* Posts by John Sims

36 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Nov 2007

WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

John Sims

Miniaturized Meerkats lead to faster HD spindle tech

Peugeot 208 GTi: The original hot hatch makes a comeback

John Sims

So...

As much as I like IT and cars... When are you going to do some motorbike reviews?

Virgin Media's blighted SuperHub NOW comes with extra squeal (oink)

John Sims
Megaphone

Hub Noise

My SuperHub makes high pitched noises and whines and has audible changes when the lights on the hub flash. The power brick is actually quite quiet in comparison. It's a bit like listening to a tape loading with a ZX Spectrum speeded up 50x but at a lower volume. My parents Virgin Netgear Hub (not the super hub) does exactly the same so I made the assumption this was just the standard quality of Virgin branded Netgear equipment. All the non Virgin branded Netgear equipment I've used in the past has always been nice and quiet.

Microsoft wants super-sensitive finger strokes

John Sims

They've got it all wrong

Forget latency on touch screens - I want a tablet that does what I want it to before I've fully comprehended the thought that came into my head.

"Ah that's just what I was about to want it to do."

Hands off our brand, Wi-Fi body warns 'white space' tech firms

John Sims
Facepalm

how about?...

Wi-Sigh

Apple admits iPhone battery suckage, promises fix

John Sims

No sign of a mail fix then

Many users can't reply to emails. Hit the reply button, type your message, hit send and - oh dear - the mail app has closed and there is no copy of your reply saved to drafts.

(forwarding emails does not have this problem)

El Reg in email address blunder

John Sims
Happy

Donation

As way of apology I think The Register should donate 1GBP per reg user whose details were leaked to a charity voted for by the readers.

John Sims

Repent!

As way of apology I think The Register should donate 1GBP per reg user whose details were leaked to a charity voted for by the readers.

Apple iPhone 4S

John Sims

@Presumptuous Coward

I certainly don't pull claims out my ass. The owner of the handset demo'd to me a message thread of texts between her and her boyfriend (which she said is a large conversation trail). I don't have that issue on my iPhone with large conversation trails. Maybe you don't have many texts in a conversation thread or maybe her handset is faulty.

John Sims
FAIL

Arc S vs 4S

I've seen a deciding factor today - someone with a Arc S thats given it a good communication thrashing. When she was showing me through it's different features she came to open up a text message convesation - I was dismayed to see a loading symbol for over 5 seconds before it appeared. Now i've never seen that with an iPhone! On my old 3GS I have never deleted a text and have some massive text conversations. So looks like it's going to be a 4S as I'm an impatient bugger. Ironically i'm going to have to wait for O2 to have some in stock!

John Sims

iPhones 4GS or Sony Ericsson Arc S?

My iPhone 3GS recently suffered the "incompatible accessory" message after going for a swim in a cup of coffee (first phone mishap in 13 years!).

I'm torn between the Sony Ericsson Arc S and staying on the dark side with Apple and getting a 4S.

Any constructive opinions and advice anyone please?

I'll post my choice from whichever device you sway me to purchase.

Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S Android smartphone

John Sims
FAIL

Arc S vs 4S

I've seen a deciding factor today - someone with a Arc S thats given it a good communication thrashing. When she was showing me through it's different features she came to open up a text message convesation - I was dismayed to see a loading symbol for over 5 seconds before it appeared. Now i've never seen that with an iPhone! On my old 3GS I have never deleted a text and have some massive text conversations. So looks like it's going to be a 4S as I'm an impatient bugger. Ironically i'm going to have to wait for O2 to have some in stock!

John Sims

SE Arc S or iPhone 4GS

My iPhone 3GS recently suffered the "incompatible accessory" message after going for a swim in a cup of coffee (first phone mishap in 13 years!).

I'm torn between the Sony Ericsson Arc S and staying on the dark side with Apple and getting a 4S.

Any constructive opinions and advice anyone please?

I'll post my choice from whichever device you sway me to purchase.

