Computer Shopper - UK (2019-08)

LETTERS

ISSUE 378|COMPUTERSHOPPER|AUGUST 2019 7

Is thereanywayyoucanpointme in the
rightdirectionas to what this item is/was?
Imight be in the market forone.
Foryour interest, the monthly arrival of
ComputerShopperon the doormat is always
welcome.While Imay not always need to
purchase new ‘gizmos’ and can therefore
read the reviews with just general interest,
Idoappreciatethe more technical articles
looking at the wider aspects of computing,
the internet, legal aspects and so on.
JohnLetton

It was the Panasonic SC-All7CD (Shopper
346). If you happen to live in the Southwest,
you can get it for£199 at Woolacotts, or
there’s alower-specced Panasonic SCRS52EBK
model on sale at Amazon, although you won’t
be able to connect to other smart speakers.
Otherwise,it’s around £300 from various online
sites, including Electrical Discount UK.

Divide andrule

SteveWebb wroteintosay that he

would like a‘bang forbuck’ comparison

of CPUs and other components (Letters,

Shopper377). He demonstrated how he

achieved this by dividing the benchmark

numbers by the price of the CPU to give a

reference number –which by the green

highlight in the screenshot below suggests

that the lower the number,the better.

However,for this to be the case,you

have to do the division the other way

around, in other words, divide the price

by the benchmark numbers. This way, it

gives you aresult in the amount of pounds

you have to paytoget an extra number on

the benchmark score.

SimonP

Both arevalid comparisons, but we have a

slight preference fordividing the benchmark by

price to give the result as points per pound.

Under this example,the bigger the number,the

better the deal. Forexample,aCPU that scores

100 in our benchmarks and costs £80 returns a

result of 1.25 per pound spent. ACPU that

scored the same but costs £160 returns a

result of 0.625 per pound spent.

Inthenextissue

COMPUTERSHOPPERISSUE379ONSALEINNEWSAGENTSFROM11thJULY

❱❱Laptops on test

Thesummerholidaysare fast

approaching, and that means it’s

time forshops and websites to start

offering their back to school/college/

university/work deals. We round up

the best laptop deals around, from

budget models and convertibles

to thin and light machines and

gaming beasts

❱❱UseWord

like apro

Microsoft’s

word-processing

application

might be widely

used, but is it

well used? We

show you some

power-user

tricks

❱❱Cerebral

computation

We investigate

research intoan

alternative model

of computation,

which offers

the potential

of massive

performance gains

by mimicking the

human brain

❰❰Happyhalf-

century,Unix!

We all use Unix every day,

when we browse the web

or use our mobile phones.

So how did what began

as an underfunded

attempt to build asimple

OS to run aphone

network become one of

the greatest influences

on modern life?