@ graham marsden

do you really think Stabby McChav is reading this, and would spend his hard-earned giro on one? they'll stick with the £5 jobbies from the local tat shop.

John Gardner

had some interesting choices for Bond's sidearms - the HK VP-70 and the ASP 9mm among others - the latter specifically made with the idea of being a concealable, but uncompromised performance handgun.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASP_(handgun)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_%26_Koch_VP70

@ dr strangelug

an equally big question is 'how could six space launches all go off within minutes of each other and no-one whatsoever on the ground notice?'

pffft - Moore carried off the

'perfect english gent' type cool as shown by John Steed and Captan Picard (technically a frenchman, but he's played as English as they come by patrick stewart) - never blows his cool, always perfectly mannered - even when someone's trying to kill him (seen in The Spy Who Loved Me, when Caroline Munro's helicopter pilot is doing her best to machine gun him.) plus he could show a hard edge when he needed to (such as when he gave Locque's car a helping hand - or foot - off the cliff in For Your Eyes Only.)

Dalton second as he really did play the part as it was written - I read a good piece (I forget where unfortunately) on a 007 website a while ago where the case was made for his performance in Licence To Kill being the template for Craig's portrayal.

Brosnan a very close third - although his last outing broke any last bounds of believability.

for an affordable 'Bond' car

why not a Saab 900 as he drives in the John Gardner books? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_beast#The_Silver_Beast

@ mike

you know the guardian offshore all of their financial affairs they can to minimise their tax hit?

not like a bunch of left wingers to be a load of 'do as I say, not as I do' hypocrites now is it?

@ shelluser - this is the best you've ever seen them. I've had at least 2 copies on both vhs and dvd of the first two films, and with both of them I was notincing colours and textures I'd never seen previously. for the prices you can pick up the 'full' box set with all the extras it's worth every penny IMHO if you're at all a fan.

@ c hill

Alien, grainy how? the BR release is crystal clear. Aliens yes, but I was under the impression that Cameron had to go with a grainy stock because the vast majority of the film is very dimly lit. and yes to everyone else, when the full BR set of all 4 is less than twenty quid, why bother getting this? I bought it for my brother for his birthday the other month and got it for £12 posted new, still shrinkwrapped.

K- for a compact with a superzoom lens

have you considered a Panasonic? the Lumix TZ range will give you an excellent sensor, Leica optics and superb build quality. and the older models in the range still perform perfectly well while being excellent VFM.

AC - 'Or am I the only one who is thinking that I'll never buy another apple product?'

I never even bought the first one.

typed on my Windows PC, with my Galaxy S2 being charged from it's USB port.

@ lincard1000

any of the Cowon mp3 players - superb sound quality, completely drag and drop and solid build quality.

@ jay 28

I'm playing all the right notes...just not necessarily in the right order.

what about

the flat-panel screens Bowman and Poole are watching during dinner in 2001?

@ john naismith

they did consider making the battery user-serviceable...but then Creative realised that it would raise Elf and safety concerns...

...mine's the one that ISN'T an anorak.

@ lou

completely agree, and you can see how Canon (off the top of my head) have responded to this with the G11 - however, would you not think at this level though, the kind of customer these will be aimed at is just going to think 'more MP = better pictures'?

and Pat 3 - let's face it, anyone who wants really good results from a compact is going to do a bit more research than just striding into the high street Currys and asking the spotty herbert behind the counter for his recommendation. the fact that Curry's are still in business show that there will always be a sector of the market for that type of buyer, imo.

very handy

in a lot of respects, the best phone I've had up to now was my Motorola Graphite from 1997 - built like a tank, made calls when I wanted to, and had a ringer that sounded like a phone and not some silly bloody tune or something (are you listening Nokia??) and the menu's and choices made absolute sense.

I'[d definitely have one of these as a spare if they flogged them in the UK.

what about the study I recall some time ago

by MIT (or some such body ) that proved a satistical correlation in the amount of mp3's of your band being downloaded to your record sales - ie, the more popular you were in terms of downloads, the more records you sold as more people became fans, and fans tend to prefer to own original copies of the music in question.

lars (and the rest of the band, and not just for the napster thing either) are indeed complete cocks.

last word to dave gahan - 'if you aint being bootlegged, you aint happening.'

