Posts by Vince

Re: Good move; but still too little, too late...

I don't know what "Windows Phone" you got running 7, but my humble Lumia 710, bought for the purpose of seeing what WinPhone is like, has had 7.5, and 7.8 and has another update pending as soon as I get around to it - more than one - in fact I reckon I've had 5-6 updates now.

My Galaxy note 2 meanwhile... 2 updates thus far, neither of which have added new features as far as I can see (there is an update with new stuff but my carrier hasn't bothered to approve it).

I do sort of like Windows Phone, although 7.8 and 8 have removed a couple of minor things I really liked (for example apps list was alphabetical with letters to start them off, tap a letter, get an alphabet, tap the letter you want and jump to it... neat if you have loads of apps and faster than the scrolling approach everyone else uses (and now WinPhone has joined in...)

A minor feature, not a dealbreaker, but the sort of UI tweaks that make something more compelling to me as it makes it faster to use and I like "just getting on with it" (or JFDI as we call it)

Re: Swings and roundabouts...

Yeah a few pence per CAL.

A few quid per processor

It's next to sod all for educational types.

Re: @Paul

Office 365 is very little cloud to be honest. I hate it, I don 't sell it and we regularly help people move away from it once they realize.

It is in a nutshell hosted exchange (plenty of choice already for that), a copy of office on loan as part of the sub (that yes you do install - although you can have a few installs - very generous of them), and access to Skydrive with "more storage than the free version").

There are other bells and whistles but frankly they aren't worth it or matter to most people.

It isn't what I define as "Cloud" in any great sense of the word.

"Consultant" indeed.

Well as you're an "IT consultant" I can imagine you're happy holding people back, since that gives you every opportunity to screw them for consultancy money advising them how to make life difficult increasingly over the next 'n' years supporting old junk.

Meanwhile since we actually show our customers the benefits, we're rolling out Windows 8 to our customers at every opportunity - and this "start menu" nonsense is a complete red herring, and there's no reason to not gain the benefits of Windows 8 for the sake of that - and actually if you show people how to use Windows 8 (y'know training, something most companies I guess don't bother with... more fool them) they adopt it just fine.

The improvements in 8.1 will only go to re-inforcing my positive view of Windows 8. Would I go back to Windows 7? God no, that'd be a horrible retrospective step. Do I miss the start menu? Not really, I haven't been "clicking" though that menu since Vista, and 8 let's me carry on just hitting windows, then typing the name ("word") and voila, off I go...

Re: You like hard questions? ;)

Reasons to use 2012 not 2008:

a) If you use Remote Desktop, it's miles better. At everything.

b) If you use Remote Access, it scales further.

c) If you use the centralised deployment, it saves you lots of time

d) If you use Hyper-V, there is literally no comparison between 2008 and 2012.

e) If you use SMB3, try telling me that's not better.

There are LOADS of reasons.

"No innovations - for many the '5' was a step up from the '4' series - bigger screen, thinner, faster, same battery life is not bad when what can you do with a phone - add a stylus like Samsung (lol)."

Yeah cause the only thing Samsung have done is add a "stylus" (ignoring that some of us who buy devices like the Note 2 specifically wanted and find the stylus/pen useful). lol indeed.

Re: Doubling? Did I miss something? Yes you did.

Well I'm glad you explained that as el reg spectacularly failed to do so.

They may as well make this site one big wiki and we can all just make edits, it wouldn't affect the quality of journalism.

Re: I'd just like to quote Bordan Tkachuk...

Yeah, that's still annoying me too. He was actually worse than "the brand" himself.

Re: Put an iPhone beside a...

No no, you're using all the other keyboards wrong...

Isn't that how that sort of glaring stupidity is considered?!?

Re: RIght...

Well I guess it depends why that is...

Maybe iPhone uses spend 50% more time on it because it takes longer to do anything on it. It's a nonsense statistic as presented of course.

Fact is I have many Android devices in my house, and most of them are only used for a few minutes a day. Why? Because I'm using Android to power smart remotes and so on, so I just don't *need* to use them all day. I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons and probably more widespread than my example though.

The "uses it more" statistic had no useful context to determine what that meant and so it means absolutely nothing. Like most statistics.

Re: Non-problem? Hardly.

The lack of control over permissions on Android does increasingly irritate me.

Especially when I'm using my Blackberry Z10 where I can say "actually this app can't use location services" but I'm ok with it reading stuff from my contact book" if I so want.

Why the hell android does not allow ME to control that I have no idea.

Re: Sigh.

Um... I think you might have missed the point somewhat my friend.

Windows *can* provide this triple cloud (don't blame MS for the stupid use of the word and the almost meaningless definition it now has), but it doesn't say nor require you to engage in this.

If "in house" and "azure" with some "third party hosted" makes sense, fill your boots. If it doesn't, no worries, as you were!

Re: Alright then, who was it?

And thanks to that post now all I can hear is the Rhianna track with that lyric.