NASA

John Sims

Move along - nothing to see here

Living only a couple of miles away from this location I went to investigate. I can confirm that there is no secret NASA base what so ever, nor is there a nearby listening station and what you see on the map is just a giant hot air baloon shaped like a pin.

"Did I phrase that right? Will you let me go now? No - I won't tell anyone!"

iPhone alarm bug: now it's the UK's turn

John Sims

Still not working...

Luckily I was off work yesterday so the alarm problem didn't effect me, but not so lucky today, even after deleting all my alarms and recreating them. Silly me!

Apple releases iOS 4.1 into the wild

John Sims
Jobs Horns

Re: Bricked my 3GS

I had this problem when I tried updating to the first release of iOS4.

It was due to a corrupt download.

1) Find the downloaded iOS update in your app data folder (sorry too long ago for me to remember exactly what it was called and which folder).

2) Delete the file.

3) Connect to PC and open iTunes.

4) It should say that it needs to restore from your last device backup (hope you have one).

5) It will redownload the iOS update and hopefully work this time.

Apple iOS 4 update due today

John Sims
Unhappy

I have a paper weight

40 mins on hold now after a failed OS4 update and i still have a paper weight :(

Did LibCon alliance bring down O2 network?

John Sims
Dead Vulture

They took down Orange data as well

I had a problem on the Orange network in Staffordshire at the same time where I couldn't get a data connection.

P.S. I'm still p***ed off with you Reg for not returning the bleeding vulture graphic - I mean how long does it take to restore a bit of Reg heritage to it's rightful place alongside Paris?

Microsoft will fix it for you

John Sims
Dead Vulture

Microsoft will fix it for you ... Oh no they wont

Fix it Center Setup encountered an error

An unexpected error has occurred. Please close and try to run Setup again later.

Santa Fe man demands half a mill for being near iPhone

John Sims
Megaphone

Fellow sufferer (in part)

The guy mentions he can't get asleep when his neighbour is charging her phone / laptop at night.

I suffer from a similar problem. My dell laptop charger doesn't seem to bother me. However my samsung and sony ericsson mobile phone charger prevent me from going to sleep. I'll lie in bed unable to get asleep all night if I leave them on and they produce a high pitched (but not very loud) noise from them that no one else seems to be able to hear. If I switch the things off I'm straight asleep. I have to say the samsung charger isn't quite as bad as the sony ericsson - I can some times sleep with that if totally exhausted.

Don't seem to experience problems from any neighbouring houses.

WiFi doesn't have any effect on me.

I love tech but would love it even better if they made a phone charger I could use in my room that didn't have such a bizarre effect on me.

UK console sales defy credit crunch

John Sims

Consoles / games killing Pubs?

I wonder if anyone has factered in the rise in console and game sales and fall in people going to pubs. Maybe it's not just the smoking ban that's killing the pub trade - maybe it's World of Warcraft!

P.S. Still no dead vulture picture - get it sorted Reg!

Reg readers rage at comment icon outrage

John Sims

BRING BACK THE DEAD VULTURE! (please)

I only use one image when posting - the dead vulture! Why? - because he's great! So why have you t**ts gone and replaced him with a badly drawn grave stone! Do you realise the pyscological impact this is going to have on my day to day life? Do you? Do you? Arrrggghhh!!!

MS takes Windows 3.11 out of embed to put to bed

John Sims
Dead Vulture

I'm still here

"everyone who actually remembers using this operating system is long gone"

I'm aged 26 and remember it well... and Windows 3.0... DOS 4... and I've still got all the disks and manuals... ah the days when a PC had a "Turbo" button on the front to give you those extra 3 Mhz when playing Duke Nukem or Castle Wolfenstein.

Tories show they're ready for government...

John Sims
Dead Vulture

El Reg Party

Got my vote.

*The bleeding vulture because it's strangely cute. Party Logo?

