I recently got a new mobile phone (a Siemens S65 in case anyone's interested), so went through the annual ritual of finding a ringtone that is distinctive, but not cheesy. Since I last did this, there seems to have been a massive increase in the number of sites that offer ringtones for sale - you text a premium rate number costing up to £3, and they send you back an SMS containing the ringtone.

Is it me, or is this the biggest scam around? The message they send you contains a midi file, of which there are thousands available for free on the internet, and the cost to them of sending the message can't be any more than around 10p. The worst part is that the people most likely to use these ringtone sites are people who can least afford it - teenagers who don't know any better. If you're looking for ringtones compatible with most Nokia, Samsung, Siemens & Sony Ericsson phones, and can connect your phone to your PC, you could do worse than visit this site or just Google for 'midi files'.

I've added some older pictures of Concorde during it's last week of commercial flight. The evening photos were taken at Heathrow Airport on Sunday 19 October 2003; the shots of it landing were taken at Edinburgh Airport on Friday 24 October as it picked up passengers for it's final flight back to Heathrow. Use the link on the left to view them.

Amateur Boxing Association offers Amir Khan £70,000 a year to delay turning professional for four years. Eh?

The award goes to mp3players.co.uk, after I sent them an email asking why an MP3 player I had sent back by Special Delivery was refused at the delivery address and returned to me unopened. Their reply was:

It was refused because the guy we employed to take care of faulty units decided he preferred the dole to employment. He just resigned 10 days in to his employment and refused all special deliveries,
including yours....

...Please accept our apology for any inconvenience caused but hopefully you will appreciate we had no control over him resigning to be a dosser again.

At least they're honest!

This post is as much to remind me as it is to help other people. I built a new PC a couple of days ago and everything seemed to go very smoothly. Until I tried using Windows Update that is. I'm using Windows 2000, but I'm pretty sure this will also apply to XP and 98.

I'd done a clean installation of W2K, immediately followed by SP4 & Internet Explorer SP1. Nothing else - no anti-virus software and no firewall (I'm running behind a NAT router so I wasn't too concerned about worms or viruses). When I tried to use Windows Update it would get to 66% and then hang for about 3 minutes, completely freezing the Internet Explorer session. Eventually it would come back, but with an error message telling me 'Windows Update was unable to scan your drivers'. Windows Update.log in winnt shows error 0x800C0008. Searching the Microsoft Knowledge Base and Google brought up a few things to try, e.g. check your date and time or remove the Windows Update software, but nothing worked. Strangely, I also had a problem accessing one of my online banking sites, so I guessed that the two were probably related. If you're having the same problem, here's how I fixed it:

1) Download Dr.TCP from here or here.

2) Run DR. TCP from the downloaded .exe. In the drop down list at the bottom, select the device you use to access the internet, i.e. your modem or network card.

3) Change the TCP Receive Window to 13900 and both MTU values to 1430

4) Write down the URL of this site so you can come back and let me know if it works.

5) Reboot the PC.



And that's it. Your network settings may differ to the ones I used here, so if it doesn't work first time, it would be worth experimenting. If it does fix it you'll also have the added bonus that all pages should download quicker.

If this has helped and fixed your problem I'd appreciate it if you could just leave a comment to say so. Now if only I knew how to prevent a stop error displaying 'registry cannot load the hive systemrootsystem32software' that forces me to reinstall Windows then everything will be working fine...

My MP3 player woes continue. After my problems with the iRiver IFP-790, I received the 1GB T-Mate Premium (also known as the M-Any DAH-610 or the Mobiblu DAH-610) yesterday. The only reviews I was able to find were those on the mp3players.co.uk website, and they were almost all positive so it seemed a fairly safe bet. I'll post a full review in a few days, but suffice to say, it's going back too.



Design
The player is very small and seems fairly sturdy. Although the buttons are quite fiddly, they're not too difficult to press. I wouldn't give the rubber USB port cover too long before it breaks though.

Accessories
You get all the usual accessories with the T-Mate and this player also comes with an in-line (non-lcd) remote control. The first thing that you should do is throw away the headphones and buy some decent ones, as the supplied ones are dreadful. It makes you wonder what the manufacturers are thinking supplying such crappy headphones with a £170 player.

Controls
Not exactly what you'd call intuitive, in fact the exact opposite. This isn't really a problem to me, as it's just a case of getting used to them.

FM Radio
This is the first major problem with this player - the radio reception is non-existent. I have a cheap £10 radio that can pick up all the BBC local stations without any problems. The T-Mate struggles to pick up anything, and when it does find something it's unlistenable. The FM radio was one of the reasons I chose this player over others so this is a problem to me.

Sound Quality
I could put up with any of the other problems if the sound quality is any good - unfortunately it doesn't redeem itself. As I mentioned, the supplied headphones are useless, but even with a decent pair there is very little improvement. The specs say the frequency range is 20-20000 Hz, and if that is the case it's certainly not even across the range, there is a distinct lack of bass or high frequencies. Consequently, the player sounds very tinny, with too much 'middle', and even though there is a 5 band equalizer, adjusting it didn't improve the quality.

15 years ago I had a middle of the range (£50ish) Panasonic walkman that had fantastic sound quality. I find it unbelievable that it's proving so difficult to find an MP3 player with comparable sound quality today.