Letters
12
Tell us what’s on your mind
What’s the Issue…?
?When did you explain how to
add your landline to your
smartphone?
Ron Catherall
CA SAYS In Issue 654, page 35. Buy the
issue from our Back Issues store: www.
snipca.com/47082.
Did you say there was software
that can convert spoken audio
files to text in a Word document?
Ian Thayre
CA SAYS Yes, you can do this using
Audacity or the online version of
Word. See Issue
655, page 20 – buy it
from www.snipca.
com/47112.
I recall you recommending a
tool beginning with T that
blocked tracking links in emails.
What was it?
Dean Hodgson
CA SAYS You probably mean Trocker
(www.snipca.com/47113) – see Issue
646, page 53. Read it on our 2022
Back Issue CD: www.snipca.
com/44660.
end of each working day, it obeyed my
command to shut down my PC.
But I noticed about three years ago
that it was getting unreliable, and then
I read that Microsoft was planning to
abandon it. What a waste. It had so much
early promise. I’ve yet to find another
voice-command tool that had Cortana’s
potential.
Paul Newton
AI can be a force for good
New technology can scare people,
which is why artificial intelligence
(AI) is getting such bad press. But Issue
664’s story about AI cameras capturing
drivers using their phones (page 9)
shows how it can have positive effects
for society.
Despite the efforts of campaigners,
there are too many people who still don’t
take seriously the dangers of texting
while driving. There were some high-
profile cases a few years ago that I hoped
would make a big impact, but it’s not
happened.
I’m not optimistic that we’ll ever make
drink-texting as socially unacceptable as
drink-driving, so instead we just need to
convince offenders that they will be
caught and punished. Using cameras
powered by AI seems a step forward.
Ken Allmann
CA SAYS With AI developing so quickly,
it’s only natural people are worried. In
this issue alone we report on how AI can
be used to ‘hear’ your passwords as you
type them (page 8) and create deepfake
videos to scam you (page 11).
But it would be foolish to ignore the
benefits it brings, as Ken points out.
Huge advances in medicine, transport,
manufacturing and energy production
are all being driven by AI. The challenge
for governments, companies and
industry leaders is to maximise the
advantages while minimising the risks
– and that won’t be easy.
Virgin Media’s customer
service was ‘curt and rude’
Following your recent article and
letters about Virgin Media making
it hard to cancel, I was a very satisfied
customer for about 20 years, getting fibre
broadband to my desk. But that had to
stop when they put the price up to over
£70 a month.
UK viewers still love
BBC and ITV
At first glance Issue 664’s
news story (page 7) on
changing TV habits suggests the
public are falling out of love
with BBC and ITV. But on closer
inspection it’s more likely that
it’s the viewing habits that are
changing, and that our affection
for these traditional channels
remains strong.
For example, while the number of
hours watching broadcast TV has fallen
sharply, a lot of that viewing has switched
to BBC iPlayer and ITVX. What’s changed
is that hardly anyone assumes that you
need to watch a programme at the precise
time that it’s broadcast.
In some ways, these ‘catch-up’
services are simply modern equivalents
of video recorders. Back in the 1980s I
used to work late evenings, and would
often set my timer to record shows like
Blackadder, Question Time and anything
that David Attenborough presented.
Looking back, what was that if not a
forerunner of ‘catch-up’ TV?
Geoff Salcombe
It’s not surprising that the number
of viewers watching news bulletins
has plunged. It’s a result of our 24-hour
news culture, where websites and news
channels are constantly updating stories.
When I was younger, if you didn’t watch
the news in the evening then you’d miss
out completely on what’s happening.
That’s no longer the case. I never watch
the news now, and yet thanks to the news
coverage on the internet I feel better
informed than ever.
Gary Hadley
Why I’ll miss Cortana
I expect to be in a minority of one,
but I will mourn the demise of
Cortana (Issue 664, page 6). For a few
years after it launched it was better than
both Alexa and Siri. My favourite trick
was opening browser tabs using my
voice. I could open the door to my office,
tell Cortana which tabs to open, and they
would be waiting for me when I sat down.
I also used it to remind me of phone
calls I had to make, and to create a news
feed of subjects I was interested in. At thEmail: <PRESIDIO_ANONYMIZED_EMAIL_ADDRESS>
Facebook: www.facebook.com/computeractive
(formerly Twitter): @ComputerActive
www.twitter.com/computeractive
13
STAR LETTER
Views expressed don’t necessarily reflect those of Computeractive
The Star Letter writer wins a Computeractive mug!
Microsoft and Google are worst
‘bait-and-switch’ offenders
I’m grateful to Daniel
Booth introducing me to
the term ‘bait-and-switch’ in
Issue 664 (Ed’s Letter, page 3).
