Having extended my laptop's screen to the new Toshiba LCD in the kitchen, I was impressed with the results. Is there a small, stylish/pretty computer suitable for the kitchen?
Ieuan Davies

Building small PCs to connect to HDTVs is a fairly common geek project, helped by the availability of low-power Mini-ITX (17 x 17cm) boards and barebones cases. These typically run a version of Windows with Media Center features (including Vista Home Premium) or the Linux-based MythTV. Articles such as Build Your Own Media PC at Trusted Reviews will give you an idea what's involved. Many small British suppliers will assemble systems to order. The Apple Mac mini could be an alternative, and is certainly more stylish.

A few companies have tried producing commercial kitchen computers, such as Seattle-based Beyond. It offered Icebox computers in both countertop and flipscreen versions, which could be mounted under a kitchen cabinet. It announced UK distribution in 2003. Did anybody ever see or buy one?

Can you recommend a free alternative to Windows Media Player for playing videos, particularly .avi? I am after a less bloated player.
Tony Jones

I think the best answer for Windows users is Media Player Classic. This can also play many QuickTime and RealVideo files, with the "alternatives" installed so you can avoid three lots of bloatware. If you download the K-Lite Codec Pack, this includes the Media Player, so you don't need to download it separately. The main free alternative is VLC, which is cross-platform. There are versions for Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, and numerous versions of Linux and Unix.

My wife has an elderly Palm Tungsten -- I think it's the E2 -- and she needs to upgrade. I suspect she would not want to move too far away.
Brian Moran

Palm handhelds have not moved on much and the Tungsten E2 is still current. The two-year-old Tungsten TX has the same Palm 5.4 operating system, but more memory, a faster processor and Wi-Fi, so that would be an upgrade. It also costs 50% more. Palm did launch a new smartphone, the Treo 500v, in the UK last month. However, it runs Windows Mobile 6, not the Palm OS 5.4.9 used in the US version, and I suspect she already has a decent phone.

Have you any information about a DoCoMo mobile phone for old people?
David Lewis

The Foma F883iES phone, also known as RakuRaku (roughly, easy-peasy), has been covered at sites such as Pocketpicks.co.uk and there are some good close-ups at Doplaza.jp. However, there is no guarantee it will ever be sold in the UK. An alternative is the Emporia Life, sold for £170 by the RNIB.

I have been trying to find a free firewall for Windows Vista basic. Zone Alarm caused massive problems and I had to do a system restore. The Vista version of Sunbelt Kerio is not out yet.
Dan Stothart

That's an awkward question. Vista has a good two-way firewall: click the Advanced Security tab to see the features the XP SP2 firewall lacks (or see the SANS white paper). The problem is that it allows all outgoing traffic by default, which is tantamount to assuming that your PC is malware-free. Setting up outgoing controls can be tricky work, so most people won't do it. Still, if you are a careful user and also run other anti-malware software, then the Vista firewall should be fine until a "best free firewall" emerges. If you are careless, accident-prone or under attack, try the free PC Tools Firewall Plus 3 or go for a commercial product.

In the course of 60 years, I have acquired hundreds of negatives that range in size from 5 x 7cm to 10 x 8 inches. Having prints made is ruinously expensive. I know there are scanners for 35mm film, but are there any that can handle larger negatives?
JW Tarrant

Large-format negatives are usually scanned professionally on drum scanners, but these are very expensive. Fortunately, some of the better flatbed scanners can scan negatives, perhaps with an accessory adapter from BetterScanning.com. Your best bet is probably the Epson Perfection 4990 Photo, which can handle 10 x 8in negs with a film adapter. It's very good value at under £300.

The Epson Perfection V750 Pro is better but is more than twice the price (around £650). The CanoScan 9950F has also been a popular choice for the job but only goes up to 5 x 4in negatives.

The Large Format Photography site is doing collaborative tests of large-format scanners.

Make sure the negatives are really clean before you start: dust specks can be a problem, and the built-in Digital ICE does not work with black and white images. You may want to invest in VueScan software to do the scanning, and PictureCode or similar noise reduction software. You will probably need to do some retouching in a graphics program such as Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro.

I am very happy with my Sony K800i but would consider replacing it with a mobile that had a DAB radio as opposed to an FM one. Is such a thing available?
Richard Carden

I only know of one: it's an HTC product sold by Virgin Mobile as the Lobster 700TV. As the name suggests, it's aimed at the mobile TV market, so it hasn't been promoted as a DAB phone.

Backchat: In a comment below, Briantist -- who has one -- says: "Sorry to disappoint, but you can no longer get a Lobster from Virgin Mobile." By email, Daryl Kayes says the shortage of DAB phones "may be partly due to the heavy battery drain of DAB technology. For example, the Freeplay wind-up DAB radio should give you 10 hours of FM reception for 10 minutes of winding, but only half an hour of DAB radio." However, more power-efficient DAB chips are on the way.

When I shut down Windows Vista Home Basic I get an error message saying that KBD.EXE has stopped working.
John Chatley

I'd guess you have a Hewlett-Packard wireless or similar extended keyboard. Suppliers provide their own drivers to handle extra multimedia keys, and so on. Check your supplier's website for an updated driver. Alternatively, you could use the msconfig utility to remove it from the startup sequence as explained here: if you don't use the extra keyboard features, you don't need the file.

The File.net site warns that a malware program could be using the kbd.exe filename. However, any of the mainstream checkers should pick that up.

I have bought a Sony Net MD Walkman to record audio on location, and transfer digitally to a PC for editing. Sony's SonicStage 1.5 gives a fail message on attempting transfer of the sound file to the PC. Short of dubbing in real time, is there any other way of digitally transferring such a sound file, please?
Richard Thorn

Not as far as I know. The "innovation" with Net MD was that you could do quick PC-to-MiniDisc transfers via a USB cable. It didn't allow the reverse. There was a petition about this in August 2002. In any case, I think the data is in copy-protected Sony Atrac format, so there's nothing else you can do with it.

Sony got the message and in 2004, three years after NetMD, it introduced the new high-capacity Hi-MD format. This can record audio in uncompressed linear PCM (ie, CD format), and a Hi-MD recorder should be recognised by a PC as a DOS-format USB storage device with no drivers required. (Record in Atrac, however, and you will have to use Sony's SonicStage software.) Hi-MD should allow fast file transfer, but I haven't done it myself. See the MiniDisc FAQ at http://www.minidisc.org/hi-md_faq.html for more details.

I'm a MiniDisc user who balked at the stupidity of NetMD and am now wondering whether Hi-MD is worth a go. But I'm more likely to buy a digital recorder such as the Roland Edirol R-09 or Zoom H4, now these are getting smaller and cheaper.

My apologies for the delay in updating the blog: I was on holiday. For future reference, you can always find the Ask Jack column on Thursdays at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/series/askjack
after the publication of the printed version, but you can only make comments here....