"it [Google] observes all Australian taxation laws"

And then does everything it can to avoid them... Along with crApple

If you think good design is expensive...

you should see the cost of bad design

Orange are the same

Avoid Orange as well - awful network

Was going to look at virgin but wont bother

Was thinking Virgin were one of the better providers however after having heard they were awful from a relative and now having read this I won't even consider them - sky it is :)

Back to the topic

The paper white is good if you like books - if you like browsing the internet for short periods of time get yourself a mini-iCrap or some other alternative which'll cost you twice as much. I think the paperwhite is great. Dont care much about the comments on epub, etc I have transferred PDFs, word docs and .txt files to my device - the rendering can be a little below average to be fair but it works and is more portable than my laptop

So...

the rich can choose how rich they want to be whilst the poor get absolutely, well and truly *screwed* (by the rich).

If the poor were children and the rich were roman catholic vicars, the poor would all be crying 'rape' right about now! WTF is wrong with the world to allow this to continue.

Not a fan

Is it just me or does the iPhone5 already feel like old technology? The problem is they have (for a breif period) proven they can be innovative, however now, they are proving the opposite with their iPhone 5 - its the same as the 4S as far as most owners are concerned and they're locked in for another year or two with the same tech they had previous ( minus the maps of course ) ... no wonder ppl are beginning to lose interest.

When will the fanbois realise...

Apple make crap products at hugely inflated prices - then trick you into thinking theyre good when theyre actually sh*t

its rubbish

Too much hype - not enough

Samsung is far better - better screen, better memory expansion options, better wifi tethering and apple are still flogging the same UI, same phone - wheres the 3D screen? This should have been called iPhone4.2 not iPhone5. Apple sucks again

Returning my kindle now

Having recently lost my kindle, I have ordered a new one - Amazon don't give any indication of thier product line-up/road map in the UK and its shit. Needless to say I will be instantly returning my kindle and rebuying one of the newer ones at £20 less, unless they send the new one in the first place. morons.

The problem with all these patents..........

The problem with a lot of these Apple "patents" is that they *are* for obvious uses but the technology is so new the general population isn't given a moment's breath to think about innovative ways to use the technology to the benefit of others. I'm not saying barcode scanning on a mobile is new, just that it is new enough no one has really had much of a chance to play with it to date.

No doubt the data collection that goes on behind the scenes will be submerged in swathes of legal bullshit you have to agree to before being allowed to use the app - which will probably come installed by default - remember what happened to IE?

Sense of entitlement

These people want a medal for being born. Let's wait till the games is over without problems *before* they get any bonuses.

Isnt this what contract law is for?

If there was no contract laid out prior to this patent being approved, neither Kodak nor Apple has any obligation to the other as far as I can tell... this is at best a form of "a gentleman's agreement" and Apple were on the losing end of it (for once). Go figure.

Orange is crap

Having complained about Orange many times over the years I will do the same again. Yes you get signal almost anywhere you go but its like having 56k dialup 75% of the time. Not my idea of mobile "broadband". I rang to complain is wasn't even getting 1% of the service I was paying for after attempting to download information. I was basically told to go screw myself. Hate orange and will leave the moment the contract is up as their customer service is also appalling.

Didnt even realise I was being tracked

I never realised how much I was being tracked until I installed AVG free 2012 which has a built in "do not track" add on for my web browser. I reckon about 33% of websites issue these tracking cookies and I wasn't even aware... Given the choice, I'd choose not to let them track me as its non of their business what I get up to online.

The Dawn French of ultrabooks

The only reason the benchmark results are so good are because the laptop uses a solid state drive (SSD). If it weren't for that fact, it'd be on the shelves at around £400 vs £1100!

I do wonder if HP Sent in the article with a free laptop to the author given how glorified it seems to make this laptop out to be (which I did not get from having seen it in the shops). This isn't even an ultrabook at its size/weight and tiny hard disk.

bad article and I have the Samsung S5...

I agree, an all round poor article that doesn't explain much of the technical specs.

I bought the Samsung Series 5 after browsing every laptop in the shops. A lot of netbooks have only got the atom processors so are worthless. The S5 is about the only one with a full blown i5 and also has a 16GB SSD + 500GB of diskspace... so its great all round. I did question the £800 price tag but currently the S5 is on offer with £130 cashback bringing it in at cheaper & better than the ACER, which el-reg rated as #1. That aside, Acer tends to use low quality components, as have Dell in my past experience. I would have gone for a sony if they had anything competitively priced and at the same size but the closest thing was £1200.

So why did I buy the S5 which is close to £1k? because if you've ever carried round a 3KG laptop for a living you soon get tired of it and thin/light laptops very quickly become attractive. The weight of the S5 is impressive and I did look at a lot of the ones above mentioned. Their specs were no where near worth investing in for anything like £300+ since come the end of this year they won't be worth even half of that.

The speed of the S5 is phenominal compared to my old Sony laptop. Only time will tell if it is durable but the metal casing seems strong enough and well built. I decided to give it a go because I have been incredibly impressed with the Samsung Galaxy S2. Happy I chose it even for the price!

The news we've been waiting for!

Can.Not.Wait!

Why stop at phone boxes?

Could also roll this idea out to streetlamps/post boxes as well with the right kind of ingenuity.

