I have a 7" Mimo touch screen jobbie, works great. Gets used mainly for messenger chat windows and media player.

SED/FED

I remember when SED TV's were going to be the future.

AMD?

Interesting article as I was just speccing up a budget system to use for this too. I can get a new 8-core AMD FX, ASUS mATX motherboard, and 2x8GB Kingston value RAM for around £400-£450. The other bits we can cannibalise from existing kit. Should make for a nice VM host!

Hopefully it'll be significantly cheaper than the Asus, I doubt it though.

Gingerbread

"The XE runs Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread, as up to date as it gets while Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, now available on the Nexus, is being prepared for other phones."

Technically not true, latest gingerbread version is 2.3.7

But...

Presumably in order to install this rogue app you have to enable "allow installation of non-market sources"? Upon doing so you get a suitable warning regarding this, so is this really such a big deal?

Too expensive

No thanks. I'd rather get an EXOdesk. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dlUi3DnrzA

$1300 next year apparently.

Solar

There are companies such as A Shade Greener who will fit solar panels free of charge (if your house is in a suitable location etc. etc.), the caveat being they pocket the money from any surplus electricity generation.

I did see something on a television program a while ago (one of those Grand Design type ones) where a couple were building a green home. IIRC they said the solar panels were actually pretty poor, and that fitting a small wind turbine made a huge difference. Of course not many people would be able to erect one in their gardens I expect due to planning permissions?

PC Builders

I was given a Cube PC a few years ago, it was pretty good to be honest. I'd always built my own systems for years but these days it's just not as cheap as it used to be buying all the bits yourself, and also, I just can't be arsed.

I have no affiliation with them but I just bought my new PC from http://www.ukgamingcomputers.co.uk/ Unlike most manufacturers who'd use cheap motherboards/PSU's etc, the i7 PC I specced from UK Gaming Computers used all the parts I would have picked myself anyway.

Bah!

Annoyingly, the four exchanges surrounding our exchange are all already "FTTC enabled". Ours still isn't on the list to be upgraded :(

Erm...

"it also leaked potential sensitive data about video gaming outfit Bethesda Softworks, the firm behind Quake and Doom"

Erm, Bethesda will be behind the yet to be released Doom 4, but not Quake or the previous Doom games.

Grok

Rather apt posting that today I thought...

Courtesy of ThinkGeek, "Today in Geek History: Heinlein coins "grok" when Stranger in a Strange Land is published in 1961. If you don't grok "grok," ask a Martian."

Coincidence

Sounds like coincidence to me, the old model machines are getting on a bit now and failing. My launch model failed in exactly the same way a long time ago.

Duplex

I seem to recall reading about the 200Mbps ones that they're actually "100Mbps Full Duplex", so the manufacturers reckon they can get away with advertising them as 200Mbps, if it's full duplex it must be double right?

Very misleading.

Ringtones

So you might be able to set your own ringtone sometime next year when people start getting these updates to their phones then?

+1

Bring back Rob Grant.

Remote XUL?

Possibly due to Remote XUL support being removed (by default)?

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Firefox_4_for_developers#Remote_XUL_support_removed

I have a similar issue with accessing webmail from my hosting provider. Their response was that their webmail component they use is written by a third party and there are no plans to change/upgrade it.

Custom ringtones?

So they've added cut and paste, but does this add support for you to use your own ring tones yet?

Carbon costs for manufacture?

What about the environmental impact in manufacturing these electric cars in the first place, mining lithium in Canada, shipping to japan to build...

Dropbox

Another vote for dropbox here. The previous version file restore really saved my bacon last week, and I also use it on two windows PC's, a Linux PC, my Android phone, and iPad!

You can also get more than 2GB free by referring more people to use the service.

*cough* http://db.tt/IZqgbbZ

Dropbox

I use Dropbox on a few different PC's, one Linux, and two Windows, as well as my Android phone. Works flawlessly for me... but I could always do with some more space. Queue shameless referral link plug.

http://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTY3OTM5OTc5

But...

How do I switch between running applications on the desktop using the keyboard now?

I note that the video blurs and jumps when supposedly alt-tabbing between the different modes, be nice to see what actually happens (i.e. if this actually works).

Grey

Simple plain greyscale logo this morning. An up yours from Google to all the complainers?

Cowon

I'm surprised that it doesn't have gapless support, the S9 didn't initially but was added in a later update, so it seems odd that the J3 wouldn't have it (sure it's not just buried in the options somewhere?).

Still happy with my S9, watching videos on it on regular long train journeys is fantastic. I've had a few Cowon's and the sound quality is always amazing. Their user interface design isn't up to much, but the J3 looks like an improvement on that front.

iPlayer

myPlayer http://www.skynetsoftware.com/myPlayer/index.aspx?platform=android is working well for me on Android (I'm also stuck on 1.6 so it will work for the Streak).

Hopefully the android version will also get Channel 4 and 5's on-demand offerings in the future too.

Eclair

If Samsung won't release an official update others will... Android 2.0 now on Samsung Galaxy! http://android.modaco.com/content/samsung-i7500-i7500-modaco-com/299144/samsung-i7500-mustymod-rom-android-2-0/

Samsung have poor Android support already...

...guess that's only going to get worse if they're trying to develop a competitor OS. :(

Galaxy

I've had one for a while now, and after being a lifelong Nokia user I'm loving it.

To answer a couple of questions, it's Android 1.5. Latest rumours suggest that Samsung will be skipping 1.6 and releasing 2.0 in Q1 2010 (I believe this is the same for the HTC Hero, although there are unofficial 1.6 firmwares available for that so I've heard).

The "sync notification" alert tone mentioned in the article can be turned off in the settings menu, the headphones one I don't know, I've not tried.

Yes the Samsung NPS software is crap and doesn't really work apart from to update the phone, but as someone has already pointed out, contacts and calendar etc. is synced with your google account anyway. So there's no need for the app's sync features. You can of course still access the SD card on your computer as a removable disk too.

Camera crap? Well, yes. But that's the same for all the current crop of Android phones, but I think it's OK, certainly in daylight.

Poor battery life? Not for me, I've had over 100 hours between charging and the phone was still at 30%. If you've got background data syncing, wifi, gps, loads of twittering facespace widgets updating every 10 minutes then yes, it's not going to last long.

One possible cause for the big battery drain is apparently if you're using the frankly terrible case that samsung provide with the phone. It keeps the camera button pressed down and prevents the phone from going to sleep.

Do I regret getting it? Not so far, so long as Samsung continue to provide updates to last my 18 month contract period I'll be happy. The HTC offerings do seem to have better support though.

With more and more manufacturers releasing Android phones I think things can only get better.

Watchdog

They spent most of the last episode claiming that 12 month warranties were bunkum and you could still claim for several years after purchase so long as it would be expected for the device to still work for many years. Then in this they claim after 12 months you can't do anything.

They also said it's £400 for a new PS3.

Price

"Asus still isn’t willing to say how much cash Blighty-based buyers will have to splash in order to secure an Eee keyboard."

Have they said how much it will cost non-Blighty based buyers then?

UPA or Homeplug?

Not having used these type of device before, I'm looking at buying a kit to provide network access out in the garage (to mount an IP security camera on the side).

Is there any preference to UPA or Homeplug or are they all pretty much the same? Likely to be any problems with the network signal reaching the garage? I don't know if it's even possible if it's on a different circuit or something?