I have a lovely Samsung full HD TV plus a Sony home theatre/DVD system. The problem is that the Sony doesn't have an optical audio-in connection, only a DMPort digital media port. Frankly, I think that's a bit rubbish, but persevere I must. Can I connect an Xbox 360 to the DMPort so I can get 5.1 sound?
Ian Bell

The DMPort is Sony's new proprietary connector, and Sony offers a number of optional accessories to connect other items. There seem to be at least four, including TDM-NW1 (£35 to connect a Sony Walkman MP3 player), and TDM-iP1 (£70 for an iPod dock). This is a horrible lock-in strategy, and I reckon your chances of getting an Xbox 360 connector are close to zero. However, Sony home cinema products generally have a back crammed with connection ports, so there may be another way. Can any readers who have managed it please let us know how it's done?

I have a blue and white Mac G3 tower running OS X. However, I cannot use Second Life, which tells me that I need a G4 processor. Macs are expensive and I don't want to have to buy a new computer just for that.
Andy Brown

You can probably swap out the G3 for a G4 processor. This is a relatively simple process as it uses a ZIF (zero insertion force) socket. However, you may also need to update your Mac's firmware. The XLR8 (accelerate) Your Mac site has instructions.

The problem is that although you should then be able to play Second Life, you won't get a very good experience. The G3 is practically an antique. Second Life is a game and benefits from game-style levels of computer power, including fast graphics. You might well be amazed at the difference a £2,000 (plus monitor) Mac Pro tower with an ATI Radeon X1900 XT card would make!

Do you recommend a refurbished Xbox 360 Core system or a new one?
No name supplied

There's not enough information to say. A refurbished Xbox 360 that has never gone wrong might be a good bet, but I'd be wary about getting one that had already suffered a "red ring" failure. Some people who have had one of those seem to have received refurbished machines that also failed.

Ask the retailer what sort of guarantee and support you can expect from them, not just from Microsoft.

Otherwise, your best bet is the more expensive black Xbox 360 Elite, which seems to be far less likely to fail. It's due in the UK on August 24. Give it plenty of air. And save the original packaging!

Back in the day, I played Frontier: Elite II on my Atari ST. As far as I can tell, Frontier isn't available for PCs, aside from a DOS version which I can't get to work even with an emulator. Do you know of any comparable games that might satisfy my nostalgia?
Chris Morris

You can download Frontier: Elite II and First Encounters from the Elite Club site. These are shareware, so you can play them free for 30 days, after which registration costs £5. If it doesn't work, you're supposed to be able to run it with DosBox, which I assume is the one you tried.

So, we're looking for an open-ended space flight game with trading, combat (Frontier has more of the trading) and perhaps role-playing elements.

The ones most often mentioned in this context are Microsoft's Freelancer (trial version available), Egosoft's X3: Reunion and DarkStar One.

What do you think?

For completeness, I should also mention Elite 4, about which there is an official FAQ dated 2000,2001. Play.com reckons it's "Due for release on 28/11/2008". You might get a different answer from Nostradamus.

My son recently bought Sid Meier's Civilization IV without checking the recommended system requirements so it's a £30 screensaver. Is it worth upgrading a five-year-old PC -- in our case an AMD-based Mesh Matrix XP 1600 -- or biting the bullet and buying new?
Steve Fowles

It's generally not worth upgrading an old PC to run games, because these tend to operate at the high end of the hardware's capabilities.

You can sometimes get a dramatic increase in games performance by installing a new graphics card. In this case, Civ IV is famous for its 3D graphics, and 3D graphics performance was the weakest link in your PC even by the standards of 2002. (The spec sheet says nForce IGP, for Integrated Graphics Processor. The graphics chip is built into the motherboard, so you probably don't even have a graphics card.) But to get really good games performance, you would also need extra memory and a faster hard drive, so a new PC could be the best bet.

Of course, you don't need to take the old PC out of service. It could still work well for email, web browsing, word processing etc. If you have a four-port Ethernet router, you can have both PCs online at the same time.

have a five year old AMD 1.3GHz class PC running an nVidia GeForce 5200 with 768MB of memory. Can I upgrade my system with a new graphics card rather than having to shell out for a new CPU and motherboard?
Dan Cook

The nVidia GeForce 5200 was an entry-level graphics card and not particularly good for its day, but should provide decent 2D graphics, given the generous amount of memory. However, it's probably fitted in an AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) slot, and this is rapidly being phased out in favour of PCI Express.

