* Posts by Matt 20

18 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jun 2009

Apple MacBook Air 13-inch 2013: Windows struggles in Boot Camp

Matt 20

Re: Attention grabbing title ?!?

Or perhaps: "El Reg Writer Struggles With Bootcamp on New MacBook Air"

O2 quietly cans gratis Cloud Wi-Fi connectivity

Matt 20

Yeah, I got a txt

It was news to me that I could ever use The Cloud though in the first place... Easy come, easy go!

'iTunes in the Cloud' has arrived in iTunes 10.5 update

Matt 20
FAIL

Glitching!

I'd at least hoped iTunes 10.5 would fix the issue it has with audio playback on Lion.

But no, it's actually worse! I have vinyl that plays better than this, for heaven's sake!

FIX IT, APPLE!

Piles of unshiftable HP fondle-slabs choke Best Buy

Matt 20
FAIL

Hardly a surprise...

If the demonstration I saw on Click! was anything to go by, it is absolutely shocking in use. Just another example of a company rushing out a meagre "me too" product to capture market share, at the ultimate expense of customer satisfaction and brand credibility.

I hope they at least dispose of and recycle the mountain of unwanted, crap devices responsibly.

Apple ups Mac Mini spec, lowers price

Matt 20

Price

Err, the previous entry level mini was priced at £612, not £649. I checked last weekend, right before I swagged a refurb previous gen with optical drive (yay!).

BT hikes call charges

Matt 20
Thumb Down

Guess I'll be off then

Looks like I'll be switching to O2 just as soon as my 12 months are up.

Apple Mac Mini 2010

Matt 20
Jobs Horns

Hard Drive & RAM

I can understand the processor choice, given the Intel & NVIDIA spat, but at this price point it should have 4GB RAM as standard. And why the f*ck are we still dicking about with 5400 rpm drives? I've had a 7200 rpm drive in my (now vintage) 1.66 GHz Core Duo Mac mini for over 2 years now with no problems whatsoever. It's not like power consumption versus performance is a MAJOR issue on a desktop system (versus a laptop).

I always get the feeling that Apple artificially hold back on features just so they're guaranteed at least 1 update in 8-12 months time. I just hope their stash of ancient hard drives isn't as big as their (now thankfully depleted) mountain of combo drives!

Did LibCon alliance bring down O2 network?

Matt 20
FAIL

Multiple and delayed texts

Last night I kept getting SMS messages re-sent to my phone, about an hour after I had originally received them. As I was having quite a lengthy text conversation with a mate, it made life somewhat confusing -- I thought one of us was going senile at first!

This morning I awoke to 27 new messages, all random duplicates from yesterday.

Honda beats rivals to hybrid coupé launch

Matt 20
IT Angle

Not bad looking...

Not a bad looking car. If only it had a proper engine...

Windows 7's dirty secrets revealed

Matt 20
Flame

Back to the drawing board

I don't understand why MS remains hell bent on providing legacy compatibility at the expense of building a truly great OS. We already have a superb solution for running old apps - it's called Windows XP, and it runs just dandy in a virtual machine. In their OS9 > OSX transition, Apple (hisssss!) demonstrated that people WILL abandon ship IF you give them something worth jumping for.

Microsoft need to stop dicking about taking the entire world on, and focus on their core competencies - namely OS and productivity apps. Innovation FTW!!

Windows 7 - The Reg reader review redux

Matt 20
Happy

Relatively Impressed!

I installed the RC on my vintage PC this weekend for kicks (Athlon XP 2600+ nForce 2 and Radeon 9800 Pro, all bleeding edge stuff). Given nVidia abandoned the mobo chipset and never put out Vista drivers, I wasn't overly optimistic, but thought I'd see just how badly it runs. The Upgrade Adviser told me all would be well, and my only heartache would be running WU after installation to get the sound working. Of course, I didn't believe it for a moment, but now as I wipe away the last few crumbs of humble pie from my lips, I must say it installed flawlessly.

The only reason I had to open the Device Manager at all was to satisfy my curiosity that all was indeed well afterwards. Not only did it find drivers for everything, but the whole setup is running much more smoothly than ever it did on Vista.

It's no speed demon, of course, but Vista was practically unusable on this machine - perhaps due to the dodgy nForce drivers I had to use.

I'm now installing all my crud on to it, and waiting to see how long it takes to slow to a crawl... But so far, so good. If it stays snappy, and I can find an upgrade for cheaps, I might be tempted to buy it. Which as a Mac head is a hard thing to say(!)

Renault unveils e-car foursome

Matt 20
Grenade

@John Hughes

" "What energy source will be used to generate the electricity" whines AC/DC.

These a are French cars.

You work it out."

Are you saying it will run on garlic and arrogance?

BT extends trials of boondocks broadband

Matt 20

Broadband at what cost?

"Openreach is hoping local authorities will be interested in subsidising wider rollout of the technology, which it's estimated will cost between £1,000 and £3,000 per exchange"

BT are the epitome of why private sector public services in the UK are a shambles. They combine everything bad about state-owned public services, and throw in the worst elements of capitalism for good measure.

At the end of the day, BT are in a monopolistic position when it comes to delivering national telecoms infrastructure. They should be obligated to maintain a half-decent network without subsidies from local authorities.

I wonder if the people to benefit from this new technology will be put into yet a lower sub-class of Internet user, and be forced to pay even more for their IPStream packages than rural users presently do.

MSI brings ultra-skinny laptop to Blighty

Matt 20

Typo

I think you mean "It's a 1.3GHz Pentium SU2700, we think."

And if so, big woo. Single core Pentium, how 90's. However, if the X600-055 with C2D and 4GB RAM is really £799 that's pretty tempting vs. the MBA.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard First Look

Matt 20
FAIL

@AC

"SL feels like a minor update that should have been free, there is no selling point other than better optimised code that should have been in Leopard originally."

Well I guess you'll be expecting Win7 for free too then.

Microsoft whips out Office 2008 patch for Mac lovers

Matt 20
FAIL

Office Mac blows

I've tried to like Office:Mac 2004 and 2008, but as I've gotten better and faster Macs, Office still behaves like I'm running on ancient legacy hardware. Even on a C2D, Entourage feels just as clumsy as it did on a G4.

I too have migrated to iWork for native Mac productivity, and use Office 2003 on WinXP in VirtualBox whenever I need some real Access and Excel goodness.

Microsoft ultra-thins to 'out cool' netbooks, Apple

Matt 20
WTF?

I beg your pardon

"Still, he made a point of saying while Chrome might implement standards like HTML, standards lag the pace of innovation from companies like Microsoft."

Yes, because Microsoft is a true powerhouse of innovation. Whereas Google are the epitome of bumbling corporate lethargy. What a crock. The only innovation MS has come up with recently is the ability to invert the Reality Distortion Field up its own ass.

So glad I'm finally free of MS and their BS.

O2 tells Apple fans to talk to the hand

Matt 20
Paris Hilton

Browser Compatibility

O2 sites regularly complain that my version of Netscape is out of date, when in fact I am running the latest version of Camino. They're not the best at testing and proofing their sites for all browsers.

Paris, because she wouldn't turn anyone away.