X works a bit like the Taskbar in Windows, but more fluid. It shows what programs are currently running (shown by a little black marker), and also contains shortcuts to things that you make use of most frequently. Items on the left of the dividing line are applications, and items on the right are anything else – Files, folders, servers, whatever.

To customise it, just drag icons onto it, or off it. Drag an icon along the dock to rearrange its order. Drag the dividing line to make the Dock bigger or smaller. A word of reassurance: When something is dragged off the Dock or Sidebar, it disappears in a puff of smoke. Don’t worry! You haven’t deleted anything – just the shortcut. The original item is still safe   

If you want to change the way the Dock behaves, select ‘Dock’ from the Apple Menu, or just right-click the dividing line.

The Sidebar, which can be found on the left side in all Finder windows and Save dialogs, works pretty similar to the Dock in that it keeps shortcuts to files and places you use most often. You customise it the same way, by dragging icons onto it and off it.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where we’ll be highlighting some more of Tiger’s nifty features! Please stick around and check out some other articles at Inspect My Gadget.

However, Mac OS X also has its own distinct personality quirks & features. The current version of the operating system – 10.4, also known as “Tiger” – was released in April 2005. Its standout features are listed here:

• Spotlight
• Dock
• Sidebar
• Smart Folders
• Expose
• Dashboard

Welcome to Part 2 of our Beginners’ guide to the Mac OS X “Tiger” operating system! In Part 1, we looked at Spotlight, the system-wide search feature, and the handy Dock and sidebar. Now we look at Smart Folders, and two pretty nifty screen features.

Smart Folders

You may have already seen a similar concept in iTunes, known as Smart Playlists. Well, Apple took the concept beyond iTunes and made it a standard part of the Mac system. Smart Folders are actually an extension of Spotlight (see Part 1) – basically they’re Saved Searches.

To create one, just select ‘New Smart Folder’ from the File menu, feed it some criteria (eg. “All Word Documents on the Computer created in the last 30 days”), and click the ‘Save’ button. This creates a purple folder which fills with the names of all the files from anywhere in your system that meet the criteria you specified.

A similar feature exists on Windows Vista, called ‘Virtual Folders’, which works on the same principle. Both are an excellent way of organising your files!

Exposé

Exposé is a truly nifty way of managing a whole lot of open windows, cutting through the clutter and letting you jump straight to the window you want, or just hiding them altogether. Trust me, you won’t want to go back once you’ve tried it! 

(Incidentally, Microsoft introduced a similar feature in Vista called Flip3D, but I’m going to be a little biased here and say that Apple does a much better job of it). 

To use it, you just press F9, F10 or F11.

F9 will take every window you’ve got open in every program and lay them out so you can see them all side-by-side (see picture). Just click on the one you want, and it will jump you straight there.

F10 does the same thing, but only for the program you’re currently in.

F11 moves all windows out of the way so you can see your desktop.

You can customise the way Exposé works by going to Apple Menu > System Preferences > Dashboard & Exposé. For example, if you don’t like having to reach for the keyboard every time, you can have Exposé activate when you, say, move the mouse into a corner or if you press the middle mouse button.

Dashboard

Dashboard gives you access to a whole bunch of mini-programs called ‘Widgets’. There are widgets for all sorts of things like Weather, Stock Quotes, Unit Conversions, Calculators and heaps more.

Basically, this is Apple’s implementation of an idea that was kick-started by a shareware program called Konfabulator (which Yahoo! later bought from its authors, rebadged ‘Yahoo! Widgets’ and is now a free download from Yahoo’s website).

It works a bit differently from Windows Vista’s Gadgets and Yahoo’s Widgets in that Dashboard widgets don’t constantly remain on the desktop – rather, they stay hidden away until you need them. Just press a key (F12) to summon them, then press it again to dismiss them.

To customise your Dashboard, press F12 and then click the little + sign at the bottom left of the screen. You will then be presented with a collection of widgets – just drag the ones you want onto the screen. You can even put more than one instance of the same widget onscreen (for example, one copy of the Weather widget for Sydney, and one for London).

Each widget has a little ‘i’ in the bottom corner. Click it and you can access that widget’s settings.

My personal Dashboard contains widgets for quick post-it notes, Wikipedia searching, and a regular selection of the daily comics; so I’ve personally been finding it handy 

That ends our introductory article on Mac OS X’s main features – we hope you’ve found it useful. Please stick around and check out some of our other articles at Inspect My Gadget.

As I have been installing a number of programs recently, I have come across many challenges and formats with each requiring their own little tweaks to get them up and running. A common reason for all the different installation methods is that the programmer has created the program but has not had the resources to package it into a nice installer.

This article will cover many methods to install programs onto your Windows Mobile Device. All you need to do is find a program to install, and then follow the corresponding instructions on this page. All are fairly straight forward once you know how to go about it, but can be a real pain if you are new to this.

While this guide is designed using Windows Mobile 5, the same methods are likely to work for other versions of Windows Mobile.

Common File Types:

Executable: When you download a program for your Windows Mobile device, the chances are that it will be an executable file of some sort. The file extension will probably either be an Executable(exe) or a Microsoft Installer(msi). These are the easiest of all types to install on our devices. Once you have connected your device to the computer, you can double click on the file and then ActiveSync or WMDC will open up and look after transferring and installing the program on the device.

The installer generally has a CAB file in it and copies this file to your device, automating the process below.

CAB Files: Another fairly common file type is the CAB file. These are little more tricky to install as we have to manually copy the file to our device and run it from there. The steps are listed below, Skip down to “Install a CAB file or Zip file”.