Not Pink

I remember reading not too long ago that if something is pink it is instantly more attractive to females. I'd still stick to tried and tested colours or as the previous commentor rightly states... anything expensive and shiny!

Something in return!?

This is a huge "data slurp" that credit card companies expect to get for free?! they should really think this through carefully.

Nice

This is a very fresh approach to employment in the public services sector - especially within IT. I look forward to supreme results as a result of "world class talent". Afterall the only other place hiring these people is the finance institution, which in terms of IT is heavily underfunded from what I gather, since banks usually have a small team of IT professionals expected to do the work of a much larger team.

How about using these as office doors openers so you can track actual time in and out of the office. Im sure some big co's would love this as their time reporting wouldnt be as screwed up

not a chance

Having been in a position to say "been there, tried that and failed miserably", I can inform that without a degree you stand a snowballs chance in hell of getting an IT job without a degree. No employer will take one look at IT coders/admins without a degree because the vast majority of people in industry do have degrees and the cost saving is negligible

Utter b****cks

Riots are not the result of GTA. People have rioted ever since they were capable of it. To blame a computer game is utterly moronic. From what was shown on the news this morning - half the rioters don't have games consoles... and perhaps thats the problem?

so who is, also, not jealous

Looks like a brick - no style or penache. 3D is no excuse not to bother making it look slick. Idea is good, execution is atrocious.. those specs look like something a high school geek would have been bullied for... and who wants to get bullied?

Agree with "its not worth the paper its written on"

I dont think companies should be allowed access to so much data if they can't realistically be held accountable for its security, otherwise we may as well all just go onto the national database so it isnt a big deal...

"your data was stolen?!"

"Yes, but its ok, they didn't get anything that isn't already publicly available on the national database"

How about an even better device

A person/soldier is drowning or in some other traumatic state and unconcious. Invent a device that is embedded in the Central Nervous System that can put the persons limbs into auto pilot and swim to safety.... or at least above water so they don't drown/freeze to death. It could even be remote controlled by some one else, or use brain interfaces to tell the mind what activities to perform.<Evil Genius>

Could be good not to draw conclusions

Can we really afford to be wrong on this? the risks of assuming one factor is outweighs other factors at this stage are too high in my opinion. better safe than sorry

Didn't MS steal Java code?

I remember some time ago (1 year perhaps?) MS were accused of copying large chunks of Java source code for their C# system... or did I just dream that?

Many years on

From what I recall, Ferrari sold an F1 car at auction and wouldnt let the buyer officially take the car from them until 1 year later because their "technology" is effectively secure for 1 year, after which it is considered old? Wouldnt this be the case with NASA technology as well? If so... the amount of time for which he has been detained now and in court is ridiculous

What?!

Its not "thin" in any way. If Dell considers this thin, its customers should consider it FLIMSY, no doubt a number of corners have been cut to produce something as mediocre as this.

How about Windows....

Why dont they market this as something truely new and call it Windows 9 or 10, rather than windows 7 which will seem old by the time november swings by. Stop and think about this M$.

Java *App*let anyone?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_applet

Apps Applets/Applications have been around since the 90s at the very least. Apple just did what no one else was bright enough to do and now they're winning, without anyone else getting a real look-in, everyone is bitching. If I were in Apples position I'd tell MS, Amazon, etc to stop being such a bunch of Whiney babies and get with the times. Amazon is less on my list of DINOSAURS when compared to the likes of Microsoft. But each of these companies lately has displayed a real lack of agility in the market. Something Apple has done with admirable success. Good on them... IF MS and the like can't be bothered to think of their own ideas they shouldn't be in the market... Can't wait to see what the Cloud situation brings, as apple already bought the webside iCloud.com

Intelligent Beings

It is my opinion that the more research we carry out the more we will begin to realise that any animal capable of higher thought can be educated to be "intelligent". Reprogramming the brain to respond a certain way is purely a matter of using the correct training method.

Personally I suspect where we are leading in a few more decades/centuries is for humans to be communicating with some animals directly.

ROFLMAO

.... this will not succeed in the UK - not during a recession - credit/debit cards already solve this problem without the need to pay to top up.

While they are watching...

Everyone else has seen it and is laughing behind their backs.... Makes me think the same must be going on with other nationalities TV shows when we receive them.

Forget it

The improvement vs. price ratio is just no-where near acceptable to the consumer market. 3D TV manufacturers really need a rethink on this one.

I believe the market needs more innovation than it has seen previously: CRT->flatscreen, flatscreen ->digital, digital->HD, HD->3D ... one small step too many, the market wants significantly more now. HD (blu-ray) still hasn't taken off in my eyes, much as minidiscs didn't until about the time just before the iPod came about. After that Minidisc was doomed.

Perhaps timing for this product is just wrong.... 3D TV would do better if, for instance, it were released when the new internet TV on demand was released and 3D content online would be significantly more abundant - perhaps then 3D TV would stand a chance. At present its a total no hoper though for the mass market - there's just no demand because there is not enough appealing content.

Orange are crap

just goes to show what an utter waste of time orange customer services are. I for one am switching my contract as soon as the possibility arises.

This would be a Good Advert

This would be an excellent advert for motorists not to use their mobile phone whilst driving.

how long will it be...

until apple removes the google app. Lol!