Re: Taking Dell to court

Sounds a bit like my experience of Dell just after they moved production to Poland (I think it was there?) a few years back.

Spent £4,000 on a laptop. Should have been absolutely mindblocwing. Precision 4440 I think it was, quad Core i7 extreme, 16GB memory (maybe 32GB, I forget), GPS, light up keyboard (useful on call actually), batteries of never-ending-capacity, ridiculously high res screen etc etc.

The theory was that this would be my desktop replacement, does it all machine.

It arrived. It bluescreened.

I had the 4 hour warranty.

I had many many many visits.

Each time it was more broken than the last time. Reinstalled each time (new hard discs aplenty), but never properly so drivers were missing for all sorts, like USB 3, or the wireless usb, or whatever.

Many months of arguing the toss with Dell, resulted in "going to take you to court then" and pointed out I could almost certainly get the story in the press given the well documented and epic catalogue of failures.

Laptop went back, money (eventually) refunded, bought the HP Elitebook, I originally wanted (but wasn't released at the time), and never cared since. Said Elitebook still working like a champ and only recently have I moved to a desktop again but mostly because I want/need several monitors.

Since then I've refused to buy from Dell, and unless my customers absolutely insist, won't buy the junk they peddle for them either.

Re: I'm going

"Infinity Reseller"

I think you mean just an alternative Fibre Broadband Provider.

Infinity is a brand name of BT's for the Retail Fibre service they offer.

FTTC (the fibre most people have that can get it) is a wholesale product many ISPs offer.

Please don't help BT in making everyone believe Infinity IS fibre and thus they're the only game in town, they've already nabbed the majority of the business.

Re: Windows, Windows,

Pretending you were seriously believing this for just a moment.

It's all nonsense. You do not have to reactivate Windows in this type of environment, assuming you installed the right version to start with. Poor quality trolling.

Re: reasons it has been so popular in small businesses

You mean when VERITAS made it... Yeah I remember those days...

Re: I don't get the this Landfill Android meme

"The implication is that these devices are pretty much worthless and should be consigned to landfill."

Because they often are exactly that. With cripplingly slow processors and a lack of memory, they fill up just installing basic and common apps, let alone anything fancy.

...and since people think "Android" means "always the same" in terms of capabilities, just like they think a Windows Laptop for £200 will be as good as the £1000 ones (admittedly sometimes true, but you know what I mean...) it's no wonder they're then fed up and blame Android for the device issues later...

Re: 0845

No "local rate", it was "Lo-Call" rate - which happened IIRC to be about the same as a local call, back when calls were always metered.

Today, it is basically an expensive number - on mobile with a few notable exceptions, and a questionable number on a landline depending on the various providers and tariff combinations you have.

Sorry, you are admining a Server 2012 box and you had trouble shutting it down? Wow, that troubles me a lot.

Re: They need to reduce their product portfolio.

So you think they should drop the One X - the Windows 8 Phone that Microsoft recommend over the Nokia (yes they do, every time I've seen them at any sort of trade fair etc). That'd be the one phone they have that's been selling reasonably well if quietly (mostly because Windows Phone is getting bad press unfairly as it's not as bad as you might think - and actually for many things I found it pretty slick - much like the Blackberry Z10).

They should drop all the budget crap they do that gives them a bad name.

Re: So we know who the replacement for Anna Leach is

"A good journalist would also have mentioned at the same time that Apples profit margins are still significantly higher than their competitors. (Actually scratch the good part, its something just an average journalist would have done!)"

Sorry? You clearly don't come here often, nor do you read any form of journalism from what I can see. A "good" journo only uses the bits that make the story sensational and thus read by people, thus preserving the job they have. Fact and statistics... always used to suit the story's angle.

Re: "Freakishly Something". Dunno About Awesome Though...

"Erm, well yes. But if you already have a license to run Office in Windows, then that's not really an issue is it?"

It will be the second you have a problem and you need support only to find out

(a) the issue is caused by not running on the supported OS (good luck getting a patch)

(b) you need pss support, and the first thing they do shows it's not on windows and you get no help

That might suddenly become a very expensive decision made (and I'm still not sure what you saved) that cripples a business if it breaks one of the THOUSANDS of applications and systems that deeply integrate and use the rich functionality within Office. Office is way way way way way more capable and complex than the average user gets I fully accept, but there are some instances where it is absolutely integral and incredibly well used.

For the sake of a few quid, it's cheaper to leave it in windows where it belongs.

Re: Now if only...

Whereas anyone who is providing good advice shows someone how to use the thing properly and all the noise and fuss over the change will go away. Handily this also means that said person won't struggle on the next Win8 system they come across which hasn't got this utility.

Which would be the majority of them...

Re: Very good indeed

Beyond the interface changes (which aren't that big a deal in my view), it's just normal windows, but more solid, more robust and actually pretty damn good.

The only thing I don't like is the new IE, but I don't like the same new IE on Windows 7 either.