I heard (from a not-very-computer-literate person, as told by another not-very-computer-literate person*) that CD-ROMs burned on a European PC could not be read on a PC in South Africa (the country, not the region) because the hardware (or maybe software) is “different” (they couldn’t articulate in what way). Apparently, this is “well-known”, as first person has heard it before.
Well, I’m a moderately-computer-literate user myself, and this is the first I ever heard this, and I can make no sense at all from any angle:
AFAIK, CDs have the same “hardware” = external dimension all over the world. So “hardware incompatibility” can not account for this aoccrding to my understanding.
If the files burned onto the CD are in an unusual file format, the receiving PC might not have the necessary Software program to open them. But jpg, bmp, tif can to my knowledge be opened by any standard PC configuration - most Window PCs have an inbuilt viewer. More savy PC owners can of course download Irfan view or GIMP for free.
So to be sure that I’m not overlooking anything, I ask the dopers: what possible problem could the person in South Africa mean?**
The files in question are pictures in jpg format. Receiving those pictures per Email is - aside from the size - not a problem.
The person currently in South Africa is presumably white and not living in a township, so it’s not a question of jury-rigged unusual configuration. Both are old persons, who have (as usual) their younger relatives do the PC administration stuff, so I assume a standard setup of the PCs in question.
** The only incompatibility I can think of is that of old VHS cassettes which need different speeds on PAL or NTSC systems, although more modern or expensive players can cope with both speeds. Maybe the older person confused that issue with all visual media in general?
The ISO format for data CD’s is a world-wide standard which is supported by windows, OSX, linux and other operating systems.
The .jpg format is also widely supported by various OS’s.
There should absolutely not have a problem. You might be able to persuade them by simply pointing them to a jpg online on a website. If they can see it, you’ve proved your point. And in fact you might want to simply serve the files for them in that manner (via HTTP or FTP).
If they can’t, maybe they meant South Africa, but in another dimension.
Definitely not. I’ve gotten CDs burned in the UK and opened them on my PC at home in Cape Town no problem.
I disagree with **Reply **that they’re confusing CDs with regional DVDs - South Africa is in the European Region 2 anyway, so we have no problem with that either.
It’s possible someone once sent them a Mac or Linux program and they couldn’t load it in Windows or something like that, and it’s all gotten garbled since then
I’ve read CDs here in SA that were sent from the UK. There is simply no concievable way that it could be different, given that we use the same operating systems and the same hardware.
My mind also jumped to DVD region-coding, but as MrDibble points out, we are in the same DVD region as Europe. (Curiously, the rest of Southern Africa is officially not, but I’m sure they get their DVDs and players from South African wholesalers.) PAL/NTSC shouldn’t be an issue between Europe and SA since both use PAL.
Can you speak to the younger relatives to figure out what’s going on?
ETA: Maybe, if the files contain text, there could be some kind of character encoding problem? If they’re in some kind of encoding that allows for accented, etc., characters, and the South African recipient’s program can’t handle that? Just a possibility.
That’s the third possibility I wanted to mention, the only incompability I know of: somebody burns a CD on their Mac without checking the appropriate settings/ using the special Mac-to-PC burn program, and then PCs can’t read or even recognize the CD.
However, most Mac users I’ve encountered in any way are more-computer-literate-than-average and well aware of the Mac/PC divide and would therefore, once you told them “I can’t read that CD you sent me” say “Oh, doh, I forgot to put a checkmark, I’ll redo it”.
If the sender knows that the receiver is older and not-computer-literate, they usually take special care to make everything as idiot-proof as possible.
What further confounded me was first relative’s reaction “No, I’m not surprised, I have heard that before” - but maybe first relative was thinking of DVD encoding and doesn’t know where the regions are.
Difficult, as currently the communication is between the two older people. An added difficulty appears to be that the younger relative (son?) is in the UK and only occasionally comes to SA…
You mean those little blocks or weird signs that replace the Umlauts when you encode in ASCI instead of ANSI or Unicode? That might frighten somebody older who doesn’t know how to turn on the “convert” option in Word; but it wouldn’t affect a picture CD.
Maybe I can convince the older relative to spring the few bucks of postage instead of doing a complicated business of uploading big-sized picture files.
I left a handful of training CD’s produced in the USA at my company in South Africa just last week, and the one that I demo’d worked. Next time I’ll probably leave them CD’s produced in China.
That’s what I was thinking, but a CD of pictures? The only possible problem I can see then is a Mac-vs-PC issue, but AFAIK CDs burned on a Mac should be readable on a PC by default.
ETA: unless, if they burned the CD with one of those programs that leaves the CD session open so you can burn more files to it later. Then it would only be readable on a computer with the same software. Make sure that the person burning the CD chooses the option to “finalize” or “close the session”, if there is such an option.
Aha! I didn’t know that! The burning software never bothers to tell that this might be important, therefore so far I’ve chosen “open” in case I wanted to add later, or “close” if the CD was full, because I didn’t know open could cause problems! Good to know in the future to watch out for.
For greatest compatibility, burn them all at once. and close it. Just closing a disk that was originally left open can still have the same problems as an open CD.
Although AFAIK everyone else is correct that there should be no country/continent related problems with CDs and picture files, it is possible that some older CD drives (though they would have to be pretty darn old, I think) may not be able to read modern CDRs or CDRWs. (I had this issue once, but several computers ago.)
Anyway, if this is just a matter of exchanging pictures, might it not be easier and cheaper all round (like free) to just email the files, or, if too many or to large, upload them to one of the many free picture sharing or file sharing sites (from where they can easily be downloaded)?
I realize it may be difficult explaining how to do this to older, non-computer-savvy people, but it will save not only money, but a trip to the post office (and uploading probably takes no more time than burning a CD).
I never burn CDs and DVDs at the full rated speeds. I learned that hard way that burning CDs at 48x and DVDs at 16x will cause problems on some playback devices and doesn’t save as much time as you think it would.
I usually burn CDs at 24x and DVDs at 8x. I also use Verbatim blank DVDs. I can usually buy a 100pack for $20 on sale and I can burn them without checking them.
Hmm, the computer would have to be really, really old. And the CD in question is a one-time burned, not a -R or RW, since those are more expensive.
Actually, that’s what first relative asked me about - instead of sending the CD to second relative, he started mailing 4 or 5 pictures, but then 2nd relative complained that downloading them over a slow connection to an old computer she got a memory error (she said “too much memory”, but her German is not perfect, so I assume she meant “Too big file, not enough memory”). First relative asked me to upload the files to my mail provider’s media center, but this still leaves the problem of downloading big files - digital photos taken by different people and not processed in-depth afterward are quite big in size.
So I suggested to first relative that sending the damn CD regardless (since postage isn’t that high anyway) would be quicker and easier than bothering with single big files.
I have a slow connection, so uploading takes quite some time, and downloading big files one at a time will take even more. Certainly much more time than walking down to the post office and paying 3 or 5 Euros for the letter, which the 2nd relative “didn’t want to be a bother about and cause expensive costs”. Well, uploading to a special site is far much more bother!
Yeah, I personally always use the slowest speed, since this has been recommended to me from several sites to reduce errors on the CD as much as possible.
Update: Now I learn from first relative that I misunderstood and 2nd relative is in the US, not South Africa. I’m therefore 80% sure that 2nd relative misunderstood “regional code DVD problems” to mean “all shiny discs = problems” (and so did 1st relative). I told 1st relative to go ahead and send the CD by mail and swallow the postage. If it actually really doesn’t work we can still try the slow route.
