For the BB (5)<-> MacOS sync it had a nasty habit of changing the date of calendar items during the sync. They couldn't be bothered to ever fix that, so hopefully the Google Calendar fix will be better!

I was waiting for a 128GB iPod Touch (to upgrade from my pre-'Classic' iPod) and would have purchased one ASAP. But for whatever reason Apple have stuck to 64GB. Basically I was after the storage, the apps (as I've bought a few for the iPad) and some wifi.

That didn't happen, and my work Blackberry is pretty stupid as far as smartphones go (not 3G, wifi never works, useless browser, lack of/expensive apps). So I took the (comprimised) plunge and got myself a 2nd hand iPhone 4S 64GB via eBay, as many people are upgrading to a 5 then there's a few of them about! It's nice to have a phone that is comparable with the missus, who has had a HTC Desire HD for a while.

I seem to recall one of the ASM libs/packages/whatever only being available via an OEL subscription (for 6.x). That's one way of getting people to use OEL. Strangely, even though you can download the ASM packages for 5.x from their website when I attempted to use some of their yum repos for the same packages, one of them was strangely absent...

Most of our RHEL boxes run Oracle (the rest is CentOS), so when they get replaced/rebuilt for 6.x it'll probably have to be OEL rather then RHEL to get a fully supported DB. No point paying for two subscriptions. In fact I think some of my colleagues over the pond will be going OEL 6.x for that reason. I don't particularly like it, but it's increasingly what you have to do if you want to tun Oracle DB.

Given their nasty (DB) pricing, mangled Sun support and this sort of thing, they are probably my most disliked IT company.

I'll wait for another year, again.

Once again I was hoping for a 128GB iPod Touch to replace my 'Classic' (though technically it's a 5th gen iPod 160GB from before they named them Classic). 64GB isn't quite enough to hold all my music and apps, which I would like to have with me at all times in case I have a burning need to listen to obscure remixes of Pacific State, 3am Eternal or A Huge And Ever Growing...

I'm surprised that the Classic is still on sale, as it doesn't quite fit in with all things fondle. I'd like like to think that if they drop it , then they'd beef up the Touch to compensate.

Though I'm sure there are some deep in Apple who live in some utopian futurist fantasy world where there's always wfif/4G/etc and everyone loves to use iCloud, iTunes match and the like and so therefore no-one will ever need more than 64GB storage.

Excellent bit of music

I loved Spy Hunter, esp it playing Peter Gunn. Pity I was pretty useless at it!

Re-inventing the wheel. Again.

The only way Microsoft and Nokia is going to get out of this is to stick with Windows 8 and whatever hardware platform it comes on, and then try expanding on it. This is opposed to pressing the reset button and almost starting from scratch every other model/year.

Generally (I know there are exceptions) if you buy a newish smartphone nowadays be it iOS or Android then it should run the next OS revision (any if you're lucky maybe the one after that too).

Or to put it another way. Changing the wheels every so often doesn't help the momentum...

Woof

I preferred The Rotting Dog Blog myself...

S'OK I suppose, unless you need support

I've had two domains hosted with Fasthosts for quite a few years now. In that time the support has definately gone down the toilet. More often than not it's not even worth opening a case as they just won't do anything, assuming they can actually understand what you're asking for. The first line support have no access to anything, so frequently ask you for your passwords to see what's going on.

A Sony fanboy speaks

I've got a fair amount of Sony kit, so some thoughts from that point of view.

Over the past few years the build quality has definately going down. In the past year the Bluray player and amp I've purchased have been significantly more lightweight than their several year old predecessors

Meanwhile as someone else pointed out, there is a lack of synergy (can I use that word here?) between products. A case in point being the Bluray player point blank refusing to acknowledge some video formats/codecs, but the PS3 not having any problems at all. They both have had various firmware updates, so it's not as if they've been completely abandoned. Similarly my new amp is touted an AV reciever with a DLNA client, but doesn't support streamed video at all!

On a similar subject I'm now pretty used to the XMB style interface that most visual Sony products have. So I have no idea which team of idiots developed and signed off the abomination that my amp presents me with. Words fail me at how bad it is, so as a picture paints a thousand words, imagine this on a 40" screen: http://asset2.cbsistatic.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2011/08/09/IMG_0026_540x303.JPG . A great use of screen real estate, no?

As for the very bad things Sony have done (to me) the worst has to be the proprietry hardware/software formats it foists on us. I'd got fed up with having to buy yet another evolution of Memory Stick with suitably evolved name for a huge price. Fortunately for Sony someone up top decided to allow their cameras to start using SD as well, as I was virtually on the way to the shop to pick up a Lumix.

