Welcome to 3DVelocity's letters page. Each week we will plunder our mailbag and inbox to find and publish the most interesting, controversial, informative or entertaining letters and emails.

Each month the winner of our "3DV Star Letter" award will win themselves a free 512MB of Crucial DDR memory, so what are you waiting for? Send us your praise, your gripes, your tips, your observations, in fact just about anything you like, and if we think it's worth sharing we'll publish it here for the world to see.

All you need to do is send your email to us here at 3DVelocity by clicking the "Submit Your Letter" link below and remember to include your name and a daytime telephone number

Our "Star Letter" feature is sponsored by: Crucial

Or if you'd sooner work the old fashioned way, you can mail us your letters to:

3DVelocity.com
Castle View
Rhes Ganol
Rhosgadfan
Caernarfon, North Wales (UK)
LL54 7HT

Christmas has come and gone,the main target this year was a Microsoft XBOX for my son.
The hunt started with a trawl of the local stores,good old fashioned shoe leather, on 8th December
without advertising,
Currys
Argos
Dixons
Comet
PC World
Games World
HMV
Tesco
Woolworths
all advertising consoles at £99.00 standalone, up to £159.00 bundled in with a few games going for the latter seemed like a good idea.
The answer from them all was try again we seem to have sold out.
Comet and PC World were the only two stores to be truthfull and say that they did not expect any stock before Christmas.
The hunt went online, again sites advertising great offers, but by the time you had punched in all your details and ordered the item in question,
only then when trying to confirm your order would the words OUT OF STOCK appear in bold red letters.
One disappointed son on Christmas Day, but he made do with a pair of socks and the promise of better to come in the New Year.
So the question i put before all you enlightened readers is how far before Christmas do you need to order your gifts to ensure that Santa gets it right?
Supply does not meet demand surely Microsoft could not make such an error.

Theparanoidandroid, UK ( By Email) *Winner for January"

I thought I'd picked up a real bargain when I grabbed a Lexmark all-in-one printer/scanner/copier from Aldi just before Christmas. That was until I needed to replace the ink cartridge which cost just fractionally less than the printer itself! Is this kind of practise not regulated? and if not isn't it about time it was?

MrJKO (By Email)

I read last year some time that major laws were being introduced to make spam illegal. I think it's the duty of sites like yours, and many other PC related sites, to publicise any convictions there may be, and I can't imagine there are many, and also to keep pressure on the regulating bodies to make sure the matter doesn't get fogotten or buried under more recent troubles.

My inbox is as full of junk mail now as it was a year ago, moreso in fact, so who exactly are these new laws aimed at?

I personally think everyone should be allowed something like 1000 free emails per week, and that anything above this should have to be paid for at 5c a shot. That'd cool them down!

EliteTroop (By Email)

Am I just unlucky or is the quality of computer hardware getting worse than ever before? last year I lost three motherboards, two were Epox, two hard disks and a graphics card. The money I pay on my computer could have easily bought me a nice second hand car by now, and it probably would have kept going for longer too. I think greedy hardware companies are ripping us all off and laughing all the way to the bank.

Tom-Bola (By Email)

I couldn't believe when I checked my emails this morning that there was one from mi Broadband provider, Tiscali. I signed up for yheir "Unlimited" 512k service at a cost of £24.99 per months, but it seems they don't quite grasp the thory of the word unlimited. Here's what it said:

"Your broadband internet access service use has been highlighted as extraordinarily high and may be affecting the service we provide to other users.

Tiscali is committed to providing the best quality of service to all of our customers and we have an overriding duty to preserve our network integrity. (See Clause 5.9 Terms and Conditions at www.tiscali.co.uk/products/broadband). Your usage is currently compromising this.

Under these circumstances we reserve the right to change or manage your broadband service and at peak times we may restrict the bandwidth available to you for high volume downloading, although regular internet use, browsing, email, streaming etc. will be unaffected.

If however you would like to cancel your Tiscali broadband service at no further cost, please contact us "

Maybe I'm being unreasonable, but I paid for unlimited Broadband to get UNLIMITED downloads. I watch movie trailers and other video clips, listen to music, game online and more, but it seems I need an acount with more bandwidth allowance. What is the next step up from unlimited anyway?

Shouldn't Tiscali rename this account to "Nearly Unlimited, but with limits"?

Finebyme (By Email)

Has nobody noticed we're in the midst of the great PC swindle? Sockets that change by a single pin, PCI-Express that replaces an AGP standard that wasn't even 25% utilised. Serial-ATA that offern no advantages over IDE other than thinner cables, DirectX 9.x hardware running DirectX 5.x to 7.x games.

None of this new stuff is needed, it's just money-spinning strategies from companies who know a PC fanatic will spend to have the latest piece of equipment no matter whether it has any benefits or not.

I'm making my protest with my wallet and I urge others to do the same to put an end to the greatest rip-off of our times.

Miffed (By Email)