Posts by roy lovelock

I decided about a year ago to get my wife a chromebook - shes ok on a computer but not tech savvy.

I had a few reasons for choosing the chromebook over a windows / mac.

First and foremost being - it works, i don't need to constantly check for viruses, updates, adware, the machine does exactly what she needs it for, that little bit of shopping and checking emails.

She even uses it as a media centre and does all her documents on the machine.

I have various windows machines but couldn't make the switch to windows 8, tried it for a few weeks then returned the machine and have since switched over to a mac book pro, i wish i had done it years ago.

I think chromebooks get a rough deal, we now have a couple of them in the house and they are the most used machines - instant on, any account can sign in, and the cloud service works fantastically. Even when we went on holiday with no access to the internet the offline mode worked well for my daughter - she loaded it with her music and videos and was kept entertained in the wet summer holiday we had in aug.

Not always does cheap mean bad, the chromebooks are cheap yes but far from bad.

very pleased with my switch

I also switched from Tmobile to Three a couple of years back. I had been with One2One / tmobile/ EE since 95 and they had been ok, but the final nail in the coffin for me was the change in contracts and the constant mid contract rises.

I had previously had unlimited data (capped at 3gb!!????) then they released the 4g and there data was Pants to say the least - i think i would have been capped in less than 1 hour very month.

Being a average 10-15gb per month Three have been fantastic, i had been told horror stories of poor coverage etc but tbh ive not seen it in the two years ive been with them.

Im just sitting on my contract for the time being waiting for the note 4 to arrive.

my wifes virgin account hasnt changed in 5 years, she has the rolling 30 day contract and it cost me £6 pm, for that she has unlimited everything (im sure there are restrictions) - ive yet to see a deal as good as that so have kept her on it.

plex hands down

My setup consists of

readynas pro duo with 4x 3tb hdd raid x (i love raid x as it will auto expand while running, and are hot swappable)

mac mini 2.5ghz (late 2012) as the server

then i have a number of devices that can access the server.

Now tv with plex hack works very well and is simple (just roku box but only £10) i have 3 of them currently.

I also have 2 google tvs by sony - these are fantastic devices that have the latest version of plex that allows the files to be indexed when the server if off line.

And lifetime plex subscription - this is a must if you want the added bonuses of sync and cloud sync.

Another forgotten device is google chrome, cheap and easy to use from your mobile phone, just open the app and cast job done.

Real shame

I was a loyal fan of htc and owned many of their handsets, until they decided they would no longer support removable sd cards and batteries. To me it really dosent matter how well built the device is if its battery fails and causes that beautiful piece of metal and glass to be turned into a doorstop prematurely.

The offset was i found just how ugly BUT how good touchwiz actually is on the samsungs. It wins zero awards for looks but its got a lot more under the hood than sense has. I really didnt realise just how restrictive sense was until i got the sammy.

I have the note 2 and my wife runs my last ever htc one x, her battery is fading at 1.5 years old and very rarely lasts a whole day now, but when it does escape running out it still needs rebooting every few days as it slows down (we have reset it a number of times and its still the same) where my note 2 runs for months on end without the need of a reboot. this is purely down to sense again.

To me and a lot of my geeky friends it doesnt matter how highly rated a phone is now, if it has no removable and memory then there not the phone for me or us (this sadly goes for the nexus devices as well).

HTC need to realise that there are a lot of people that turned their backs on the iphone excatly for this reason and htc were the brand to go to originally, since they decided to remove what people wanted they have lost sales.

I really hope that HTC realise this - they dont need to shave of a couple of mm, just give people back what they removed - back the hacking community and the sales will return if its not too late.

mastercard

i was really annoyed when my mastercard was replaced early with a contactless payment card, i work in an job where my friends have had payments taken from thier cards accidently.

i explained this to my card supplier and they told me its an standard now with mastercard.

the CS agent told me that any payments taken would be returned, but didnt seem to understand the agro it cause the customers when they have to change thier cards with online payments etc.

in the end i found the nfc chip and pushed a small screwdriver though it, voila dead nfc, (fyi the chip is right next to the visible chip and pin chip in the centre of the card, you have to be careful not to damage the chip and pin contacts).

