Posts by jason 7
1207 posts • joined Thursday 11th June 2009 11:27 GMT
Try a Sharp instead.
Had a £120 Sharp soundbar demoed to us a few weeks ago. Then we listened to a £400 Sony one. The Sharp one weed on the Sony from a high height. I didn't buy either was just curious.
As for the reason behind Soundbars over multi-speaker setups is that not all of us are that anal about having full surround and also we don't like having wires and boxes strewn around the living room. I've seen very few surround systems that look or even work nicely. Most are just a mess.
Some folks just want to add a bit of oomph to their inch thick TV.
Posted in No 'Xbox 720' in 2012, says MS exec
I dont think its about the GPU anymore.
After all it only has to push say 60fps at 1080p. A modded/optimised 6770 could probably manage that. The standard is now set very low. Back in 2005 that would have been a tough point to reach with average hardware.
I think the secret is to bump up the CPU side and do more interesting effects in software. That and bump up the cache/ram side of things. But as MS will probably utilise a modded DX11/12 platform it could make it difficult for developers to go off-piste so to speak.
Posted in No 'Xbox 720' in 2012, says MS exec
Yeah new dash is terrible.
Easily the worst one its had so far. Just trying to find stuff is hard enough. Up down up down, left right up down. Jeez.
I still think the first or second dashboard the 360 had was the best.
I was hoping too for some new hardware this year.
Posted in Sony BDP-S185 Blu-ray player
Blimey.....
.....reading through some of these posts either some folks are trying too hard or living with Blu-Ray is a real struggle.
What happened to the simple 'open close play' of DVD?
Step backwards me thinks.
Posted in Starship Voyager dumped into skip
If you sold a 3 bed room house for just £140k before the crash it must have been a bit of a shithole.
Posted in Netflix vs Lovefilm
Started using Love Film online a few weeks ago.
I have a 16Mbps ADSL link and picture quality is pretty good. Only get a bit of pixelation when something goes really crazy on screen.
Not that much different to Freeeview. The only criticism is as mentioned previously navigating the collection is really horrendous and time consuming. A lot of gems are really hidden away if you are just browsing.
Posted in Netflix vs Lovefilm
Using anything with the new Xbox 360 interface...
....is nigh on hopeless without a bloody Kinnect. As I'm 40 I refuse to buy such a thing.
Worst user interface the 360 has ever had. Awful.
Hitting back a couple of times then takes you to a "Go back in icon" that just takes you back to where you wanted to leave. The whole across the top and then up and down...christ.
FFS!
Posted in Starship Voyager dumped into skip
Bought it 17 years ago?
At the bottom of the market. A one bedroom flat would maybe have cost around £30000.
May well have been paying £50 a month mortgage on it.
I know as I got my one bedroom flat in a city centre for that around then.
Currently got it down to £40 a month.
Comet is a mess.
Went into my local Comet superstore a couple of weeks ago, it was awful.
No real organisation, the flat screen TVs had no sense of organisation. All the sizes randomly scattered around so you couldn't get any idea of comparison. New stock mixed in with old etc. etc.
The best bit was their clearance table. All the stuff that by the looks of it had been run over or used as a doorstop in the back of the store. All with an amazing too good to resist £1 off!
Sad.
Posted in George Lucas: 'No more Star Wars'
Exactly, hilarious he's making a remake....
....of a perfectly good TV movie as his last film.
How the mighty have fallen.
The original movie isn't bad so why bother? Oh I guess no one was around to say "George wtf are you doing that for????"
Not an original idea in that head....ever.
Posted in George Lucas: 'No more Star Wars'
The guy retired pretty much after 1983.
Nothing really of note since then.
He got lucky with the first Star Wars movie and had a lot of people around him keeping him under control and telling him in no uncertain terms "George, that's a load of crap!" and therefore it was a vastly better film for that. By RoTJ things are starting to go astray and mistakes of judgement are being made.
Since then no one has ever dared tell him to his face when he's going wrong. Except the 7 billion that don't work on his payroll.
If he had kept a few strong personalities around him and listened to a few folks then it may have been very different.
It's just so sad to watch those making of scenes on the prequels where you see talented actors running around empty green draped hangers for sets giving no emotion or depth to them. Whilst Lucas sits a few feet away looking at a monitor with a latte in hand. No wonder all the performances are totally flat. Must be soul destroying for an actor.