@ tony smith

'It's getting to the point where, for some people, the *way* something is presented is more important than *what* is presented. That's the wrong way to view, IHMO.'

absolutely - it's like the records What Hi Fi use for reviewing stereo gear - almost always turgid bollox that no bugger in their right mind would actually *want* to listen to.

however, for the films I like, a good BR presentation is well worth the money IMO - 2001 for example, is simply jaw-dropping in terms of the way it looks - I noticed colours and details and even sounds I never had before, between vhs and dvd copies of it. also John Carpenter's The Thing is a stunning example of what BR can be like.

what I do object to, though, as people have said, are the high street prices of the discs and that on a lot of occasions, the transfer is taken from a crappy source that doesnt really improve any on the dvd presentation - thus negating the point of it being a BR disc in the first place. and when will the studios pull their collective fingers out and release the genuine classics held in their archives on dvd rather than the rehashed remade crap that passes for 'new' releases these days?

ah yes, lets ban something tangientally involved

because banning handguns has stopped all gun crime within the uk hasnt it?

I dont know

this whole idea sounds like a bit of a turkey to me...

hmm

'drm and other such nonsense put me off them a long time ago.'

and Itunes works flawlessly, I suppose.

I have a Sony mp3 walkman here as I say - it doesnt give a f**k where I got my mp3's from, how many pc's I hold them on, and doesnt decide to delete my entire mp3 collection on a whim.

keep drinking the apple kool-aid - I'll stick with my Sony thank you.

'apple has the app store.'

with such gems as 'need to work out the tip in a restaurant? we have an app for that.'

erm, I've had an app for that on my phone for some time now - it's a thing called a CALCULATOR. and then only if you're so thick you cant do the mental arithmetic. but then if you are thick, I suppose that would be the explanation for paying for crap like this.

nice...

have sony said if it will still have a drag n'drop file system for putting mp3's on it like the regular sony mp3 walkmen? if it does, I'll have one.

I dont see the point of this tbh

the only major difference I can see between this and the D90 is the lcd screen - and it's the same price. so why is it being described as 'entry level'?

only 75%?

I think you're being a bit harsh - this is a very good piece of kit indeed. When I was looking a camera for myself around christmas, I narrowed it down to this and the D90 ( I went for the Nikon in the end.) overpriced? very possibly, as Panasonic themselves launched it with £50 cashback straightaway, but as Jared points out, Panasonic are making (and have here IMO) incredible cameras on any terms. several review sites have said this has better performance than quite a few 'normal' slr's.

but why have you taken so long to review it?

@ Tim - 'Quality was always secondary'

er, what? the difference in quality was precisely what spurred me to change to dvd - *and* duplicate my existing vhs collection on dvd. if quality wasnt the issue, then why have people bought dvd titles they already have on tape?

so...

for only £280, I can have an iphone. and £35 a month for 18 months. so thats £910. for which I get 200 texts and 200 minutes.

now, I'm already with o2, and I've just gotten an N95 off them for free, at £30/month which gets me 600 minutes and 1000 texts, plus what they call 'long weekends' which gives me free calls midnight friday through to midnight monday. I signed up for 24 months, granted, but with at the very bare minimum three times (and realistically a lot more) the call and text allowances. thats before we even get to the phone spec. so for £200 less, I'm getting arguably a better phone with a far better tariff.

and before all the fanboys start explaining what I'm missing out on by refusing to line Jobs' pocket any further, ( something which Maddox has already done far better than I - (possibly NSFW btw - http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone ) can I just raise a question about this particular blurb about the iphone - 'iPhone is a revolutionary new mobile phone that allows you to make a call by simply tapping a name or number in your address book, a favourites list or a call log.'

so that would be just like every other mobile phone I've had for the past ten years then, wether made by Motorola, Ericsson, Nokia or SE then?

I'm truly intrigued as to who will end up buying this, I really am.