Zip Files: Zip files are the least common form of installation package. You generally see them when trying to install BETA programs to your device. More often than not, they contain a CAB file or EXE file in them. Other times you may find that there is a collection of files which don’t resemble much. With these files, we also have to manually copy them to our device. Then you run the files from where we copied them to. This gets frustrating navigating through “File Explorer” to launch our programs, so I will show you how to create shortcuts in your “Programs” folder to keep everything neat and tidy.

TSK Files: TSK files are Windows Mobile themes. Using the information below, copy these files anywhere on your device. If you go into your Today settings, your device will detect the theme and add it to the list. Select the new theme, and your device will guide you the rest of the way.

So that I don’t repeat myself too much, join the guide at the heading which is appropriate for you.

To install an Executable:

Launch the executable on your PC

Choose where you would like to install the program on your Desktop. This allows you to uninstall and reinstall your program at a later stage easily.

ActiveSync or WMDC will open up and install the software to your device.

Jump down to the “On your Device” section of this guide.

To install a CAB File or Zip file with multiple files in it:

Automatic Method: (Updated 29/8/2007)

Get yourself a copy of CABviaActivesync and this will let you install CAB files directly from your desktop computer. This program works with both ActiveSync and WMDC.

Once installed, you can right click on CAB files within Windows Explorer and select “CABviaActiveSync”. The add/remove programs component of ActiveSync or WMDC will then be launched and do the whole job for you. This program really makes installing CAB programs a snap. Otherwise…

Manual Method:

Extract the CAB file or files and place it somewhere on your computer.

Right click on the uncompressed file/s and select copy.

ActiveSync will not allow you to copy directly from the ZIP file to your device.

Open up ActiveSync and select Explore.

You will now see a window showing the contents of your device.

Navigate through to somewhere on your device such as “My Documents” or your storage card. Right click and select paste. If you are installing an application of multiple files, it would be wise to place them in a new folder.

Your files will now be transferred over to your device.

Navigate through to the file/s on your device using the “File Explorer” of your device.

Tap the CAB file.

Continue through to “On your Device” for the next steps.

If you do not have a CAB file, you should have a program launcher on your device, in the folder you created. Try tapping on the files to find the executable.

Go to the end of this article to see how to set up a shortcut in your programs folder.

On your Device: Join in here for all executable/cab files

You will be asked if you trust the publisher and asked if you still want to install the program.

Make your choice by either pressing “Yes” or “No”.

You will be asked where you want to install the program. Take your pick.

It is sensible to keep a fair bit of Device memory free, though it is desirable to put most programs in here.

Your device will then install the program.

Hopefully, you will see that you have had success with a screen similar to this one.

In most cases, you will be able to search your program folder for the shortcut to run this new program. Sometimes a shortcut is not created so continue on if this is the case for you.

Creating a shortcut in your programs folder: 

You may find that you need to create a shortcut to have easy access to launch the application. To do this, do the following…

Find the application/executable on using your devices “File Explorer”

Tap on it and hold down

Select “Copy” 

Navigate through to Device\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

Scroll down to the bottom of the list, get the free white space.

Tap and Hold Down

Select “Paste Shortcut”

To uninstall programs:

Windows Mobile gives us a number of options for uninstalling programs. We can open “Add/Remove Programs” in either ActiveSync or WMDC. Then we can untick the programs we no longer want on our devices.

We can also do this from the device itself by going into the “Start Menu”, selecting Settings and viewing the System Tab. In here is an icon to “Remove programs”. We can select the programs we no longer want on our device and select to “Remove” them.

Things get a little more complicated if we want to uninstall the programs that we had to copy the multiple files to the device. We need to locate the program manually using “File Explorer”. Once the program has been found, hold down on its folder and select delete.

I hope you will now have many successes in installing applications and themes onto your device. There is not a great deal of fun stuff that you can do with Windows Mobile when you initially open up our phone and start to use it. The range of freeware is huge installing some of these applications is a great way to get get the most out of your device. With the programs being so easy to uninstall, try some out. I am yet to find a program that has caused any permanent damage to my phones operating system.

I hope you have liked this article. Please stick around and check out some of my other articles at Inspect My Gadget.

It is very easy to set up and it can be done very cheaply, and in some cases free. The cost comes in with cables and adaptors which are cheap unless you need to buy an extra component. It should be possible for everyone to acheive for well under $100.

This article will show you how to connect your computer to your television and stereo. We will cover lots of different scenarios so I hope by the end of this article, everyone will have successfully been able to acheive this.

This theory is identical to if you want to hook your computer up to a projector so if that is what you use, this article is also appropriate for you.

What you need:

This is hard to define initially in this article as there are so many ways to achieve this depending on what type of television you have and what video outputs your computer offers. You may also find that you only want to attach the stereo, and leave the TV disconnected, or vice versa. That is fine, just find the relevant parts of this article to suite your needs. For now we will keep it very basic.

• A Computer, desktops and laptops will both work. You will require a spare output from your video card.
• A Television with some type of AUX input.
• A Stereo with some type of AUX input.

AUX stands for Auxilery, which means an input from an external source. Most stereos and televisions will have these as they are what you would use to connect your DVD or VCR to it.

How to connect your video source to your television:

We are going to look at video first because there are a lot of options here. Connecting your computers audio to your stereo is a much easier task.

The quality you will receive from this setup will depend greatly on the television itself. You may find that reading text and desktop icons are very difficult with the analog options below, but even with an old television, you will be able to watch movies which are on your computer on your TV. They will be of similar quality to connecting your DVD or VCR to your television.

Define your televisions AUX input type:

We first need to define what inputs you have on your television. Some will work better than others. The newer and more expensive televisions are likely to get better results. We will start with the best and work our way through. It is best to keep the format the same at both the output of the computer and the input of the television, meaning that we don’t want to convert from Component Video to S-Video connections where possible.