I remember Terrence Stamp summed it up nicely when he said that at first he was quite excited to appear in a Star wars movie till he realised he was just in a glorified toy catalogue.
Posted in Flash stalks Seagate's hybrid drives
I agree to a point.
I have the WD 7200rpm 320GB in my laptop shortstroked to 100GB. Works a treat. Plenty of space still.
I also agree that this doesnt fit all folks. I just dont see the need to carry my entire 'digital life' around with me. I have yet to find myself needing 278 hours of audio or the contents of Blockbuster video on the go. Very few folks want to look at my 407 holiday snaps of Canada 2008 either.
Plus if you lose that laptop......you did encrypt it didnt you? Ahhh I guess not.
Not quite
I think you might find Aviva sold the two data centres in Norwich and moved all their kit out some time ago. The two centres have been fully refurbed and are now run by Sentry42 and very nice they are too.
Sentry42 would be more than happy to have Aviva put their data back in should their current system not be up to scratch.
Posted in Netflix goes live in Blighty
Local Library is the way!
We've been doing this for a couple of years now. £2 for a new title for a couple of nights.
10 minute walk to the library. Reservation is dead easy too.
Ermmmm....
..just what the hell are you on about? Run that past us again?
So folks need to go rummaging into the BIOS code? Plus use torrent sites?
Well that's a step forward for the common man.
Arrghh I meant Explorer 8 or 9 not Windows.
Sorry.
One other change I'd like....
When you have rebuilt your PC and are then downloading and installing the 118 updates for XP/Vista/7 that half way through the install (when you have walked away for a bit to do something more interesting) that it doesn't stop the install to ask if you want to install Windows8/9!
Well yes I bloody ticked the box so just install it and stop asking me if I want this or that running I dont care!!!!!
Many is the time I have come back to an install an hour or so later to find it sitting there waiting for me to tick 'yes' with 75 updates (and a lot of .NET ones at that) to go.
On the right lines....
But the problem isn't really with MS when it comes to the actual media.
It's Acer/Asus/HP/Compaq/MSI/Fujitsu et al that actually make the decision to not include the media.
Now if these companies as you say had a download section that allowed you to type in your serial number or license key and download the appropriate ISO then that would be superb.
Would cut their support overheads I would have thought?
Ahh but......
...that doesnt stop us having a good moan about another topic in a similar vein that bugs us.
Sounds like hard work to me!
The only real changes I'd like to see are simple lift and shift single folder migration for Outlook/contacts/favourites etc.
All those silly hidden folders and data stuck all over the place for what is for some such a core application.
Sorry but the import/export options are not good enough.
Would be so cool to be able to copy the user folder and drop it into a new machine and all the appropriate installed apps just pick up the data and run with it.
Chances are you cant use an Acer disk on a Dell.
Unless you meant can't instead of can. If so sorry.
The keys etc. are checked to make sure the licence key issued for say a Dell ties up with the OS installed thats likely flagged an Acer OEM version.
Years ago you could rebuild anything with a plain XP OEM CD but MS have tightened up big time on this.
To be certain if its a Dell you are rebuilding then you use a Dell reinstall CD, likewise for any other OEM brand.
YMMV but its quite rare for mix and match to work nowadays. Hopefully maybe the EU will step into this and make it so as long as you have a valid licence on the machine you can use any disk that matches the type of OS or make it so physical restore media has to be supplied.
It's enough to make you install Linux.
Almost.
More to this than meets the eye I reckon.
It could be that Comet were charging for the disks rather than just including them with the PCs that caught MS's attention.
I get very agitated when a customer asks me to repair or rebuild their old XP/Vista machines. The first question I have to ask is "Do you have the original OS CDs to hand?"
There is the customary pause then they usually respond "Err no!"
If its a Vista laptop/PC then usually there is a recovery partition but often these are so complicated I wonder how the average user is supposed to use them. Some even need the PC to be properly working to actually recover from! If its a Dell that's okay as I have a full selection of Dell recovery/OS disks to hand. If its an old XP Acer/Bizzaro brand then its pretty much tough luck as MS have tightened up the activation checking databases and unless you use the exact manufacturer OEM CD now you are screwed. They really don't want you re-using that XP now.
