I too miss Steve Jobs....

...for all the wrong reasons.

I think it would have been nice to see him eat his words as sales of smaller ("dead on arrival") tablets continue to increase, along with Samsung's share of the tablet and mobile phone market place.

Go on.....vote me down.... you know you want to!

Oh no!!

Where am I going to buy my tacky 'Angry Birds' tat now? What's that.....? ebay? oh that's OK then.

If I had the choice.....

....I'd prefer to be killed by a human being every time. Oh yes none of that robotic killing for me. I just love that human touch associated with a fleshy-but-lean, mean, killing person-machine. Trained in indiscriminate murder and over-zealous, racist, xenophobic extermination techniques. So much nicer every time than being murdered by a drone or a robot of some kind.

Oh yes, for the discering dead person, the distinction is really important.

Is any computer safe......?

This is very worrying and depressing. Does this stuff work on ANY platform? If the answer is no, which platforms are safe? What about my android tablet using the Dolphin browser? What about that cute little 'android on a stick' gadget I've just bought and plugged into my TV? More than ever before this stuff has got me seriously considering a machine with no hard drive and a Linux variant booting live from a DVD...... sure, it's slow to boot up but just try infecting that!

@Sean Tomato Buggerme

You are a geek, potentially with Asperger's or similar. Your patience for other, normal human beings is non-existent and you fail to accept that GUIs were principally invented to make things easier for normal humans. Now be a good boy, put your Red Bull down, stop eating those crisps, step outside and have a look. That yellow thing in the sky is called 'The Sun'. Try and get more of it. Tell Mum and Dad you are off out somewhere, and try to spend less time hating people who are clearly inferior to you with your clever keypress combos and command line shennanigans. I have used various computers with different GUIs for a very long time (Atari, Amiga, PC, Archimedes, etc) and still believe that shortcuts like that should not be necessary. It's OK anyway I have created shortcuts on the desktop for the most useful stuff but still feel that shouldn't be necessary and I'm fu**ed if I'm going to try remembering those keyboard shortcuts, so there. Troll.

Mixed Feelings

I recently set up a shiny new Win8 laptop for two OAPs who were used to XP on an old desktop machine.

For them TIFKAM gives them easy access to everyting they need. It sure as hell got in the way of what I needed to do though. How are you supposed to get into the Control Panel or 'My Computer'? The biggest embarrassment came when we inserted a CD that had some simple card games on it. A message appeared for about three seconds that said "click here for more options" but it disappeared before OAP#1 got the mouse pointer onto it. I then struggled for ages to find out how to 'explore' the disk before giving up, ejecting it and then re-inserting it. That did not inspire them with confidence that I knew what I was doing.

My assessment.....some tricky things have been made simpler, but a shedload of simple things have been made trickier. I was very impressed when I enabled the wireless option on their printer, entered their password and and by the time I turned back to the laptop it had found it and installed the drivers without me having to do anything.

Would I buy it? Not as an upgrade. I love Windows 7 too much now. Would I buy a laptop with it pre-installed? Possibly, but only if it was cheap and had a touch screen.

He hated utility companies and their bills

....and took great delight in sending cheques, late, unsigned, and stapled 50 times to the remittance slip, under the bit that said "do not write below this line".

You might smirk but, having consumed the service in question (he hated phone bills in particular) he was then reluctant to pay for it. Ha ha yes very funny but the net effect of such behaviour is to increase the 'cost to recover' for each utility company and guess what happens then? yes, they increase their prices. For someone so smart he didn't really do the maths there.

How do I know? I used to work for 'Post Office Telephones' back in the day and they expeded huge amounts of resource just to appease him and entice him to pay.

Ahhh.... happy days!