I know that Sony Centres/Shops are franchises, but you would like to think a corporate drone would take a look every now and again. When looking to do some amp pre-purchase research I visited three such establishments, and none of them even had a single amp on display. It's almost as if they didn't exist. Bluray players were a bit elusive as well.

So to sum up in report style. Must try harder.

Strange that the DLNA bods say this now, I've been running (Netgear) powerline stuff for a while now. I stream films/music from my Netgear ReadyNAS or Mac to PS3 and Sony BluRay and amp. Generally works fine, no buffering at all (compared with WiFi).

Though as I only use them for streaming and PS3 connectivity I usually switch them off when I'm done.

For me the demise of Game started some time back when they closed their Canary Wharf branch (probably priced out of the rent I expect). By the time they closed, there was hardly a PS3 section at all (lots of 360 and Wii though) and even the (PS3) pre-owned was very slim pickings. They had a few PC games, but not really much new stuff. Very rarely would I buy something from there, as it was always extremely expensive compared to everywhere else.

Where I live there's a Game, but I can't say I've really been in there much. As every time I do, I'm reminded of how expensive it all is. I appreciate they're not going to be as cheap as online, but more often than not it's £7-10 over.

Fortunately CEX have now opened a branch a few mins walk away from them. Before I had to go up a few tube stops or have a bracing walk to the nearest branch. As of late I've managed to offload some of my older games and stuff I'm not playing any more, and stock up on something I may have missed and in one case a new game. Kudos to the nice man who gave me the full fat version of Battlefield 3 (with online stuffs) for the price of the diet version. Done whilst joking that as it had been out for 24 hours I was sure to get my arse kicked online by a load of kids!

"An Apple PR person sent a statement to El Reg"

What Apple are talking to El Reg now?

Another +1 for SuperDuper! here. I use TimeMachine for everyday stuff and do full-on clones every week or so (every few weeks for the offsite drive).

Shops lacking kit, with big prices

Whilst looking for a new amp recently I popped into a few Sony Centres, and they now seem to be rather heavily slanted toward TVs, fondleslabs and not much else. Not that I was thinking of buying from there, just wanted a look at the kit. Purchased from Richer Sounds in the end for £150 under the Sony list (web) price.

In the past I'd managed to haggle a deal at the Sony Centre on TCR (one of the Shasonic ones) when buying a TV and DVD/HDD. Though at that point I was walking up/down taking notes on who could offer what, and ended up buying from Ask opposite in the end.

Have purchased from the actual Shasonic shop itself a few times, I wonder if that is going under. Likewise a Sony Centre opened in Wimbledon a few months back, I also wonder if that is one is on the way out. Strangely w-a-y back in 1996 there used to be a Sony Centre in Wimbledon, but that closed down some time after. Maybe someone thought if Stormfront (Apple reseller/specialist.whatever) could sell shiny kit there, Sony could too?

MS: Windows 8 = Windows 8 = Windows 8. But Windows 8 (x86) != Windows 8 (ARM) != Windows (Phone) 8

This is going to be a a giant clusterfuck. MS has been banging on that there will be something called Windows 8 and it will run on PC, tablet and phone. But in the smallprint they now say that there's not going to be much (if any) crossover between Windows 8 (x86) and Windows 8 (ARM), and I guess that also goes for Windows 8 (Phone).

As many commentanrds have already pointed out, there are bound to be people who purchase a Windows 8 tablet, and then wonder why they can't throw some of their existing x86 software on there. MS is so hell bent on using the Windows brand that it's just shooting itself in the foot continuously.

It only takes a sideways glance at Apple (or even Google) to see that it is possible to have two separate arch OS (MacOS/iOS and at a push Chrome/Android) from a known brand.

I think they should have just called the (entire) tablet/phone OS Metro and be done with it. Besides having the Metro interface on a PC is just a complete disaster.

Apple Store = Customer Service?

Hopefully one of his first actions will be to put tills back into the Apple Stores again. I don't mind waiting in line for a till, but waiting around trying to flag down a passing sales droid who can be bothered to help really annoys me. Moreso as on the last 2 trips to an Apple Store I've known exactly what I wanted, I just needed to pay for it.

Note to Apple, you can sell more stuff if customers can actually pay...

I remember Wordwise. For me it was on a ROM on BBC B/Master whilst I typed up my A level CompSci project (amongst other things) in 1992. I also recall the different edit and view modes. My mind was blown when I first saw a WYSISWYG word processor on an Archemidies!

So true!

"or piss off a spouse as harrowing Skyrim noises overpower their Hollyoaks omnibus".

Though to be honest I get significantly less grief for Skyrim than Battelefield 3 or GT5!

For £3 I could definately be interested! Not 100% about the touchscreen controls, but I'll probably give it a go.

