"many might argue that the government hasn't gone far enough"

while even more would argue that the Government has absolutely no electoral mandate to go as far it as gone.

Owning a TV is not compulsory.

If you don't want to pay, don't have a TV in the lounge.

Like all forms of tax there is always an argument from people who object to spending on one specific spending - why should TVL payers have to cover the cost of the Beeb's F1 or rugby coverage if they have no interest in motor sport or rugby? Etc etc.

A lot of the BBC's output in dire but an equal amount is very, very good. That of course is an entirely subjective statement.

Just a long as the TVL ensures British free-to-air TV doesn't sink to the levels of that in the USA or Italy I'll keep handing over my fee without too much complaint - as I suspect will the overwhelming majority of the population of the UK.

It's one of the things that defines this country for the better along with the NHS, unarmed coppers and fish & chips.

It's a price thing

I spent some time with the Samsung Chromebook and though in someways deeply flawed as a devout believer in all things Google it had an appeal. At £150 I'd buy one tomorrow. At £450, forget it.

You want an Ikea catalog, not Reg Hardware

" Then we could see what it looks like in an actual living room."

So, you want a panoramic view of a some journos sitting room with a TV in the corner? Maybe in a full review with space for multiple images but even then a shot of a telly in a lounge will give me no idea of what it will look like in my front room which will have different furniture, a different color scheme, different lighting sources, be a different size etc etc etc etc.

Reg - please ignore this gimp and stick with the stock images. Some of us aren't just looking at the pictures.

And Manchester

lost access to Wikipedia etc on Sunday at around noon and just got them back (13.30 Monday)

WTF are you babbling about?

@ Voland's right hand

Sorry, at what point is your rant supposed to contradict what the author has said? Who gives a stuff what bit of the corporate parts bin the Yaris was made from? It's has sold well, especially compared to Starlet that came before it, and a 6-year life cycle per model is well above the industry average but despite that both Yaris 1 and 2 sold well strongly up until replaced by the new model.

In short the author is bang on with his opening statement which anyway is the short opening of a review not a detailed analysys of Toyota's design and engineering philosophy since the late 1990s.

Twit

That's actually quite clever and handy

'nuff said

Phew...

"Resources are things we invent, folks, the outcome of our ingenuity"

Thank Christ for that. I'll sleep more easily tonight knowing we can rustle up more oil and gas by using our ingenuity. I've been labouring under the misaprehension that these and other substances only existed in finite quantities on this planet. How wrong can a man be?

re Decent

That's a bit harsh, I've had a San Fran for nearly a year - running CyanogenMod - and it's been faultless. Nothing wrong with the call signal strength, battery life or reliability. Camera is a bit shit I grant you, but no worse than I expected. For £100 it's a cracking bit of kit. The one thing the SF is NOT is a decent replacement for a Gameboy - it lacks the CPU, GPU and RAM for a decent gaming experience.

Can't help but think that a lot of these negative comments are being driven by a pretty unrealistic expectation of what you should expect for £100 or £150. Like the reviewer has said, the Monte is no Desire HD, but a HD will cost you way over twice the price.

I think

that may be the funniest first line I ever read in the Reg. Came close to coffee/keyboard interaction moment. Good stuff.

I've an idea

"But cars? If I want to read about cars I go to Jeremy Clarkson. Before long you will be reviewing washing machines."

Drop the editor a line with a full list of all the other things this site covers that you don't like or have no interest in so they can tailor it perfectly to your requirements.

Arrogant jerk.

I have no interest in games so I don't read games reviews - it's not hard, nobody is making you read the Reg's very occasional - and not half bad - car reviews are they?

Did your parents never tell you that the world doesn't revolve around your likes and dislikes? They should have.

It won't stop waste

Quite the opposite, the "developed" world already throws millions of tons of good food away each day because of insanely over cautious "use by" dates. A connected fridge is only likely to extricable the issue by erring further on the side of that caution to avoid potential litigation.

Truly an answer to a question that doesn't need to be asked.

Pretty fair I think

All in all that's a pretty fair round-up and quite amusing in places too. I don't think it's unfair to mention the lack of HDMI on the Lenovo, for that sort of money it should have DP & HDMI. The Macbook review is spot on - yes it's lovely, yes it's way too expensive, and yes Windows and Ubuntu have closed the gab on Mac OS. Shame there's no Samsung or Alienware kit, but like the man says, if you can't get it, you can't write about it.

Let's all take a deep breath

No reason to think things won't improve once the new service center has bedded in and any spares inventory problems have been fixed.

I sent a Desire Z back to HTC UK on March 14th - a couple of the keys had started to stick - and got it back on the 22nd, good as new, all work executed under warranty.

A friend on the other hand has just got her six month old MacBook Air back after a four week trial with Apple that would have tested the patience of a saint.

Should HTC be having these problems? No. Does any company have perfect customer service? No.

Proof

If proof were needed that we really are a nation of utter, utter imbeciles.

@ Simon 49

The weather / time widget is Fancy Widget Pro. The "folders" are from Folder Organizer.

Nice review

I like these 300 word app reviews, they actually give you some real detail about what they do and how well they work, better than than the usual 50 wd "round-ups" which do little more than tell you something actually exists.

Hope the author will get around to picking a best "notes" app in the near future, there are dozens to choose from.

The world does not revolve around the iPhone...

"Nokia rightly realises Android is plunging ever more downmarket"

I suspect HTC would give you one hell of an argument about that. And Google. And probably Samsung.