I had never heard of it before,
but it perfectly sums up the
behaviour of some so-called
reputable companies in the
past.
Daniel mentions LastPass
and CCleaner as two infamous
bait-and-switchers. To that list I’d
like to add both Microsoft and Google.
I think they are the worst offenders.
Back in 2015, Microsoft cut the amount
of free space OneDrive offered from
15GB to 5GB. I was outraged by this
betrayal and moved all my files
immediately to Google Drive, which
was offering 15GB.
All was fine with Google, but then in
2020 it declared that all new photos
uploaded to Drive would count towards
your free 15GB of storage. This was
despite saying a few years earlier that
uploading photos to Google meant
“a lifetime of memories”.
I’ve reluctantly stuck with
Google because I thought it
would be too much hassle to
switch (which is precisely what
it was hoping for). But after
reading your feature on free
online storage in Issue 663, I’m
considering moving to Mega’s
free 20GB (www.mega.io). It
sounds like a decent service, but I
guess it’s a matter of time before it
pulls its own bait-and-switch trick.
Dennis Pilling
CA SAYS Dennis is right that both
Microsoft and Google have been guilty
of ‘bait-and-switch’ tactics. This is
where companies lure you in with a
tempting offer, knowing that later
they’ll start charging for a service
or feature that was previously free.
We’ll continue to expose these
unfair practices. Please let us
know which ones you’ve
been affected by.
O&O AppBuster (www.snipca.com/46027)
to get rid of OneDrive (see screenshot
above). But that was only partially
successful because OneDrive still appears
in File Explorer, and there are two grey
(OneDrive) folders that aren’t completely
empty. OneDrive should be an option,
like Office 365, when first setting up a
new PC. The way Microsoft forces it on
users, with such dreadful consequences,
is nothing short of bullying and extortion.
Thank goodness your magazine has
enabled me to resolve just some of these
problems, even though it has taken many
hours.
Colin Gray
Forcing OneDrive on us is
‘bullying and extortion’
Following Issue 660’s Cover
Feature on mini PCs, I purchased
the Geekom Mini IT11 (£479 from www.
snipca.com/46362) with Windows 11, to
replace an ageing Windows desktop PC.
I’m delighted with my purchase, but far
from delighted with Windows 11. I wish
I had read Issue 663’s ‘Make Windows
Great Again’ Cover Feature, but it arrived
three days after I bought the PC.
After transfering all my files from an
external hard drive, Microsoft told me I
needed to pay for more OneDrive storage.
I wasn’t even aware that my documents
were being duplicated in OneDrive.
Frankly, File Explorer in Windows 11 is
so unnecessarily complicated that it’s
difficult to tell what documents are filed
where. I’ve lost a lot of the valuable data I
transferred, deleting it from the external
hard drive too soon.
As you suggested in Issue 663 I used
It then took me almost three weeks
to extricate myself from the contract. I
suffered all the reported delays, long
waits, silly offers and several cut-off
calls. I was also blatantly lied to about
the BT package I was moving to.
When they did eventually agree to
terminate my contract, they were curt,
rude and offhand. BT may not be the
greatest company, but they’ve delivered
what was promised and are pleasant to
deal with.
Virgin Media lost a loyal customer, and
I now won’t buy any Virgin-branded
product unless I have absolutely no
choice. As someone who spent 40 years
in marketing for blue-chip companies, I
can assure you that Virgin’s attitude is no
way to run a company anywhere except
into the ground.
Philip Howells
CA SAYS We’ve had many emails from
readers unhappy with the service
they’ve received from Virgin Media.
It would be interesting to hear from
customers of other providers, whether
the service has been bad or good.
Am I entitled to
a broadband rebate?
We live nearly four miles from the
nearest fibre cabinet and have no
prospect of fibre replacing copper before
VoIP arrives in 2025. Smartphones receive
a weak, intermittent 4G signal here, so
we rely on Wi-Fi from our ‘broadband’
modem with its 200-250Kbps second
download speed. The connection drops
out several times a day, and though 4G
may drop in occasionally, it’s seldom
there when it’s needed.
Next month, I’ll be 76. My state pension
is £55.20 a month so it’s just as well I’m
still fit enough to go on building dry stone
walls – one of two small businesses I run
from this communications black hole. I
read that VoIP requires about 100Kbps –
around half our current bandwidth –
and, like dial-up, is likely to render the
internet unusable during phone calls.
We pay £18 a month for 0.2Mbps,
and yet for £20 a month, those on the
fastest social tariff get 350 times that
speed. Is any other commodity allowed
to be priced in this way? Dividing our
broadband cost by 350 produces a figure
of five pence a month. That should
amount to a sizable rebate after all
these years.
Peter Goodwi
Please make a quick summary of all these letters