I picked up an iPad2 from Reston whilst I was in the US a few weeks back.

I went into the store and was met by a 'greeter' who then directed me to an iPad on a desk, which I then had to fiddle with for an employee to come over. The store wasn't busy, and after a few mins salesbod toddles over. So I ask for a 16GB iPad2 WiFi in black (as that as what I wanted). He then asked if he could ask me a few questions to see which iPad is best for me. I told him he could try. He did, and (in the style of Brian Clough) in the end decided I was right and knew what I wanted.

That small issue out the way, he then had to order the item via the iPhone round his neck, for someone round the back to bring it out. At this point there was lots of waiting around, and salesbod even had call someone up to see WTF was happening. Eventually iPad2 showed up. As I had a UK plastic and was paying in US I had to have a chat with a HSBC bod over a crap line to reassure them it was all legit.

After that the salesbod offered to initialise (or whatever) the iPad2, as it was iOS4 back then and you had to do that sort of thing. In the end what should have been a quick (well 15 mins tops) in/out purchase ended up taking about an hour!

Not entirely convinced

The Metro UI looks like it will finally bring Windows (in some form) to a portable device without trying to shoehorn the traditional Windows look and feel in. This is definately a good thing, moreso if you've had the misfortune to use Win CE (or whatever it was renamed to).

However MS' insistance of having Windows 8 on PC, slab and phone may come a bit of a cropper. In short the Metro UI on a PC desktop is a complete disaster. You can turn it off with a bit of messing about, but how many average bods are going to do that? It's the same argument that many use againt Ubuntu's takeup of Unity and GNOME 3's direction.

Another slight problem is that no matter what it looks like, you can be sure that MS will ensure that it will have to do Windows things. This is what stopped previous Win tablets dead, as they were just normal Win stuffed onto a keyboardless laptop with some estra blurb for touchscreen/stylus.

With the move to ARM for the slab, then it's WinPho7 time again for the apps. As the film says if you build it (well them), they will come. But will there be enough apps? Will existing devs who code for iOS, Android and whatever BlackBerries run this week branch out to Win8?

Like some other comments here, I agree that MS seem to be going in the right direction, but it may be too little too late, with a huge swadge of "look we have a tablet too!".

Silver Lake Partners eh?

Expect to see a decrease in Yahoo staff and spending and for certain management to get megabucks whilst everyone else (including any current stock owners) gets screwed.

From the game that gave frag a slightly new definition...

Ah Doom!

I recall the earlier versions which used (I think) IPX which brang many a network to its knees, and the later TCP/IP versions which didn't as much.

And the mods (all those .wad files)! Can't remember if it was I or II, but I too played a pretty full-on Aliens mod. Sounds and everything it wasa great! I also created a few little mods myself, the best being the one that was a reconstruction of my flat at university (albeit one with lots of monsters, Nazis and a teleporter instead of stairs).

Happy days!

The redesigned price finder page was palying up last night. Couldn't get it to work at all in Firefox and after several attempts it worked in Safari. Not sure if it was due to the outage, or just the new redesign.

I picked up an iPad2 in the US a few weeks back. More often than not I use it every day whilst slumped on the sofa after work. It does exactly what I expected it to, namely web browsing, email and a few games. So my Mac doesn't get switched on as much.

The only real down side for me is that some websites don't quite play well with Safari (and sometimes Opera).

More Moooooo!

I had 2 boxes from Gateway. I recall they were very reliable and used to come with a fair swadge of hardware and software (like full-on Office for a start). Pity they decided to withdraw from the UK market though.

The only down side was that their support was terrible. Took me ages to get some W95 drivers out of them, and when they did come back (on floppies *I* had to send them!) they were pre-release ones and I'd managed to blag some proper ones from elsewhere. Another time one of the support CDs was duff and it took me ages to get a replacement. At one stage some support muppet clained I couldn't possibly know the part number, at which I read it off the disc to him...

Pity. Only been in one, but it had loads of kit to play with in there. Though to be honest I don't think I would have ever purchased anything from there!

Frag Fodder

I picked this up at the weekend for the PS3. Am suitably impressed with the multiplayer so far (haven't bothered with the campaign yet). I've got some favourite maps already (Caspian Border and Seine Crossing). Though to be honest I'm pretty naff at online FPS and have the stats to prove it!

So why B3? I had CoD4:MW some time back and put in enough time to get to level 55 (just the once!) but I found it a bit of a slog. Sometime later I got Battlefield 1943 which I find to be quite fun given the different roles you can play and of course the vehicles! Based on that I decided to take a punt on B3 rather than CoD:MW3 as if I can get points/XP/whatever from doing things other than shooting people then that's a good thing for me.

Maybe with a few more kills that laser sight might just make a difference...