The Digital World:

HDMI – High Definition Multimedia Interface: Ideally we will all have an HDMI connection on both our television and video card, but most likely don’t have it on either. Many new LCD screen and Plasma displays offer this mother of connections. They are also becoming a little more popular on Video cards. This will give you the highest quality signal. This format can also carry audio. This is very easy to connect from one device to another. It offers the same video quality as a DVI.

DVI – Digital Visual Interface: Many current computers will offer this connection out of the video card. You may well find that if you have a plasma or LCD television, this will be the best connection to use.

The Analog World:

VGA/XGA – Video Graphics Array: This is the standard video output you would have from your video card in your computer. There are not many televisions with these inputs on them. I specifically bought a CRT television with this port many years ago as LCD and plasma displays were very expensive at the time. It offers a good quality picture but is limited on my TV to 640×480 resolution. Text is readable and movies look great. This VGA resolution is higher than what most CRT screens can handle.

S-Video &ndash Separate Video: This is common on Video cards and televisions. With this format, you will have difficulty reading text on the screen, but films and games will be fine. This is the same output many DVD/HD-TV boxes/Gaming consoles offer so you can expect the same quality as that. Many video cards have this connection.

Composite Video – RCA connector: Last and definitely least is the trusty RCA connector. This is what we have used for many years to connect audio and video components together. This is of a lower quality than S-Video but it is still fine for sending audio and video signals around the place. You are most likely to have this connection on your TV and it is possible that you have this on your video card also.

How to decide which connection to use?:

Here are some scenarios: The higher up the list the better

Computer has HDMI and TV has HDMI – Use HDMI
Computer has DVI and TV has DVI – Use DVI
Computer has DVI and TV has VGA – Use VGA + Adaptor
Computer has VGA and TV has VGA – Use VGA
Computer has S-Video and TV has S-Video – Use S-Video
Computer has RCA and TV has RCA – Use RCA
Computer has S-Video and TV has RCA – Use RCA with adaptor
Computer has RCA and TV has S-Video – Use RCA with adaptor

If your scenario is not in this list, things get much trickier. You can purchase a box which will convert input sources to various outputs, or you could purchase an external video card for the task, though both of these options are expensive. You are probably best to buy a new video card with suitable outputs on it. You do not need a fancy video card to achieve this as any video card on the market now is capable of playing video and most games smoothly.

If you have a dual monitor setup already, and your card has a third port for s-video or Composite/RCA, you are likely to have problems connecting all three displays at once. You may be able to use a Y-splitter to send the signal to two sources (losing quality) or get very familiar with your driver configurations so you can switch from one output to another quickly.

If your computer has on-board integrated video (part of the motherboard), and no other outputs, you can put another video card in your computer and have both working together in parallel.

Ensure that your TV is on the right channel before continuing, even if it is a black, blue or static screen.

Configure your video drivers:

Once you have connected your computer to your TV using one of the cables listed above, we need to configure our video card to send a video signal out that port. As all driver software is different, I will cover some of the more common aspects to look out for.

If you are HDMI, DVI and VGA, your computer will recognise your TV as a standard monitor which is much nicer and easier to configure in the driver options.

Most video cards will detect automatically if there is a device attached to its output.

You need to decide if you will have a clone view or an extended view. Clone view shows the same display on both you monitor and you television, whilst extended mode will allow you to drag program windows from one screen to another, or even stretch across both.

On a laptop, the external video output will be preconfigured so you will not have to adjust anything. Once you are plugged in, you can press the “Fn” key with the corresponding Function key. i.e. Fn+F5. The function key depends on the laptop but the key will generally resemble a picture of two monitors. Using these keys, you cycle through the various modes, laptop monitor only, external monitor only, both monitors.

Configuring: Similar for XP and Vista

I am sorry it is not possible to write instructions for each and every driver and connection. You would get a long way reading the manual for your drivers and video card. If you still have problems after doing this, request information on a particular card in the comments, I will do my best to give you this information.

Here is a rough how to for many of Nvidias video cards.

Go into your “Control Panel” and load up your “Display” properties.

Click the “Settings” tab and you will probably still see one monitor depending on what type of connection you used.

Click “Advanced” and then select the tab that corresponds to your “Video Card”. i.e. Geforce 6600 GT.

Here you have all the options for your card. If you are using a Nvidia card, click on n-View Display Settings, otherwise, whichever option shows you multiple display types.

Here you can select Dual-view and Clone, enable and disable displays. Also in the Nvidia control panel, in the tools section is an option to “Force TV detection”.

You may have to restart. You want to get your computer to a stage that in the display settings tab, you have two screens.

So now you should have video on both your computers monitor and your television. If the quality looks really bad, try playing a video and seeing how it looks then. You can try things like changing the resolution in your display settings. You may find that your TV has a sweet spot. Too low a resolution gives a bad picture, too high also gives a bad picture but in the middle is just right. Spend the time to get it as good as you can because once it is setup, you wont need to touch it again.

How to connect your audio source to your television:

Unless you are using a HDMI connection, you are most likely going to come across RCA connections on your TV or stereo. Your computer is likely to have a 3.5mm plug (standard headphone jack) on the sound card.

The easy way to connect your computer to your stereo is to purchase a 3.5mm stereo plug to RCA pair cable. This will plug in both ends without a problem.

Many computer sound cards now offer a digital output. If your sound card has one and your stereo can decode it, this is the best way to go. This is a little harder to configure in your audio settings but the sound results are great. This is the best way to go for surround sound.

