I’ve been having trouble with my new Dell 2007WFP widescreen monitor, since I was given it back in December.

The monitor comes with a single link DVI-D cable, which I was attempting to use with my Geforce 6800-GT graphics card. However hard I tried I could not get the resolution above 1024×768. When I tried to step up from 1024 the screen would go blank and that was it. The 6800 had two DVI-I connections on the rear, and the only way I could get the thing to work was with an analogue cable and a DVI to analogue adapter. Not knowing much about DVI inputs etc, I put this down to some wacky driver problem, and resolved to wait until I built my new PC at the end of January (with the release of Vista).

January came. I built a brand new machine; Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (Overclocked to 3.2Ghz), 4 Gigs of Ram, Nvidia 8800 GTX, Lian-Li PC-1000Plus case, and lots of hard disk space. Very nice indeed, but errr………same problem. I could only get it to work with an analogue cable.

So I spent today googling the problem, and from what I could tell I shouldn’t need to use a DVI-D dual link cable unless I used resolutions above 1920 x 1080, and I couldn’t even get above 1024×768. So I thought I’d take a punt, I whipped down to Maplin’s bought a DVI-D dual link cable, and now it works perfectly!

I’ve just bought a new digital SLR camera, its a Canon EOS 350D, which replaces my Sony DSC-P73. I’ve got no idea how to use it properly yet! but I’m determined to learn. I’ve found a fairly good blog called the Digital SLR Guide. There’s a beginners course for SLR camera owners so I might give that a shot. I know Canon have some courses scheduled this year so I might go along to one.

Even using the basic modes, the camera takes fantastic photos.

Well, I’ve had the TV Drive for 10 days and unfortunately i woke on Sunday to discover it has gone the ‘way of the pear’. Looks like Telewest tried to remotely install some sort of update on Saturday evening and its caused the TV Drive to get stuck in a rebooting loop. Which is a bit unfortunate. I’m now waiting for an engineer.

Having used the TV Drive up until Sunday I have to say it is a good bit of kit, even if it is a bit buggy!