Posts by Geoff Campbell

Re: Elephant in the room

There are plenty of 12 year old Priuses around. Most are still on the original battery pack. Toyota provides something like ten years of warranty for the battery pack, if I remember correctly.

GJC

Re: Read many long, skinny books do you?

Just call me Quixote...

GJC

Re: "Make you pay"

Ah, well, that's rather the point, isn't it? Apple cannot, in fact *make* anyone pay for anything. What they can do is to *ask* consumers to pay for certain things. And if they get the functions or price/performance wrong, consumers will say "Err, no thanks", and go elsewhere.

There is no sign of this happening at the moment, I should say. But any company is only ever one wrongly-designed product refresh away from disaster, whether they are Apple, Dell, Ford, or Tomy.

GJC

(Paris, because of course her price/performance offering is always right, and it's Friday)

Re: Pockets generally aren't 1-dimensional…

It's nearly 10% bigger. Given that "fitting in pocket" is a binary state for a given tablet/pocket combination, and further given that the Nexus 7 just slips nicely into either a back jeans pocket or an inside jacket pocket with little width to spare, I think, as I predicted months ago, that the iPad Mini is too wide. Which rules it out for my uses.

GJC

No, not the end, or at least not necessarily.

But certainly the start of a new phase. One in which they are facing a lot more, and better organised, competition. How they respond will decide the future of the company.

I'm not sure I'd be investing in Apple shares any time soon. I did have a small chortle at a friend who recently exclaimed "Apple down to $632! Time to buy!". Fortunately for him, he didn't have the courage of his convictions.

GJC

Re: Digital Research?

He did indeed. And to assert that security was some sort of afterthought in the NT design is patently ridiculous.

GJC

You're kidding, right?

A UK Judge being used as an arbiter of what is cool? I suspect that would kill Apple's sales stone dead overnight.

GJC

Re: Wake me up when they go below 140 quid

That's an inordinately long way of saying "Leading edge".

The highest capacity drives are always more expensive per GB than older models. And always will be. But the price drop, when it comes, will be swift and very pleasing.

GJC

Re: OUTRAGE!

Damn, you beat me too it. So I shall just have to out-nerd you and add Barry Nelson; Michael Jayston; and Toby Stephens to the outrage list.

(No, I have no idea who they are, either. Ain't Wikipedia great?)

GJC

Re: Kobo Glo

There are no adverts on the Kindle in the UK, as far as I can tell.

GJC

Re: Linux et al

Well, yes, it is what I think, that's why I wrote it, do you see?

Different people work in different ways. A significant chunk of the PC market do indeed read documentation, in my experience. In a different market, I read documentation when I'm trying to implement something I've not done before, or when I come across an unusual result that I don't understand.

I also read forums and other web resources, and sometimes that works.

Here's a thought - you and others are, in fact, quite correct when you say that a lot of documentation for commercial software is shite. Perhaps the FOSS movement could gain some traction by putting itself forward as an alternative that comes with proper documentation, to encourage newcomers?

GJC

Re: Disambiguation

I always use 24:00 for midnight when misunderstanding could cause problems.

GJC

Re: @Dave

True enough, and I can certainly see the Note family being classed as a Tablet rather than a phone, as well. Ain't choice grand?

GJC

Re: AppleCare

So Apple will sell you an insurance policy for your iPhone. So fucking what? I can buy insurance for my S3, too. In fact I have a feeling it is probably covered by my house contents insurance. Although personally, I prefer to handle it carefully such that I don't drop it.

GJC

Re: I just got an S3 for the wife.

Seems like a fair exchange.

GJC

Re: Hybrids

Having used both in the same laptop (a Seagate Momentus hybrid followed later by a Crucial M4 SSD) I can certainly believe 2 seconds quicker for the hybrid after a few boot cycles to train the cache, although I didn't ever time it formally. They really do have a massive effect on boot and application load times.

This is with Windows 7, FTAOD.

GJC

Re: Best investment I ever made.

Well, you can't really blame us for your lack of foresight :-)

I was buying up a whole bunch of different stuff, as I wanted to have them to play with later on in life. Got all sorts of machines, mostly for a tenner - to the point where the TLA GST was coined on some systems, for "Geoff Standard Tenner" as a unit of currency.

Twenty years on, I realised there was no point in having a loft full of machines I wasn't getting the time to even look at, and decided to sell them on to people with more spare time and enthusiasm than I had. I was quite surprised by what some of them fetched.

GJC

Re: Native Google maps

Certainly Apple have past form for refusing to allow apps that duplicate functions already on the phone. I wonder if they might invoke that clause to block a Google Maps native app?

GJC

Re: Christmas crackers and cornflake packets

Metal support is already here.

I was at one of the trade shows a while ago, there is at least one company doing additive manufacturing with metals. The machine uses a different process, fusing a bed of powder with a high-power laser (no sign of any sharks in the model I saw, sadly). This allows for some fascinating light-weight metal structures to be made.

I think the company I spoke to are only leasing machines currently, and they are at the eye-watering, if-Sir-needs-to-ask end of the cost range, but they do exist.

GJC

@AC 13:02

I have absolutely no idea what you're trying to say, so have a down-vote on the basis that I might disagree with you if I understood your post. It's always best to play it safe in these situations, don't you find?

GJC

Re: A core of truth indeed

Oh, you might be surprised. Most religions allow for the messiah to return from the dead, why should Apple be any different?

What, too soon?

GJC

Re: Wales wants fast broadband

Well, I'm sure the sheep will enjoy it, but I suspect the 3 million people who live here will make more use of it.

GJC

Re: @Test Man

I just provided the link to the solution to that problem. Most phones can get stock Android with no manufacturer or operator cruft on.

Yes, I agree, the first-time installation is not as simple as, say, Windows 7, but there are step by step guides provided. Once you've done the first one, upgrading is generally just a matter of copying a zip file onto the phone, rebooting, and selecting the "upgrade me!" option from the menu.

GJC