Complications arise if we want to keep our computers attached at the same time as we connect to the stereo as most computers will only allow one output. There are some options as to how to tackle this. You can use your headphone jack to send another source out but as this is normally on the front of the computer, this can be untidy.

A 3.5mm stereo splitter costs only a few dollars which allows you to connect the one port out of you computer to 2 ports which you can plug into. These cost only a couple of dollars but you will lose some quality doing this. Unless you are an audiophile, you will hardly notice the problem.

You can get an audio selector which are very basic boxes to generally switch multiple sources to one output. As there is often no complex electronics in these boxes, they simply open and close circuits, we can use it in reverse to send one source to multiple outputs. A speaker selector is different and will likely not work for this task.

You could install a secondary sound-card, either with multiple outputs or a single stereo output for connection to your stereo.

Surround sound: 

It gets very tricky when we move up from stereo to surround sound. Although we are able to use cables to connect it all up, it is much easier to send a stereo pair into the stereo and then letting the stereo decode the signal into surround such as pro logic. We can also use the digital option if our computer and Hi-fi allows it. This will mean there is one cable, rather than 3 or 4 stereo pairs.

If you are only using your hi-fi from this article onwards, and not using PC speakers, you should not have problems connecting your computer to the stereo in surround mode. You can use windows sound settings to send out a signal to 5.1 or 7.1 systems and everything sounds fantastic.

If all has gone well, you will now have your computer hooked up to your TV and stereo. This opens you up to a whole new world of multimedia experiences. Continue to check out inspectmygadget.com in the coming weeks as we will cover many software tools which can help you make the most out of your new “Home Theatre”.

The most commonly used programs menu is still available and I will use this most the time, but I have more than 8 applications I use regularly so I am forced to go into the “All Programs” cesspit. I came across similar problems with previous versions of Windows, where user guides and uninstallers are all thrown into the Start Menu, when these can be accessed in the program directory itself or using by using “Add/Remove Programs” within the Control Panel.

This article will show you how to tidy up your “All Programs” menu to make it more usable. There are many different ways to file your programs away, so you will need to find out what works best for you. This article will show you how I organise my programs and hopefully give you ideas of how you can best tackle your own.

The picture on the right shows my “Start Menu” programs after 2 weeks in Vista. The list of programs is twice as long as what is shown here, and that is without expanding any of the folders.

As with other versions of Windows, your computer will probably come with a lot of programs you don’t need. Being a new operating system offering you a lot of extra built in applications, it is worth opening each of these programs to see which ones can be helpful and useful to you.

Ideally, we want to cull many of them. I cannot tell you what you should keep or trash because this depends on how you use your computer.

Important – Read First:

It is much harder to add programs to your start menu than it is to delete them. If there is an item you are unsure about, please leave the shortcut and cull it at a later date.

The changes you make, will affect everyone who use the computer. There are a couple that will only affect yourself, but for the majority of programs, other users logging in will see the same as you do.

You will need to be logged in as an administrator to have enough rights to delete and move these shortcuts.

This is something you will have to do continually as you install programs in the future. If you don’t, your start menu will get untidy again.

When uninstalling programs, you are likely to find that the shortcuts you have moved, will not be removed in the uninstall. You will have to do this manually. After you have gone through this though, you will only have 1 shortcut to remove.

Enabling “Show Hidden Files”

This is not completely necessary to do to acheive this, but it does make navigation much easier. It is important to change this back once we are done. It will protect us from deleting or changing things we are not meant to, as well as hiding files that mean nothing to us.

Open up an Explorer Window such as “Computer” or “Games”.

Click on “Organize”

Select “Folder and Search Options”  

In Folder Options,

Select the “View” Tab

Dot “Show hidden files and folders”

Click “OK”

Start Menu Locations:

The shortcuts to the “Start Menu” programs are stored in three main locations.

The main location: Contains most of the shortcuts
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\

Individuals Location: Contains only a few shortcuts
C:\Users\Chris\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\

Games Explorer: Most games will add themselves to this automatically. Some older games, you will have to drag shortcuts into it.

Backing up:

If this is a new concept to you, please consider making a copy of your start menu programs so that you can restore any shortcuts you have removed at a later date easily.

The easiest way to do this I find is to create a folder in your “Documents” folder called “Start Menu” and copy the contents of the first two folders above into it.

If you miss this step, you should be able to use Vistas “Previous Version” restore utility though I have not had an adequate chance to see how well it works.

Defining Your Filing System:

There are many ways to organise your “Start Menu” shortcuts. I like to do it according to genre so I want to break down my programs into the following groups. This will vary according to how you use your programs.

Games:
Microsoft has looked after this for us.

Multimedia:
For anything audio visual

Applications > Windows Office:
For main applications and Windows utilities. Vista comes with Windows Mail, contacts, calendar etc which I am not going to use currently. I will put these aps into “Windows Office” as I may want to use them in the future.

Accessories:
Little bits and pieces around the place I might use, this is left relatively untouched

Maintenance > Anti-Everything:
For system maintenance and anti virus software.

Internet:
For bit torrent, browsers and other peer to peer apps.

Startup:
is required by Windows as it launches programs in it at start up.

Mobile Devices:
For anything related to my Pocket PC.

I also want to create a folder inside Applications called “Windows Office” and a Folder in Maintenance for my anti spyware and anti virus software.

Do this by right clicking in the white space of your explorer windows and then selecting “New” and “Folder”.

You can then name the new folder to whatever you want.

Depending on how many applications you have in any one folder, you may want to make sub folders. This is useful if you have multiple movie players or sound recording applications, break it down to an audio folder and a video folder.

Organising it all:

All you have to do now is delete or move the shortcuts around. You can either do this from the explorer window you have open, or you can drag things around directly inside the start menu. If you are moving many files around, I recommend using explorer, then you can drag things around inside the start menu for the finishing touches or whenever you install a new program.

