Watchdog

If you've bought a PC recently, you might find that your new computer is fitted with a DVD-ROM drive. One of the real benefits of this is that you can play DVD movies on your PC or, if you can hook your computer up to it, on your TV.

This all sounds great so far but as with all good things there's a hitch - and that's the price and availability of DVD movies. If you're looking for films on the High Street you'll have to seek them out in the back corner of the stores, where retailers tend to hide them, and you'll find yourself paying a premium for titles in this format.

While the situation is improving, shopping online is still the only way to get access to a wide range of titles at discounted prices. DVDplus at www.dvdplus.co.uk offers films at around £1-2 cheaper than on the High Street and delivery is free.

To play movies your system also needs to be fitted with an MPEG-2 decoder card, and as standard this will be set to play films coded for Region 2 - the region covering Europe and Japan. However, you can find software utilities on the Web that allow you to change the region settings. Switching to Region 1 will enable you to play discs coded for the US & Canada, and great deals can be found at online stores like www.dvdempire.com and www.dvdexpress.com.

Region 1 DVDs also tend to be more up to date, and normally offer extra features.

TACKLING TEXTBRIDGE

Dr RF Freeman e-mailed What PC? to ask us to clear up a query he has regarding Xerox's TextBridge OCR software. He started off by using TextBridge 98 and he was quite pleased with the accuracy, but when he received advance notice of the release of TextBridge 9.0 (reviewed in Close-up in What PC? July 1999) he was keen to test out its claims of 99 percent accuracy.

Even better, the advance notice came with a discount offer for existing TextBridge users, such as himself. Instead of paying the recommended price of £69 for the software, he could buy it for £20 less. But when he called his local software store they quoted him a price of £49 for all users, both new and existing.

When we spoke to Xerox, which makes TextBridge, it was happy to clear this up. The discount offer does only apply to existing users. So either Dr Freeman's local store was feeling very generous, or it had made a mistake.

PLAIN ENGLISH PLEASE

What PC? always tries to avoid the meaningless jargon surrounding technology, which does more to confuse than enlighten. So we were none too pleased to read a recent PC World advert that listed a 40x Multimedia as part of a PC's specification. This presumably means a 40x CD-ROM drive, but it is certainly not clear. We'd like to appeal to advertisers to inform consumers about products in plain English.

WORKPLACE SPIES

Many companies have introduced rules to try to ensure employees don't misuse resources such as e-mail and the Internet in the workplace. But recent innovations have given organisations the power to spy on their staff's every move.

The Computer Misuse and Detection System (CMDS) was designed for American espionage agencies, to allow them to track computer usage including server and e-mail access, and now it's on sale for commercial use in the UK. It can tell your boss when you are late for work, or if you download illicit files - in fact, it will alert network administrators as soon as you vary your routine; they can then report back to management.

Staff may not even be aware this type of surveillance is in place, although it gives employers the ability to scrutinise users' data. Yaman Akdeniz, founder of Cyber-Rights and Cyber-Liberties told What PC?'s stablemate Network News: 'Monitoring systems should not be secret and it is unacceptable for companies to pry into employees' data', while civil rights group Liberty condemned the use of the system as 'snooping'.

Since it's impossible for you to tell whether your boss is poking around your PC to keep an eye on what you're up to, perhaps it would be better to keep any sensitive data on your home computer, and make sure you get to work on time!

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