I worked for IBM, at their Portsmouth HQ in the 80s. I had nothing to do with OS/2 (I was a mainframe COBOL man) but I was swept along with it all..... demos, shows etc. I was there when we were all told to claim our free version of OS/2 Warp (presumably in an attempt to get some kind of 'halo effect' going, where friends and family would see it, like it and buy it too). I got mine (loads of floppy disks) but it would not install on my (non-IBM) PC. My manager was escorted off the premises when he announced he had taken a job at Microsoft. It struck me that IBM went after the corporate market with OS/2 while M$ went after the home market with Windows, although I am sure it was much more complicated than that. I was also there when they hit the buffers financially..... not a pleasant time. I got farmed out to work at client sites on money-spinning contracts. It taught me all I needed to know to become a contractor myself! I wonder how my frozen pension is doing these days...... sigh...!

First impressions were not great

Last week I went to a friend's house to install a new router and to re-build a home network consisting of multiple PCs, an Xbox, an FTP Server, two NAS boxes and a few other bits and pieces. One laptop had Windows 8 on it. I was not impressed. I couldn't make head or tail of the cartoon interface and when I made that go away (with some wierd mouse swipe to the upper right corner of the screen) I found a desktop with no START button!!!! Getting into the Control Panel, tweaking Network Settings, trying to view other devices on the Network.... all turned from something easy to do into something that was really hard. I admit I was fumbling my way around, running searches to find the utilities and wizards I needed. I got there in the end but I for one won't be buying, nor will I be recommending it to all the people who acll on me for unofficial technical support!

Can he find his way out of the building?

Ah yes I can just picture the conversation now......

"you're fired, Mr Forstall. There's the door - over there..... no, left a bit..... right a bit...... if you're using our latest Maps software you'll find it's the grey blob adjacent to the yellow blob that we think repesents this building although we can't acutally be sure as it may well represent an entire suburb......"

Wow......

...the more you pay, the more severe the penalties? Why stop at forcing Motorola to destroy the offending tablets when, for a few million more you can request the senior executives to chop off their little fingers at the knuckle? I heard that, for another 50 million we can insisit on the CEO committing hara-kiri while for just 100 million Apple employees can eat the Motorola Management Board's first-born children in front of them with a nice crisp salad.

So in the end.......

....both firms won (it's the currency.... geddit??)

Mine's the one with the Google Nexus in the pocket.........

F**kwit

I see from the BBC report on this story that the idiot attempted some drastic back-pedalling when it was clear that his tweets were far from popular with the wider community. As previous people have observed, most 17-year-olds have not yet developed the requisite amount of common sense to speak in public but I can't help but think what a fool he is and that he deserves some kind of chastisement. I hope no charges are brought, as that would seem a bit OTT..... but it depends very much on the wording of the 'darker threats' mentioned in the article.

Goodbye HTC....

...our love affair ended when you produced the 'Flyer' as your dreadful entry into the tablet market.

I still see them for sale in certain outlets (Staples for one) for stupidly high prices and there's just no way Joe Pub will buy one when you see what is also on offer ..... including the new Google tablet, which I spotted in PC World over the weekend. Couldn't get near it because of the queue of people waiting for their turn to try it......

Apple patent trolls will be on this....

...like a rash. Are those corners rounded? Are they (gasp)......icons? Guilty! Bring it on - Apple vs the Supreme Deity Himself. But which one is best? There's only one way to find out........ FIGHT!!!!

Oh but I already know the outcome - Apple fail because this particular iPad wannabe is clearly a LOT less cool than the iPad.

good riddance

Sorry I see no valid, legitimate use of such a tool. If a parent wants to RESTRICT a child's computer usage, they use an overt tool that makes it clear to the child that they cannot access certain sites etc. They DO NOT install a snooping tool and then let their child think they have unrestricted access, so they can be spied on. That's sick and sneaky.

Don't give me analogies relating to knives because knives have other purposes. What it the honest, legitimate use of this snooping tool, exactly?

Hmmmm....

...so all they have to do in future is advertise it for £400 for half a day, before introducing the amazing, once-in-a-lifetime, super-duper discounted price and they won't get any further slaps on the wrist.

Glad to see the consumer's best interests are always protected!