I don’t like anything apart from program shortcuts in my Start Menu. I don’t like having uninstallers and read me files as these can be accessed elsewhere. It is very likely that you will be able to uninstall programs from the Control Panels “Programs and Features applet”. A few to get you started.

Adobe Reader 8: This application loads automatically when I launch a pdf file so this an be removed completely.

Games: Ensure there is a shortcut in the games explorer to the game itself  and then delete the folder. If you want the user guide/readme files that came with the game, store them in your Documents instead of the “Start Menu”

Default Programs: This is available through the control panel so I am removing it from the start menu.

Internet Explorer: this is available at the top of the “Start Menu” so I don’t need it here. If I were to use Firefox as my default browser, I would put this shortcut into “Internet”.

New Microsoft Office Document: I either load the document which in turn loads up Office, or I open up the Office Application to create a new file. I don’t use these shortcuts so I will remove them from my list. Many people love these links so they should keep them.

Microsoft Office: This folder is full of useful programs and not much rubbish, it is worth keeping the whole folder intact.

So much of this comes down to personal preference. Leaving it as is will hurt you in the future.

You should be able to take it from here.

The Results:

As you can see, I have culled the list down quite a bit and it is much easier to navigate. All the games can be accessed from the “Games Explorer” to the right of screen.

There is no more need to scroll through the applications as they are all neatly put away into a folder.

This is also great if you install applications for future use. Some applications don’t have ideal names. Once you have put them in their folder, you will be able to see later down the track, what the application is used for, and this can help identify them to you.

This method is nice to keep applications we rarely need to use out of the way. For example, Anti Spyware is something we should use monthly, we don’t need to see it the rest of the time. This way we know how to get to it when we need it, but it won’t bog us down the rest of the time.

The Final Touch:  

The internet has become a huge part of our lives. More and more web applications are becoming available to us. It is also great for getting TV guides and other goodies. I like to have my Favorites show up in my start menu so I can launch a page similar to an application. To do this,

Right click on the “Start” orb and select properties.

Select the “Start Menu” tab and click “Customize…”

Tick the Favorites Menu” box.

Click “OK”

You will now have a Favorites link within your Start Menu. It takes a little bit of time to get used to it here, but you bypass the step of having to load up you browser in which you would have to go into your favorites anyway.

I hope you will now find your “Start menu” to be much more usable, being easier to get to what you want quickly. You should also experience fewer incorrect clicks. I hate trying to load up a program only to find the help loads instead because the icons were similar.

I hope you have enjoyed this article and that it has been useful for you. Please stick around and read some of my other articles at inspectmygadget.com.

To be fair to Vista, most of the problems I came across were related to video card drivers which have nothing to do with Vista itself. I started off this experiment using the drivers that came with my video card. I soon found that an update was required and this allowed most games to work without any other tweaking.

This article will look at a broad range of games which have been popular over the last 8 years. I will also explain my successes and difficulties installing each of these. All games are legitimate copies and cross many genres.

I don’t claim to be a big gamer, though the games that I have, I like to run smoothly. I have not bothered running benchmarks on these games. All that matters to me is if the game loads up alright and then runs at a speed which makes the game usable. If the game crashes with all updates, I treat that as a failure.

Inspect My Gadgets Test System:

I recently bought a new computer to run Vista. I didn’t want to spend the big money so I got hardware which I thought would be adequate. It turns out that it is more than enough to run Vista comfortably.

Hardware includes:
Intel Core2 Duo Processor: 6600 @ 2.40GHz
2GB RAM
Nvidia Geforce 7600GT 256MB Video Card
Vista Ultimate

I have updated all the drivers to the most recent I could find as of 01/06/07

The games and how they installed and played:

Deus EX: We are going back a few years with this one. Installation was very clean and there was not one problem with getting this running. Once in the game, it ran smoothly and made use of the hardware that I had in the Vista computer.

I ran through the training mission and Deus Ex worked flawlessly.

MDK2: Another game which takes us back to the start of this decade is MDK2. Installation was quick and easy and Vista did not complain about anything. I played through the early stages of this game and there was no lock ups. Yet again, another flawless installation.

Colin Mcrae Rally 2005: This game installed fine and there were no apparent problems during the install. As I tried to run the game, it reported that I was using an unsupported operating system.

I went to the Codemasters website and downloaded and installed Update Patch 1. This did not solve the problem.

I then proceeded to install the 64bit patch also available at the codemaster website. This allowed the game to launch and run smoothly on my computer. Once I was in the game, I came across no problems.

Medal of Honor, Pacific Assault: The install went flawlessly. The game loaded with the first attempt and I started the first mission. I had a lock up at the same spot, very early on in the game. I retried this 3 times and each time it locked up at a similar spot.

I installed the patch from the EA website and tried running the game again. The lockup happened, this time earlier than before. It was at this stage I tried to update my Video Card drivers. This solved the issue and the game ran well. I love the Drill Instructors speech at the start. It was good to hear it again.

This was a really nice game to see running under my new Video card. The image quality was much better than I had in XP using a 6600 GT.

Medal of Honor Warchest, Allied Assault: The install and gameplay were both flawless. There is nothing else to say. This may be due to having the latest video drivers installed. It is quite an old game now, so I expected success with this. With this success, I expected the expansions below to work smoothly also.

Spearhead Expansion Pack: This Installed painlessly. I had a couple of problems with video settings of Spearhead. The graphic defaults had set themselves to be ridiculously low. After adjusting these in the game, everything was fine. Being an old game, I installed the update patches which went on without fault. I worked my way through this whole game and there were no problems. With the new video card, it was like I was playing a new game.