It can be so frustrating especially when you are just trying to re-install a OS that the Machine has a licence stuck to it for. At the end of the day there is no change, the user carries on using XP/Vista just as they paid for a few years back but oh no.....
I now have to spend around 90 minutes for every laptop I buy in for customers creating the damn recovery DVDs. If I leave it to them then chances are a year later I'm screwed.
Posted in BlackBerry PlayBook in US price plummet
Isnt it just a case of....
.....if you have email via a Blackberry then you need the Blackberry?
Anyone else using Gmail/Hotmail/webmail need not take notice and just access their mail via the browser as usual.
I wonder if folks in general have got the wrong end of the stick and think that they cant access email at all unless they have a Blackberry phone to tether to it.
Posted in BlackBerry PlayBook in US price plummet
Nice hardware.......
....shame about everything else really. I had a look in the apps selection and whilst I agree its not the be all and end all to have 50000+ apps with only 10 good ones that are worth using but the RIM app store is woeful.
My other half was interested but as there was no proper Kindle app she walked away.
Please not a Mac UI!!!!
I borrowed a Mac Mini a few weeks ago to see what the fuss was about.
I was expecting a life changing experience after all the hype.
What a disappointment. It just felt clunky and looked clunky. I'm a long term Windows user and after using Win7, OSX just felt awful.
I even prefer using the Ubuntu 10.4 Netbook edition on my Acer Aspire One netbook for getting stuff done.
When you see sums like that wasted.......
.....why don't we just give James Cameron a billion pounds to make four movies and just take the profits from that.
Okay we don't get a NHS system (well we didn't from the original plan either) but we'll probably more than triple our investment.
Couldn't hurt could it?
Posted in AMD loses marketing boss
No great loss.
I've been saying this guy has been a waste of space for ages. Not like he put a lot of effort into the role.
Marketing? What marketing? A lot of 'working from home' I reckon.
Posted in 2011's Best... compact cameras
Ermmmm....
...I think we could have gone more 'compact' then these to be honest.
Just want to find a cheap pocketable 8MP+ compact that doesnt compress the crap out of every shot to make the more expensive version with the same hardware look better.
I tried nine linux based AV rescue disks about 6 months ago.
Most of them were useless so another alternative is welcomed.
Will the game...
....be as much of a mess as the show is now?
Posted in Toshiba Regza 32UL863 32in LED TV
Ummm important question here.
Where exactly would one buy such a TV?
Google/Amazon et al drew a blank.
But......
...why should anyone like BAE?
That company that gives such great value for money every time.
Posted in The BBC Micro turns 30
I would tend to agree with this.
It was a nice quality bit of kit. Though I always felt the specification was unbalanced for the time (great connectivity with ports galore but limited RAM/graphics capability) and it was too pricey.
Had the machine not had the backing of the BBC I strongly believe it would have languished like many others such as the Oric and Dragon 32.
However, I am more than happy with how it turned out. It was a fun time to be at school.
The best Computer Studies memory I have was when the BBC B's and Masters were all hooked up to a disk server (this was around 1986/87). We sneaked a look at the manual and found all these extra commands and programs that let you send messages to the screens of the other machines and watch what they were doing.
Oh the fun we had sending messages like "Hello Sexy!" to the girls and watching their amazed faces as such messages appeared then dissapeared. "Whats up Helen?" "Oh...nothing Sir...ermm nothing!" Watching the other kids trying to 'hack' the system and sending messages such as "ALERT ALERT SECURITY HAS BEEN NOTIFIED!"
The fun lasted several months till we realised our O level projects had to be handed in a few days later. I remember I wrote the BASIC code out by hand at home then typed it into the BBC B when I got to school at lunchtime. I managed a C pass. That was before exam passes were given out like sweets.
May I just say....
...that I use Ebuyer at least once a week for orders and I have yet to have an issue with them.
They often deliver far faster than I expect and their service has improved greatly over the past few years.
I wish them continued success. This I am sure is just a blip and a load of whingers moaning that they didn't get the crap crap they didn't need anyway.
No one died as a result.
Posted in The BBC Micro turns 30
Indeed, Revisionist history strikes again.
I remember those great days very well.
I was 12 years old in xmas 1983 and everyone in my high school at that time wanted a 48K Spectrum. No one, I repeat no one wanted a BBC B.