Ive now switched my account to visa as they gave me the option. Sometimes progress is not needed or wanted, i dont ever want or need my card details be accessable by anyone with a nfc reader, i want the option to disable this useless and dangerous feature, until then i will be avoiding mastercard.

the problems shown here by M&S just show that sometimes tech is not the answer

try the audiobook

i was suprised with the digital copy price, but i have subs to audible and it worked out to around £4 (there abouts) for the audiobook on my yearly membership.

ive all but given up purchasing books in the conventional way as audible makes it a lot cheaper and it less effort!!!

tmobile do it again

why do they manage to upset so many users within a two year period, my contract expires in October, Ive been locked in for the last two years (and been with them for 18 years now) - with 2 price increases, and now the removal of the full Monty tethering i will be switching my personal line in Oct. Ive had the full Monty for the last few months and love it, i use the tethering part and that was the reason why i switched package.

t mobile seems to currently want their cake and eat is as well.... its going to cost them in the long run if they carry on treating customers with the contempt they are currently showing.

very nice

I was one of the idiots that purchased the useless sony liveview watch, from day one it didnt work, a firmware update sorted out connection problems but it was lacking in one thing, a clock that that was on all the time (well you could but the battery would die within about an hour).

My live view had some cool features but was never the killer product that i would normally wear, this looks like it might fill that void.

TBH 1 week battery life isnt that bad, especially when you consider that most new smart phones wont last much more than a day on average use, i cant see the issue with charging it once a week.

They could though add a nice little calculator solar cell, im sure that would extend the life by some degree.

£100 seems a little steep though, liveview came in at £50 and play had it for sale reacently for £13, i think £50 would be a more acceptable price.

i will be keeping a close eye on this product as it come to market, i wont jump on the first shipment either......

another customer gone here

i currently have the 3 at home package, and used the streaming on occasion when at work on my samsung galaxy tab. this is very poor descion by love film and i think they will lose good percentage of thier customers because of this.

talk about shoot themselves in the foot - your damned if you pirate and your damned if you legally stream.

when are these companys gona understand that DRM is an out dated and hated by everyone, amazon do this on audible and now they are doing it on love film, well done

silver lining???

This may work in samsungs favour. Ipad, or wannabe ipad owners will see all this case over the internet and news and think, "hmmm samsung is a copy of the ipad but cheaper".

im hoping that current apple owners will see what apple are doing to effectly create a monopoly will leave a sour taste in thier mouths and leave when thier next upgrade is due.

I just hope that samsung take this into account when apple want newer and more powerful componets from them

2.1 now

just thought i would add that ota updates are now happening which upgrades the firmware to 2.1. the machine is much better now with none of the audio glitching whith headphones, live wallpapers, 9 home screens and most of all the machine is now fast with a lot less lag than on 2.01.

if you havent upgraded to 2.1 or it refuses you can do it manually, you wont want ot go back.

now roll on flash 10.

the price is more like £80 not £180

i concur, i bought my one in november to use with my archos 5 android and the machine has been flawless since i payed dc unlocker 15 euros to unlock the device. 3 were doing this device for £39.99 before christmas so it turned out to be a bargain. i already have an excellent dataplan with tmobile so that sim card dropped straight in.

the machine is basic on features because it just gets the job done as advertised. we dont need any more of the fandangled settings just the connections with encription... job done.

75% is a little low imho for a device that does as advertised, maybe your rating was affected by the too high price that was reflected in the article?

@Richard Eustace

I had the same subscription, and yep i did eventually find that convert with goldwave but it was too late for me, i had already spend bundles on cds by then. When i approached audible about non ipoders they said tough get an ipod!?!?!?!.

The amount of business this company must have lost because of this, my local libary has made a killing since (and its a whole lot cheaper!).

The one nice thing that the site does is allow you to re download your files if needs must (unlike itunes),

Good idea if you have an ipod or one of the other players, but there are cheaper and easier alternatives, local libary was £2 per book the last time i visited.