Breakthrough Expansion Pack: This was the trickiest of all the installs I am covering in this article. My computer was reporting that I needed a Video Card that could handle certain textures. I already had the latest drivers on by this stage. I had to download nhancer which allows you to change some video settings for particular games, working closely with the Nvidia drivers. Once this was installed, I did not need to make any changes to the games profile, as it loaded the best settings. The game then ran really well in single player.

This was the only game I tested under multi-player and I did not have a great deal of luck with this. The game loaded and I could see the buildings fine, but it appeared as if the other players in the game were sharking (dropping under map) and this made it very hard to play. It was still possible to get a few kills but frequently I would find someone popping up directly in front of me, out of nowhere. I am sure this will be fixed with future Video Driver updates but currently, I will have to play this in XP. Many players have had success with his game in Vista.

Need for Speed Carbon: This is one of the more recent games I have tested for this article. The install went well and the game loaded without any problems. I was able to play single races fine but in career mode, when I was in a police chase, the game would lock up. This happened to me twice out of around 4 chases. I assume this is a video problem also and in the future, this game will work fine on my machine. Many other people have reported complete success with this game.

Call of Duty 2:When I tried to install this, Vista reported that there were known compatibility issues. The installer allowed me to continue and the install went through without problems. I was able to play through a few levels of this game and it ran great. I think the new video drivers may have made the previous issues non existent. This was a great game to play utilising the new hardware in my system.

FIFA 2005: The install for this ran very well and there were no warnings or errors throughout. The game loaded fine and I was able to play a couple of matches. FIFA 2005 ran very well and I came across no problems.

Spellforce II – Shadow Wars: This game came with my Video Card. It is the most recent game I have. I had trouble installing it initially but yet again it turns out the Video drivers were initially at fault. It is odd though that a video card company will give you a game with their card to show the cards capabilities, and then give you drivers that aren’t up to date enough to run the game. This game ran flawlessly also. I didn’t get out of starting town because I got bored but everything in the town was fine. This game didn’t impress me much, and I don’t know why it was included as the example to see what you can get out of your video card, as the graphics were not spectacular.

All Seeing Eye: This program is used to connect to multi-player games, allowing you to see which players are on what servers in the games you predefine. This software downloaded and installed well. I was able to test it with Medal of Honor Breakthrough and I came across no problems.

Conclusion:

I had a really high success rate from installing and playing all of these games in Vista. The only dramas I had in the end were playing multi-player “Breakthrough” and “Need for Speed Carbon” locking up occasionally. The nice thing about Vista is that when it locks up, you don’t need to restart your computer, it will kick you back to the desktop. This is obviously a good thing.

The most common solution for getting any games running in Vista, is to install the latest video card drivers, generally available from Nvidia or ATI websites depending on your cards chipset, otherwise your computer manufacturer. These companies have not yet had enough time to enable all games to work flawlessly. They have come a long way since the very early days of Vista and they both release new driver updates regularly.

If you are not comfortable with computers and like to get straight into your games, you may come across some problems that you won’t be able to fix. The majority of games will work straight up, others you may need to search the web for solutions or ring up someone who knows about computers (family friend, not complicated enough for a computer tech) and they should be able to help you get up and running in whichever game you choose.

You can be confident that in 6 months, all new games will run under Vista and they will be spectacular at that.

If you enjoyed this article, please check out some of my other articles at Inspect My Gadget.

This article will guide you through all the options and features WMDC offers us. It is fairly easy to use and setup compared to ActiveSync, but at Inspect My Gadget, we want to get the most out of it, and this means looking at each and every feature individually.

This article is designed to guide newcomers through the Windows Mobile world. It does not cover much troubleshooting, as this is covered in my article “How-to: connect your WM5 device to WMDC via Bluetooth”. If you are having problems connecting your device, please check out this article as it has solutions for all the problems I have come across.

What you need (if you want to play with WMDC):

• Windows Vista
• I will be using the Ultimate version
• A Windows Mobile Pocket PC or Smartphone, 2003 or newer
• For this guide, I will be using an HP Ipaq rw6828
• Windows Mobile Device Center
• This is a free download from Microsoft, available here
• Outlook 2003 or later for email/calendar/tasks sync
• Windows Mail and Calendar are not supported

Straight into it! :

The opening screen:

There is not much to see here. There is no device currently connected. You have the option to go into “Mobile Device Settings” in which you can alter your “Connection Settings”. There is no need to adjust this yet as the defaults will get you going. This will always be available to you. I will run through it towards the end of this article.

Connect your device:

Once you plug your device in via USB, your screen will gradually change to the screen shot you see above. It takes a little time on the first go, as drivers for your device need to be installed and to prepare your computer for the fun we are about to have. Most importantly, you should see that it says “Connected” on the bottom left of the screen.

If you want to connect via Bluetooth or Infra Red in the future, it is necessary to connect via USB initially, to create the partnership.

You are presented with two options on this page.

• Set up your device
  This option allows you to setup your device much the same as you might have done with ActiveSync. It allows you to use all the features that WMDC offers. This is the option you will want to select if you want to synchronise your Outlook information. This option allows you to set up a partnership. You would most likely use this option if you are connecting to your own computer.
• Connect without setting up your device
  This is similar to ActiveSyncs guest feature. It allows you to view files on your device, extract pictures and install programs but it does not allow you to synchronise your Outlook data. This option does not allow you to create a partnership initially. You would most likely use this option if you are using someone elses computer or synchronising directly with an Exchange Server.

Either of these options can be changed at a later stage, you would want to be careful synchronising your data with someone elses machine as you may wipe some of their data, or worse, give them all your phone contacts and calendar appointments which would be a pain to remove later.