And still more jam tomorrow.....

Seems like I've been waiting ages for that perfect Android-based tablet. I lost patience and went for a cut-price Mororola Xoom, and I'm happy to an extent but certain annoying niggles remain where things don't quite work correctly at times. Yahoo Mail is one of the worst offenders.

By the time the other manufacturers release Tegra 3 tablets the price will have doubled - surprise surprise!

My quest for the (tablet) Grail continues.......sigh.

Not good enough

...for a setup like LinkedIn, totally web-based, and operating in the 21st Century. Why do they always fix things AFTER the horse has bolted? The Company I work for has a dedicated Security Team constantly looking for weaknesses, vulnerabilities, loopholes and the like, and the company in question does not even use the web as its main source of business! They even engage 3rd parties to attempt hacks, so they don't miss anything.

Shame on you, LinkeIn, for the anguish you have caused and for the hassle of changing passwords on a number of sites as a result. I won't be trusting you again any time soon with any personal information.

This is a brilliant idea and deserves praise!!

Yes I can see it now.... "excuse me Mr Homeless smelly person, please stand nice and still while I do a quick bit of Stock Market speculating.....lovely.... just made another ten grand!! Lovely Jubbly!! Now be a good hobo and lie down on the pavement would you? My legs are tired and there are no seats nearby. Ahh that's better.... sorry if I am a bit heavy.... spent £600 on a super meal last night........"

Why stop there? We could force them to make human pyramids or pretend to be statues, to entertain the tourists.....

Seriously who thought this was a good idea?

I thought Steve Jobs described smaller tablets as......

......."dead on arrival". No - wait.....

Interesting battle looming....

...between the world's worst patent trolls and the world's worst abusers of patents! All you to do is detemine which is which!!

If Apple sued Samsung because of the outward appearance.......

....of the Galaxy Tab, and how it could easily be mistaken for the iPad, then why on EARTH are they not already on the case with the manufacturers of this machine, which to the untrained eye looks just like a Macbook Air????

Blimey those screen shots remind me of......

....Alien Breed - a game I first played on my trusty Commodore Amiga, roughly 20 years ago. More than coincidence? Just saying........

Very tempting!

I agree with Vitani - at that price it could be a very nifty in-car entertainment device, or an in-home glorified remote control for my extensive music collection held on a small low-power computer which is connected to the Hi-Fi..... ah just think of the possibilities!

Ah yes and M$ have nnever done that themselves.....

Oh no not at all. They single-handedly invented Networking, Web Browsers, CD Burning Software, DVD Burning Software, Photo Editing, Video Editing etc etc, and innocently built them into their OS without even knowing that in doing so they would put other software houses out of business.

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

I think you'll find....

...that Apple first patented the idea of selling smartphones for profit, and that Steve Jobs (RIP) will continue turning in his grave (iGraveRotator (tm, pats pending)) until they have been made to pay for this blatant rip-off of their intellectual property. Ah yes - I can hear the patent trolls rubbing their grubby little hands with glee over this!

oh lovely......

...a mobile phone that doubles as a mini ghetto-blaster. How nice. I am already sick of walking past the anti-social morons as they think it's cool to play load music on their phones in public. Someting that small is always going to sound like a nasty tinny transistor radio from the 70s.

Seems an odd decision

....unless they can come out with a Touch with similar capacity. Like other people who have commented, I have a 120gb classic and it is full of my fave music. I love just putting it on 'shuffle' and being surprised by what it finds.

There is no other manufacturer producing high-capacity devices and I just don't trust the cloud....

a) to always be there

b) to be free (ie me not being charged for using it) once I have paid for the music itself.

If Apple abandons it I hope someone else (Creative Labs? iRiver?) fills the obvious void they leave behind.

Maybe he was cursed....

...with the age-old "May your next sh1t be a hedgehog" curse. Just wondering.

That is all.