You could try a newer nForce card or, preferably, an ATI Radeon if you can pick one up cheaply on eBay, but then the slow processor might become the limiting factor. PC hardware has moved on in the past five years, and a new PCI Express motherboard, processor and graphics card should provide a boost in performance.

Try testing your PC at pcpitstop.com (using the panel on the left of the site). This involves accepting a small download. It will rate your PC's performance, compare it with similar machines, and suggest things you can do to optimise it. If you register it will store the scores, so you can compare the results before and after making changes to your system.

Can you recommend a good PC strategy game? I've tried Settlers IV but it is let down by a useless manual and overcomplicated multiplayer procedures.
Peter Codner

There are plenty of good strategy games but they all have a steep learning curve for newcomers who have not played earlier versions of the same game. In some cases you can catch up, because the early versions can be downloaded from "abandonware" sites.

The long-term trend is towards "real time strategy" (RTS) series such as WarCraft, Command & Conquer and Age of Empires, which are all good. However, I'd suggest Sid Meier's Civilization IV or another Sid Meier game such as Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (basically Civ in space) or Sid Meier's Railroads! (an update of Railroad Tycoon).

Civilization, inspired by a turn-based board game of the same name, did the settlers thing in 1991, a couple of years before The Settlers appeared. Both take a very long time to play. Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword is the latest Civ expansion pack, due on July 24. See firaxis.com.

Do you think the Sony PlayStation 3 will be launched in the UK come March next year, or are further delays inevitable? Would you recommend purchase of an Xbox 360, as it seems to be an established next-generation console?
Darryl Ness

There is no simple reply because different people have different needs. "Early adopters" want hot products as soon as they come out, even if it means a pricey console that still has bugs and few games. "Late adopters" wait to get the most stable system at the lowest possible price, but will have missed out on a couple of years of fun. Most of us are somewhere inbetween.

If the PS3 does appear in March 2007, it could be a good choice for early adopters and keen Sony fans. If you are one of those, pre-order as soon as possible. But most people should wait until we see how it performs, more games appear, and prices settle down. Sony will need to reach that stage by Christmas 07.

In particular, it's important to see just how compatible the PS3 is with Sony's earlier machines. If it has no problems running PS2 and PSone games, this could be a powerful argument for buying a PS3.

A year ago, the Xbox 360 was the console for early adopters, but this Christmas it should reach the mainstream. It has enough good games to make it viable, and the forthcoming selection looks outstanding. If you have broadband, Xbox Live Arcade is almost a "killer app", and there's also the built-in Windows Media Extender that can take films and music from your PC to your TV, much like Apple's forthcoming iTV, but with a powerful games console thrown in free. All this could make it worth buying, even if you hope to get a PS3 later.

There's an extra complication with the next generation of games consoles, in that it will also affect the battle between the two blue-ray based movie playing systems, Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Blu-ray players currently cost $1,000 (£530) in the US, and Sony has built one into the PS3. This makes it a good deal if you have a high-definition TV set and want to buy Blu-ray movies - but few people do.

DVD players cost about $25 and that's what you get in an Xbox 360, which is one reason why it costs much less to make. Instead, Microsoft plans to offer a cheap (£130) HD-DVD add-on this Christmas, and it could offer an add-on Blu-ray player later. I like this approach because it's far too soon to commit to one format, especially since both could fail.

Othewise there are still plenty of games coming out for the PS2 and the PC, so the risk averse can wait and see.

Can the new Xbox 360 be used as a computer to run Windows XP applications?
Frederick Omo-Osagie

No. The Xbox 360 uses a version of Windows NT Embedded, based on the same code as Windows XP, but it's not designed to run XP software. In any case, the Xbox 360 uses a processor based on IBM's PowerPC, as used in Apple Macs: this is not compatible with standard XP software written for Intel chips. However, Free60 is attempting to hack the Xbox 360 to run GNU/Linux and Darwin, the Unix code on which Mac OS X is based. See www.free60.org.