As all of the options available in “Connect without setting up your device” are available in “Set up your device” we will select the first and create a partnership. Choosing the latter bypasses this step.

Select items to Sync

This window allows you select which possible items you want to sync with your device. The list contains the following options from Outlook:

• Contacts
• Calendar
• E-mail
• Tasks
• Notes

You can also include Mobile Favorites and Files. There is nothing new here. It is the same options that ActiveSync offered. The defaults are generaly fine for most scenarios so don’t get too bogged down in this. You can always leave most of the boxes unticked and then tick them in the future as you require them.

When done, Click “Next”

Name your Device

I am not sure why we are given this option as our mobile devices already have a name. This is a little neater and is more of a name for the partnership. Call this what you want but it is nice to keep it simple such as the default. When WMDC opened, it called my Pocket PC, “Chris’s Smartphone”. It works fine for me and I have no need to change it.

When done, click “set up”

Your computer will now setup your partnership and proceed to sync your Outlook data with your mobile device.

The main window

It does not matter if you have chosen to create a partnership or not. This window is the same for both options. The only difference is an option to change what Outlook data you would like to sync.

We will now go through each of the options on this page.

Programs and Services contains only one option initially and this is a link to a Microsoft Website. It could come in useful though, it is titled “Get updates, downloads, help and more…”.

There is also a “>>more” option below it which will give you access to “Add/Remove programs”.

This window shows what software has been installed on your device. You can untick boxes to uninstall software or tick a box to reinstall it, as long as the software was initially installed from the current machine.

Usually when installing Pocket PC software, you run a windows installer which automatically opens this window and adds the program to your list. That is why there is no Add button here.

When done, click “OK”

Pictures, Music and Video is a nice new function of WMDC. It was possible to do all these functions in Windows Explorer in XP, but it was not as tidy and required much more effort from the user.

The first point, “(x number) new pictures/video clips are available for import” tells you how many pictures and videos you have on your device, and secondly when you click on it, will transfer all your pictures and videos over to your computer.

Depending on your settings (listed below), you will be prompted to “tag” your pictures allowing you to easily find them later using Windows in-built search facility.

The options button on this page will direct you to the “Import Settings” below.

“Pictures/video import settings” is not part of WMDC but rather Windows itself. You have the option to change settings but luckily the defaults are fairly suitable.

It’s handy having this option here though as to get to these options through Windows Photo Manager takes a fair few steps. Click “File”, Options” and click on the “import” tab.

“Add media to your device from Windows Media Player” opens up Windows Media Player, with the sync tab selected. This allows you to drag music from your music library onto your device.

The image on the right shows your device and by clicking “Next Device” you can select various Storage Cards.

I realise this isn’t part of WMDC either but it is more interesting than tagging pixelated pictures of the neighbours dog.

File Management is a shortcut to Windows Explorer showing you the contents of your device.

This can also be accessed by going into Windows Explorer and selecting your mobile device. You see a graphical representation of how much space is available on each storage card and your phone’s internal memory.

Mobile Device Settings lets us view and change all the sync settings. We will rarely need to go in here once the device is set up, but it is good to have a look at it now so we know what we are able to do.

Change content sync settings: You will only see this option if you have previously created a partnership with your mobile device. This gives us a few extra options for each component we want to sync. We get to these by clicking on sync settings for each item.

• Calendar sync settings: If you have chosen to sync your calendar with your pocket PC/smartphone, you will get all future appointments from outlook on your device. This window lets you choose how long past information will be stored on your device. I set mine to keep one months data but then find I rarely need to go back and look at it.

If you are syncing between multiple computers, you are able to select which computers you want to sync this type of data with. Keeping both synced can be a great way to keep multiple computers up to date, resulting in the same data on both computers.

• Email sync settings: You can configure what mail gets stored on your device. The default is to give you the last 3 days mail. This is generally quite a good figure. If you set the number too high, you run the risk of your device running slow as there is not enough free memory, or if the number isn’t high enough, there’s no point using the feature. This will depend on how much mail you get each day.

  Limit e-mail size lets you filter out larger messages you have received, to preserve your memory space on the device. A standard text email will rarely be as large as 5KB but emails with fancy backgrounds or signatures and the like can easily be larger than this. If you are unsure, start at 5KB and work your way up if you are not getting particular mail.

  Include file attachments lets you sync email attachments with your computer. This is a great way to clog up your device with junk and make your device run slower.

  Only if smaller than a predefined size. Email attachments can be huge and almost instantly clog up the internal memory of your device. Saying that, the default of 25KB won’t allow you to see many pictures and documents. I set mine to 100KB and this lets the majority of attachments through (including spam).

  Yet again, you get to choose which computer you sync with. Calendar gave you the option to sync between multiple computers whereas for email you can only sync with one.

  Select folders to sync lets you choose which folders you want to sync with your device. The default is to only have the Inbox but you can include your whole folder tree on your device, this includes selected folders inside your inbox.

  Something that is particularly useful is the option to add RSS if you have setup Outlook to receive RSS. This can clog up your device but gives you plenty of reading for the the train journey to work.

  Tick the boxes you want to sync and press save.

  

File Sync Settings allows you to synchronise your files from your devices “Documents” folder with a newly created folder in your computers Documents folder titled “Documents on (devicename)”

You can add or remove individual files for syncing. This feature can be useful for  keeping particular files on your device, but it is also easy to get carried away with this and fill your devices memory very fast.

Manage a partnership is the second option in Mobile Device Settings. You can name your PC with something descriptive. This is more useful if you have multiple computers, where you may want to call one Home and the other Work.