As for Nokia design, give me an N8 before an over designed fragile faux objet d'art iPhone 4 any day. Even if you don't like the N8's looks at least it's design doesn't actively impede it's ability to make a phone call!

I'm sorry

but this announcement was bleedin' obvious. If the Nokia N8 ran WP7 it would have sold considerably better than it has done. The benefits for both companies are blindingly obvious and I suspect in 18 months time it will seen as a wise move on both parts. Nokia make bloody good hardware, WP7 is a pretty decent OS for one only four months old - 2+2 = 4.

To all the nay sayers

It's so simple -

If you need to drive more than 80 odd miles in a 24 hour period, you can't have an electric car.

If you can't park off road or at least very close to a potential charge point, you can have an electric car.

If you even irregularly need to travel long distances you can't have an electric car.

Frankly if you are a one car household you can't really have an electric car.

But for the two million or so people / households for whom the above caveats are not an issue the Leaf may not be a bad option, purchase price notwithstanding.

One day the oil will run out, and when it does we are stuck with batteries, hydrogen or horses. The evolution of the e-car has to start somewhere.

Surely the canny punter

buys Android and gets free fully-functional turn-by-turn satnav?

Broadcom

are those Broadcom wireless cards more or less Linux compliant than the Realtek cards Samsung uses in most of its other netbooks? Guessing they can't be any worse.

I suspect many people

are wondering why the level wasn't set in a "fictional" airport near London or New York or Berlin.

Setting it in a real country, any country, was a tasteless and crude, but highly effective, PR stunt by the game makers.

Clearly it has nothing to do with the recent attack but I can see why many Russians are pissed off. If the game level had been set in the UK and it was one of our airport's arrival lounges that had been blown apart I think we would all be a little less dismissive.

Anyone want to bet

that this clown owns an iPad?

Well said!

Will make a welcome change from lightweight know-nothings like Dan Snow delivering history for larger drinkers and Express readers. Michael Wood, Kenneth Clark and Simon Schama are in a class of their own when it comes to this sort of stuff. Well done the BBC.

Let me get this right

The BBC drove an electric car to Edinburgh despite the fact there clearly isn't the charging infrastructure in place and the car was not designed for a trip of that length.

Why?

Mix and match

The combination of a 320GB external HDD, Google Docs and Dropbox has all my bases covered. Monthly cost: - zero.

I'm confused

Is the involvement of the Biblically annoying Lane Fox supposed to encourage or discourage uptake?

Christ on a stick...

I back-up daily, and I've nothing really worth backing-up!

You don't need a study

to tell you that a large chunk of the British population is obese, sedentary and ignorant....just take a walk down the high street and look about you.

Apps2SD

"You can put Apps on to SD as my Android 2.1 supports APPS2SD"

but surely only if the device has been rooted?

Testing

Not entirely sure I don't prefer a reviewer to use his or her ears when testing audio kit. A string of numbers, stats and oscilloscope screen grabs may get some of you all moist but at the end of the day all most normal people are interested in is how it does the job and how does it sound compared to other similar devices. I'd say the Reg got both those boxes ticked quite succinctly.

Battery life

is poor so I invested in a 2200mAh USB charger from Expansys and take it with me when I am out and about. £25 well spent to avoid having to worry about running out of juice.

you don't need Sky

...FX is on Virgin too

Sansa Clip...

gets my vote, just so long as you ditch the bundled phones. I found some very nice Sennheisers on play.com for £10...sadly only in white at the price, and the resultant sound is superb. Get the 2GB version and look for a cheap 8GB memory card and you are laughing. As for the Shuffle, who would by a cheap MP3 player you can't "drag'n'drop" content to from Windows/Linux?

One thing missing from the reviews - can you synch playlists via an MTP media player? With the Clip you can.

No shock

Have you seen the obese, feral, ill-educated and loud-mouthed rabble that make up the under-18 population of the UK recently?

Music

Big deal, the Rolling Stones and Dylan had a greater impact on popular music in my opinion. That's not to say Lennon and McCartney didn't knock out some damn fine tunes, they did, but this continuous desire to mark them out as above and beyond everyone else is just plain nonsense.

Nice little handset

The other half got one of these last week and despite my reservations it's not half bad. Maybe just a little too small, but very easy to slip into a jacket pocket without ruining the hang of the old whistle and surprisingly easy to use. Makes my Desire look like a breeze block when you put the two side by side. Impressive battery life too.

Nice review

I bought one of these two weeks ago just wanting a large screen basic sat-nav to get me from A to B, Very happy with it so far especially the size and weight. My last sat-nav was a TomTom but the "A five hundred and twelve" style of verbal road designation drove me bonkers. Mio's "A-5-1-2" is much preferable in my book. Battery life ain't bad either.

Excellent

Good to see the return of some 'leccy car coverage. I for one miss it.

Android browser

nothing wrong with its "feel" or anything else for that matter.

Wait until the end of the year

and something like ICD's Gemini will be widely available running Android and having an SD card slot, telephony, a longer battery life due to its Tegra 2 platform, WiFi and 3G and all for around £200 or on contract from the likes of T-Mobile for £15pcm. I still won't need one because I simply don't have the need for a gadget that sits between my HTC Desire which I always carry with me and my Inspiron 11z, which I carry when I need a real computer, but at the price I'll treat myself to one as a cool toy.

The iPhone sells because it is a very good phone and we all need phones but I doubt more than a fraction of the population of this or any other country - the self appointed urban tech elite aside - feel the need for a "pad" of any size shape or form.