Solution

Surely the solution is to ensure that some good-quality games are available at launch? it doesn't have to be very many - perhaps one from each popular genre? It would be more expensive at the start but surely worth every penny in terms of units sold.....

OMG they both show icons

Guilty as charged then. Forget the fact that it is the OS not the device that displays the icons. Does Apple really have the patent for 'icons on a desktop'?

Are those icons????

Are they 'icons' on that screen? Do they 'run stuff' when you tap them? Can it make 'phone calls'? Do you use 'gestures' such as swiping the screen to scroll? Does it have 'pinch-to-zoom'? What about copy/paste? That device looks a bit rectangular to me...... does it have 'buttons' too? OMG the Apple Patent trolls will be all over it like a rash! Let's hope they have the Cupertinian Blessing before they go too much further.....

And his crime was what, exactly?

Seems to me he created a program which infiltrated the computers of people who were involved in a p2p file sharing ring. The software then deleted all music and video files on the PC while displaying a cute cartoon character on the screen. His punishment seems a bit harsh when you consider that 99.99% of such file-sharing rings exist only to illegally distribute copyrighted files, mostly films and music.

Good riddance to the smirking ginger minger

The only thing any of them really regret is being found out. Once this little feeding frenzy is over and our appetite for revenge is sated they will all re-group anyway and will continue to ply their grubby trade selling idle gossip, slander, rumour and tittle-tattle to brainless morons who mistake it for 'News' or 'Entertainment' when it is neither.

That is all.

Will they understand it?

Thanks to the alarming number of stories in 'El Reg' about Mr Plod routinely arresting people with 'electronic digital image capture and storage devices' (digital cameras to you and me) for being guilty of various fictitious crimes (mostly related to terrorism) I really do wonder whether they can grasp the concept of a 'computer' and the complex laws associated with it......

Samsung build quality.....

"the whole thing is nailed together with Samsung’s customary thoroughness". Interesting comment. I recently had the misfortune of trying to repair an early Samsung Netbook and found that....

1. The fault was in poor design or poor quality parts. The screen display was intermittent and came on/off as you moved the screen between open and closed. I had to replace the ribbon cable between the motherboard and LCD panel to fix it. I found a significant number of people on various forums suffering from the same fault. It seems the horrendously complex hinge mechanism was to blame, effectively acting as a guillotine on the cable that was threaded through it. Crazy.

2. The plastic bezel around the front of the screen self-destructed on removal. It seemed to have been made from reconstituted eggshell and moulded to a thickness that can only be measured with a tunnelling microscope. Appalling.

Neither of the above fill me with confidence that Samsung will ever rise above 'cheap and cheerful' when it comes to netbooks at least.

Are you sure it's that old??

Surely the Creationists might have an issue with you saying it's that old. Do you have any proof? Surely the magic sky fairy made it, single-handedly, a bit more recently than that??

Mine's the one with the 'atheist' badge on the back.....

I am reminded of my favourite T-Shirt design...

....it had a picture of a Tyrannosaurus Rex and under it the words "Poor Noah - not enough room for the dinosaurs" (or similar).

Surely they (the dinosaurs) are the biggest, most solid proof (if ever it was needed) that these guys, despite having their own opinion (and reserving the right to have such), are delusional and exhibiting a serious form of denial bordering on the insane.

Yet more jam tomorrow?

Ah another early announcement of a low-price "iPad beater". I'll bet that when it finally reaches UK shores we will find that one or more of the following are true:-

- it doesn't work with Android Market

- it doesn't support Flash

- It's suddenly over £400 for some inexplicable reason

- it has a resistive screen which can only be viewed directly from the front

- it's at least one version behind the latest version of Android

- its storage capacity can't be increased by shoving a large-capacity SD card into it

- despite the dual-core CPU it runs like a dead sloth

If, on the other hand, none of the above materialise, I will finally put my hand into my wallet and buy it!

Yum! More jam tomorrow

....and when it comes it will be £500, the OS may be cripppled in one way or another, it may or may not support Flash, it may or may not work with Android Market, and you will be tied into some dreadful deal with a Mobile Infrastructure provider too.