If the same file or piece of data has been updated on both your device and your computer since the last sync, it creates a conflict because it doesn’t know which one to use. Multiple contacts with the same name is a common occurrence. Here you get to choose if your device or computer will take precedence.

Last but not least is connection settings. This allows you to select how your device will connect to your computer.

Allow USB connections you would generally leave on.

Allow connections to one of the following gives you the option to connect via Bluetooth or Infra Red.

This computer is connected to can generally be left as automatic. The options are “Home” and “Work”. This allows for internet access on your device. Home assumes you are not running through a proxy and work assumes you are going through a proxy. I am guessing automatic will allow for both options.

So that is a complete rundown of all the options and features of Windows Mobile Device Center 6.  If you are having trouble connecting your device via Bluetooth or you are getting errors, please read my article “How-to: connect your WM5 device to WMDC via Bluetooth” containing many troubleshooting tips, useful for both USB and Bluetooth connections.

One more thing, you can see the progress of your Sync in the Sync Center. A nice touch.

I hope you have enjoyed this article and found it useful. Please stick around at inspectmygadget.com and read some of my other articles.

I have had Engin VOIP as the main line in my house for a year now. I got married and moved out of home. The new house already had a cable internet connection so I decided to stick with it. Signing up to the Engin VOIP service meant I would not have to rent a phone line for phone or internet services. This seemed like the ideal solution, embracing new technology to save myself money.

This article will explain my experience with the Engin service in Australia and show you the positives and negatives of using VOIP services.

I do not have experience with other VOIP services. All I have used is Engin, other companies may be better or worse. I am based in Australia so this article is relevant to Australians. There is a good chance that in other countries, companies have invested more money into VOIP.

I am using Engin Voice Box Series 1. Other VOIP products may offer a better quality call. Ensure to include the cost of the voice box into your decision to go with VOIP.

Reasons: There are many reasons why I wanted to give Engin a go. It was a risk as it was fairly new but they offered so much more than a regular phone company for the price. I have listed some of them below.

• Extremely cheap local calls
• Extremely cheap national calls
• No land-line cost
• Free extra services such as called ID which regular Tel-cos charge extra for
• New technology, I always like to tinker
• Engin was being advertised on radio and TV
• Cable would provide plenty of bandwidth to allow for voice calls.

Installation: Installation was quick and easy. All I had to do was connect the voice box up to my router and my phone system. I also bought a set of Uniden WDECT phones and placed them around my house so there is cordless phone in each room of my house and attached it to the Engin Box.

I rang Engin with my details and registered myself with the service. The whole process was quick and easy and the next day it was up and running.

The first week was a bit shaky. The phone would continually drop out and the call quality was not great. Each morning I would have to check the phone for a dial tone to ensure I could still receive calls. After the first week, things settled down and the phone would rarely disconnect itself. To reconnect the voice-box again I would have to disconnect and reconnect power to both the router and the voice box.

The Bills: These are great. I pay $9.95 a month to access the service and 10c for each local and national call. Calling mobiles is also cheaper. Our household makes around 30 local/national calls a month, costing us $3. We also make around 10 mobile calls a month which costs us around $10 for 30 minutes of talk time.

All up, that’s around $25 for us monthly. We would have to pay around the $60 mark with a regular Tel-co.

Day to day use: At the start there was a minor noticeable sound delay in many of the phone calls and the call quality was not all that good. I could make sense of what the other person was saying, but it was nowhere near the call quality of a fixed line.

I was not happy with people at the other end saying that the phone line was crap, or saying they heard an echo. I wanted do something about this so I signed up as a Voiper user. This allowed me to play around with the settings inside the voice box. There was a cost to this as I would no longer get the same support offered to regular users. I had used their support prior to this but they were unable to help me get the quality of calls to where I wanted it to be so I felt like I had no support anyway. I was left to my own devices from now on and had to use web forums to learn what to change to get the most out of the system.

I changed the voice codec, testing each one to see what sounded better. I played with a few other settings also but the codec was the main one. The codec is the converter which changes your voice to a digital signal the computer world can understand.

The results were a little better after these changes. The dropouts still occured every so often and my wife and family were getting quite frustrated by it all. After 6 months I was borderline as to if we should get a proper phone line installed. The cost (approximately an extra $40 a month) helped me stick with Engin. This was a very bad time for Engin as calls were dropping out all over the shop.

I continued on with it, trying a different codec every couple of weeks. I don’t think the codec change is what has helped make it better though. I think the company itself has done some upgrades at its end. The phone line is now quite usable and it very rarely drops out. I asked my wife what she thought of it and she said “I suppose it’s alright”.

It is still not quite up to what a standard Tel-co company offers. When I started off using Engin, it was like calling overseas around 20 years ago. Now it is the equivalent to calling overseas 10 years ago.

Conclusion: I am using Engin as the only phone line to and from my house, we can also communicate through our mobile phones. For us, the money saved through using VOIP makes it worth sticking with the service. It is a trade off. The quality isn’t fantastic but it is usable and it should only get better with time.

Running a company and using your VOIP line as your only phone line may lose you customers. If the phone disconnects or isn’t of great quality, the customer may become frustrated and go somewhere else.

If you already have a regular Tel-co land-line, you may want to consider installing VOIP also as the cost of sending a fax through the system is cheap. The cost of calling national is cheap. With many of their voice boxes, you are able to send your current phone line into the box so that you can choose which system you send your calls out on. This is especially useful for calling emergency phone numbers.

If you have a power outage and you use VOIP, you will need to use your mobile phone as VOIP will not work.

I hope that this has given you a worthwhile understanding of what VOIP will be like for you. There is no doubt that VOIP is the future, but currently you will have to decide if the future is ready for you.

Please check out some of the other articles at inspectmygadget.com