Kaput…? (Personal Tech)
Q. I have an MP4 player on which I store media, but I am not able to play them. The keys simply do not respond.
Ashish Bhatia
Check if the Hold switch on your MP4 player is set to the On or Lock position. If so, Unlock it. If this doesn’t work, try to reset your MP4 player using the reset switch. And if that doesn’t work, you may need to get it replaced.
Old Things, Old Ways
Q. I have a Polaroid Fun Flash 640 digital camera. I’m unable to download photos to my PC.
Rakesh Shreshta
Turn off your PC and any peripherals such as scanner, printer, etc. Connect the camera to the PC using the serial cable. Connect the AC adapter to the camera to turn it on. Turn on your computer and turn on your camera. Double-click the PhotoMAX icon on your Desktop to open the Polaroid PhotoMAX image maker software. Click Get photo. Click From album or camera, then Download from camera. It should work.
Very Communicado!
Q. I want to access my e-mail on my Internet-enabled Java mobile phone. How do I go about this?
Parag Desai
Flurry is a free mobile e-mail client that lets you send as well as receive e-mails on a J2ME mobile phone with a GPRS
connection. Download and install it from www.flurry.com. You need a valid e-mail address to register Flurry. You can add e-mail accounts either at the site or from your phone—POP3, IMAP, or Webmail.
Step By Step
Q. I got the Largan Chameleon digital camera free as part of a Digit subscription offer. The problem is that my Windows XP PC refuses to recognise the camera.
Shriniwas Sharma
You have probably installed the camera the wrong way. Uninstall the drivers you installed. Open the Device Manager and select View > Show hidden devices. Look for any unknown device, right-click on it, and click on Uninstall. Restart your computer and install the drivers for the camera from the accompanying CD. After the installation is complete, connect the camera to the PC and turn it on. Your camera should now be recognized by XP as a removable drive from which you can copy the photos you clicked.
Modus Operandi
Q. When I connect my MSI P610 media player to my PC, it does not get recognised as a removable drive, and I am not able to view the songs on it or modify its contents.
Keshav Sinha
The MSI P610 has two modes of connecting to the PC. The first one is known as the MTP or the Media Transfer Mode, in which the player is recognised only by Windows Media Player 10 or higher as a media playback device. You can synchronise it only using this player. The second mode is known as MSC or Media Class Storage mode, in which the player is recognised as a removable drive. These modes can be selected from the setup menu of the player. You should select the USB mode to MSC to recognise the device as a removable drive.
Sloth!
Q. My Sony Ericsson K750i has become noticeably slow over the past few months. Even when I switch it on, it takes a long time, sometimes up to two minutes, to start. I have a 2 GB memory card. What could be slowing it down?
Chetan Raghuvanshi
Your phone could be slowed down because of many different reasons. The phone slows down as you install more and more applications and games. It is a good idea to delete applications and programs that you do not use. Move the programs to the memory card after installation—by default they get installed into the phone memory, which is not much. Try not to use animated wallpapers: these consume a relatively large amount of memory.
Scattered data in the memory card is also one of the reasons why a mobile might slow down; try removing the memory card and start the phone. If it starts faster, this is the cause of the slowing down. Delete unnecessary data from the memory card, back it up to your hard drive and format it using the phone. Copy back the necessary data to the card.