The money I had saved up for that "iPad killer" android tablet is staying put for a while longer alas.

Why, quite soon, with the accumulated interest I will be able to afford an iPad anyway and I can give up on what is proving to be a pointless waste of time.

And in other news.....

Gun shops were sued by all families that had lost loved ones in firearms 'incidents'.

W H Smiths were sued for selling blank CDs and DVDs (only ever used to copy stuff illegally, apparently)

Ford were sued by all families that had lost loved ones under the wheels of their vehicles

BAE Systems were sued by all families..........

(repeat ad nauseam)

Pointless

This is a futile and pointless exercise by Intel, now they have realised that tablets are popular and that they tend to ship mostly with no Intel components in them.

Looks like a desperate attempt to stop the inevitable slide as people ditch their x86-architecture museum relics for inceasingly-powerful smartphones, tablets and netbooks.

It wouldn't surprise me if PCs and laptops died out in the next few years, replaced by tablets and hybrid thingies like the Motorola Atrix. People will carry a powerful computer in their pockets and simply dock it with a larger screen, keyboard and mouse when the need arises.

'Bye Intel and Windows - it was fun (?) while it lasted......

Jam the day after tomorrow

Good job I gave up holding my breath for the "reasonably-priced-android-based-capacitive-screen-decent-CPU-zillions-of-apps-decent-storage-capacity" foldle slab then.

Like I said before, I'm certainly no Apple fanboi but blimey they are waaaay ahead of the pack now their second generation slab is out.

(Mine's the one with no more than £300 in the pocket for tomorrow's jam).

Great Idea!!

I love this so much I am thinking of marketing my own versions! Yes!! I think I have an old ZX80 case lying around...ah here it is.... now let's see if I can cram a small PC Motherboard into it... great. Next product..... an old Dragon 64 case with.... yes you guessed it - a small PC motherboard in it. Super. I still have an old Oric-1 round here somehwere.....

For my next trick - an Breville Snack & Sandwich Maker with a small PC motherboard in it! Finally, a Goblin Teasmade with a small PC motherboard in it......no wait! Come back! These things are really really innovative you know......

(My coat is the white canvas one with the brown leather straps and the long arms that go round the back.....)

Jam tomorrow

Ah even more jam tomorrow! Yes indeed - further vapourware from yet another manufacturer in a desperate and vain attempt to stop Apple from continuing to make an absolute killing in the tablet marketplace.

I'm no Apple fanboi (only have an iPod classic) by any stretch but I can plainly see that there is no real competition at the moment (based on looks, price, quality, performance etc) and a press release of further jam tomorrow (which is all this is) changes nothing. I see Acer has announced some tablet prices - I haven't looked yet but I fear another Galaxy Tab/Xoom moment even now.....

Sorry to be so gloomy but there is no light yet at the end of the tunnel!

That's amazing

...and is going to find its way into all manner of products in the future. I think I have just invented a glove which, when worn by someone who is *ahem* pleasuring themselves, generates enough current to re-charge an iPod. Perhaps it could be linked back tot he iPod in such a way that a smutty video is only displayed when the user reaches a specified level of current generation. I think I'll call it the iSpank, or perhaps the iBash......

That's mine over there, with the zinc oxide nanowires all over the back....

My last visit to Dixons.....

...was not a good experience. I needed a replacement power supply for a popular brand of laptop and was hoping they might sell a universal one. All they had was some clever (green?) universal adapter for the amazing knock-down bargain price of £70. Even then they were hidden away on a shelf behind the counter and I had to ask to see them, having wasted several minutes ascertaining that they were not on display anywhere.

Suffice to say I reluctantly declined the offer of the bargain PSU and took my business to the webz where I was well served with a choice of lower cost, good quality options.

I noticed while I was in there that their pricing model for other items (memory cards in particular) was more than a bit crazy too.