Certainly no one wanted to take on a paper round to buy a BBC B. We all felt quite sorry for the poor kid who's well meaning but mis-guided parents bought him the BBC B or Electron.
Then the C64 came along and it was over for the BBC B as a home machine really. Spectrum or C64 all the way.
The BBC B was fine to do my Computer Studies project on but that was it really. I did however have a hankering for those classic Microvitec Cub monitors though.
Posted in Ten... top Xbox Live game downloads
Yes Defense Grid!
Best Live game EVAR!
I have spent so many hours playing Defense Grid and the game never gets annoying.
Very rare.
I had a look for monitors.
They only had six on sale!
All of them pretty average. No wonder they failed.
So 100% operational by 2030....
...and retired from service 2031 is that it?
Am I right or am I right?
I would like to go on record as stating I'd like to take over the running of this project. I feel that even knowing the basics of this kind of thing, I am light years ahead of everyone else running it currently.
Yes, waste of time.
The BestBuy discount code simply reduces the price to the same as or slightly higher than Ebuyer/Overclockers etc. etc.
Nothing to see here.
We need to dump Global Warming/Climate Change now!
As a concept its flawed in that its not something thats blatantly proved. Show me some states showing it exists and then someone will show me stats it doesn't and both can be classed as credible depending which side you sit.
It's not helping as a poster boy for the environmental cause. Too divisive and it's wasting time we don't have.
As I have said before we need to go back to basics. We need to go back to that old fave of the 60's and 70's......Pollution.
Yes we can all see 'pollution' and the effects of pollution. No one can say "Hey pollution is a great thing!" and not look mental. No one can stand by a lake full of dead fish and say "nothing to see here!"
If we all get behind just cleaning up the crap we've made then chances are the planet as a whole 'climate wise', will benefit as a direct result.
We are all too busy arguing about what or what isn't going on above our heads but forgetting about whats going on around our feet.
Let's all tackle that instead. Worth a try isnt it?
Or isnt there any money in pollution? Hmmmmmm.
Yes, poor conditions to keep such artifacts.
Total lack or respect there. Horrific.
Would have been better to put it in Duxford!
With regards to Nell.....
...a design I liked too by the way.
He does know that the designer of that ship was one James Cameron?
Oopsie!
"SADORRR??!! Sador of the Malmori??????"
Yeah its not the same anymore.
I went to the first three of the Erotica shows and whilst the first one was a bit rough the second and third were really good. I then didn't go for a couple of years then went to one around 2002 and it wasn't the same. Not the same buzz and far more porn sellers.
Dread to think what it's like now.
Did the insurance company....
.....actually see what they loaded into the top of the launch rocket?
Could have been a busted old boiler filled with concrete.
I prefered....
...Amipro but that's just me.
Hmmmmmmm....
...my other half built a website for HM GOV a couple of years ago. Was the first they had on time and on budget I think.
There is a reason the sites look the way they do and not like Facebook etc. They are not meant to be fun, just give information and the barest means of interaction needed to get the job done. Less is more.
I'll give him say 6 months tops. I can imagine the look on the mandarins faces when he goes after them asking for billions to re-build all the sites out there.
As taxpayer I'd just like to say I've already payed quite enough for the council estate. I don't really want to now pay for Alton Towers.
Tough job for Clooney.
I cant see him taking the role.
He just isn't that unlikable and whiny. Wont convince.
Not nasty sites usually.
The organised crime gangs behind this stuff now seem to target sites that more affluent web users would go to.
Cruise sites, holiday sites and finance sites seem very popular. No point putting drive-by virus stuff in free porn sites.
No they want the less confident users that they can terrify into typing their credit card details.
Malwarebytes, not bad but not perfect.
Still misses a lot of stuff. You run Malwarebytes on a heavily infected HDD (no point running it on the infected PC, too late) and let it clean off say 43 items.
Then run it again and see what happens. And again....
Most folks will only run it once and think themselves clean. Then after three runs, run MSSE or Combofix and see that another dozen items crop up.
Its not perfect. Yes its worth using but not on its own. You need to use at least three products.
However, by the time you have run 3-4 full scans you may as well have rebuilt the PC from scratch.
Havent bothered with AdAware in years. As for Spybot S&D, christ, is there still a market for software that looks like it was designed in 1998? Lazzzyyyyyyyyyy!