Supermarket goes hi-tech to stop kids buying booze and cigs

John Sims
Dead Vulture

Seems flawed

The beeb site has an article on this. From their picture one of the measurements appears to be the length of each eyebrow. Bit of trimming me thinks would fool the system. This could prove quite entertaining if the youth of today start hacking away at them randomly!

USB 2.0 - or not?

John Sims
Dead Vulture

Same problem

I've got a Dell laptop with exactly the same problem if I use the USB ports on the side. If I use the two at the back they work at 2.0. Unfortunatley I can't change my BIOS settings as Dell very kindly decided to password protect it on the BIOS update that came with my update from XP to Vista CD. Naughty Dell!!!

Digital TV sales soar as Brits flock to Freeview

John Sims
Dead Vulture

Confusion for the non-technical minded

I've had numerous people mention that they are going to have to buy a "freeview ready TV" because the adverts say if they haven't got one then they won't be able to watch TV after the switchover. These are all people with freeview decoders plugged into their existing TV. They now understand after I explained. It makes me wonder how many other people out there with external decoders have gone out to buy a new TV to feed their telly addiction without needing to.

DAB: A very British failure

John Sims
Dead Vulture

Too expensive

DAB radios have been too highly priced for far too long. I know quite a few people who would like one but to their credit they're stubborn enough not to pay more than they think a DAB radio is worth.

O2's Companion halted

John Sims
Dead Vulture

Billing probs

I've had to call up every single month since I upgraded my phone in October to have my bill corrected. It's a different random problem every month. Never had any problems before and it's getting very annoying.

Automated crack for Windows Live captcha goes wild

John Sims
Dead Vulture

Simple stop spam idea

Along with the usual To, CC, BCC and Subject fields why don't they add an extra AntiSpam field. When you sign up with various websites and give away your email address you also give them an AntiSpam word or password. Within a setting with your mail provider you then provide a list of valid entries for the AntiSpam field. Any email without a valid entry goes straight into your spam box. If you start getting spam using one of the words or passwords you have a good idea who passed on or had your details stollen from and can then disallow that entry within your mail box. A spammer can find a valid email address easily but how are they ever going to know whether they used a valid entry in the AntiSpam field? Maybe I'm being short sighted but it sounds simple enough.

'Heavy' handset challenges all comers to prove its mettle

John Sims
Dead Vulture

AKA JCB TouchPhone

This is also been sold under JCB branding as the JCB ToughPhone and comes complete with a ringtone of a JCB Digger starting up?!?! It's actually quite cheap for a newly released sim free handset despite above comments saying you can get same features for £20 - yeh maybe if you buy it on pay as you go where the handset price is subsidised - The lowest prices sim free on the market at the moment is £30 and it's a diabolic motorola that can only display 8 characters across the screen at time. You can get it free on on contract at phones4u and mobiles2yourdoor. For sim free you can get it at Speedy Hire and Plumb Centres.

Power cut hits Rackspace UK

John Sims
Dead Vulture

Good Advertising

What I found great is this article was the first one on the register homepage and the Rackspace advert was prominantley to the right of it.

Vista provokes user synaptic collapse

John Sims
Dead Vulture

Hardware button needed

It's always annoying when something comes up and says you haven't got permission, especially when you're the administrator. As a workaround to Microsoft's annoying boxes I recon they ought to support a new peice of hardware that's bundled and linked to every motherboard - the "It's my f**king computer - p**s off!" button. One press and the message box goes away and shows you what you want.

Paris Hilton exits missionary position to save Universe

John Sims
Dead Vulture

Paris leaves "mark on the world" - sh**s on Rwanda

Paris leaves "mark on the world" - sh**s on Rwanda

LG to take on iPhone with 'super 3G' tablet

John Sims
Dead Vulture

Re: Is it the Viewty

The KS20 is a different handset. The Viewty model number is KU990. Main difference is the Viewty has 5 megapixel camera where as KS20 has 2 megapixel and the KU990 runs windows mobile. If you want more info have a look at http://ks20.lgmobile.com and click on the international site link (no UK link)