AN OUTSIDE VIEW

The business pages are saying how the launching of Windows 7 later in the year will give a boost to computer sales, which have been in the doldrums lately. It will enable Microsoft to phase out Windows XP, which is still being sold with the new generation of notebook computers which cannot run Microsoft’s most recent system, Vista. There is another way of looking at this. The advent of W7 will mean that millions of perfectly serviceable computers will be disposed of. Many will end up as landfill. When the energy used to produce and deliver a computer is taken into account as well, this is not environmentally friendly. But it is good news for Linux users who will now have the choice of a new generation of computers coming onto the market at knock-down prices. Three-year-old Thinkpads are a particularly good buy, and the latest will now have dual-core processors and SATA drives, which are now available in energy-saving solid-state versions. My only real complaint about the dominance of M...

Question: What is the right width for a railway carriage? Answer: 3 metres inside, 3.2 metres externally. This gives enough space for seats, armrests and a gangway in between. If there is any significant new railway construction to take place in Britain, this should be kept in mind. Future building should not be sub-standard. Britain was the first country to have railways. We made the mistake of building them too small. Now is the time to make good.

Support for the construction of a new high speed railway in Britain is growing, though there are going to be years of debate about where it should go and what sort of a line it should be. Britain is not ideal territory for high speed rail. 80% of the population is packed into about one-third of the land area, south of Leeds and east of Cardiff. Most of the journeys made are quite short. It is also the case that within this core area people are fairly spread-out, which makes it difficult to serve them by public transport, and particularly so with rail transport. Britain’s whole pattern of land use assumes that most people will make most of their journeys by car. Outside this core area, however, there are two important centres of population, the Scottish lowlands belt and Tyne and Wear, and this strengthens the case for high speed rail significantly. A further difficulty concerns the entire concept of the line. Rail promotes itself on the strength of its ability to provide good journey t...

Jag tycker mycket om SJs websajt. Där är det mycket lätt att titta på tidtabellen, hitta tåg och köpa biljetterna. Men man vet aldrig hur mycket biljetterna kommer att kosta. Jag har köpt biljetter från Göteborg till Köpenhamn för bara 95kr, men har ofta betalt 400kr. Om man får köpa billiga biljetter så måste man göra det veckor före. Biljetterna är giltiga bara ett särskild datum och en särskild tid, annars måste man köpa nya. Vem vill verkligen göra det? Jag anser att biljettpriserna bör göras enklare. Bara två biljettprisnivåer behövs: ett vanligt pris, kanske 1kr per kilometer, och ett högre pris under högtrafik, kanske 1.5kr per kilometer. Då kan men vet precis hur mycket resan kommer att kosta. Och en sak till. När man reserverar en fönster plats, finns det inte alltid något fönster bredvid. Man kan inte tittar på landskapet men istället man får se bara plast. En fönsterplats bör betyda just den. En fönsterplats utan fönster är ingen fönsterplats. Den är en falsk beskrivning.

Sorry no regular internet at the moment, will start posting again in mid-August.