Posts by wondermouse
26 posts • joined Friday 6th November 2009 16:53 GMT
Dell OEM and other hit last weekend - was it this?
At some point last weekend, my trusty Dell Laptop suddenly decided that my Dell OEM Windows 7 was not geniune. So did my mate's. All this week I've been hearing about machines that were legitimately running Windows 7 OEM suddenly being illegitemised.
Is it the same thing? Something MS has done seems to have screwed the status of these machines.
Minimum 18 month contract
I would have given it a go, but there's a minimum 18 month contract whether you pay all at once or in monthly instalments.
Last time I tried the Sunday Times Ipad app it was awful and clunky compared to the Grauniad one.
So for those reasons, Rupert.... I'm out.
getting the status bar back
"WHERE is the "total number of tracks/total size" information that used to be handily on show at the bottom of the iTunes window?"
OK to answer one of my own fails at least. To get the status bar back you have to.....
1. CTRL+B to bring up the menu bar
2. then view>show status bar to bring it back
Good grief - talk about hidden settings! Without the menu bar you can't access it!
Itunes 11 - Apple You B*****DS!
I installed iTunes 11 this afternoon.
I had a well managed iTunes 10 library with lots of playlists, almost all album art imbedded in ID3 tags, and about 120,000 tracks, all properly tagged.
Now I have NO playlists - they've ALL been removed. AARRGGGHHHHH!
Now about half of my library is missing. Now Christmas for example has only 11 tracks rather than 47
I can't find the column browser at all - the one view I used all the time.
It is currently busy "determining gapless playback" for 24,186 tracks and so is slower than a snail on strike
The search box - always one of iTunes' best functions - now keeps asking to search the iTunes store rather than my library.
WHY do they choose to hide the "track number" and "disc number" fields by default? It makes no sense and is totally beyond me.
WHERE is the "total number of tracks/total size" information that used to be handily on show at the bottom of the iTunes window?
All the TV shows that I carefully ripped and labelled in ipod format, with season info and the like - all gone.
And last of all, WHY, in the name of all things holy, does iTunes STILL not have a RESCAN LIBRARY BUTTON to add new media and remove deleted and renamed items? This should have been there on DAY ONE, not still missing 11 versions down the bloody line.
This is the biggest abortion of an update I think I have ever seen in iTunes.
Listen Apple - I WANT MY LIBRARY BACK. I WANT MY PLAYLISTS BACK. YOU ARE A BUNCH OF UTTER, UTTER, UTTER, UTTER.....
The stakes are high?
Are the stakes high in this case then?
Just wondered as you restated this twice....
Shome mishtake surely?
"... together with an invitation for hackers everywhere to pour over the code..."
then bake in an oven at gas mark 6 for half an hour, before topping... er... themselves.
"The real genius of TiVo is convincing the unwashed masses to pay an additional and significant monthly fee for "PVR Service""
No, the real genius of Tivo is that it does PVR functionality far better than anyone else. Just compare TiVo with Sky Plus and see. A Sky Plus is simple but dim. A TiVo is just as simple but way more useful and clever.
Posted in Beeb rescues old Who episodes
I imagine the reasoning went something like:
We have loads of old black and white stuff on 2" video tape. In this age of colour TV no one would ever want to see those again. In addition they take up miles of expensive storage. If we record over them we save on our tape budget and free up space too....
If the situation with Doctor Who is appalling, then early Top Of The Pops is even worse. Almost nothing exists of early TOTP - no Beatles, 1 performance by The Stones, a rehearsal take of Sandie Shaw and so on, because no-one high up in the Beeb realised just how important pop music would prove to be.
Ironically I think every TV News bulletin has been kept, because news is "important".
Luckily the germans preserved Beat Club and Beat Beat Beat so we still have some pop.
Interesting to note...
..that on geticloud.com the landing page is devoted to VOIP solutions not cloud computing, and even when you follow the datacenter link it's all about hosting, managed services and technical support rather than the sort of cloud computing that Apple is pursuing.
On the plus side, the site says they have been in business since 1985.
But why would you?
If this was £150 quid then sure it would be a no-brainer.
But at £349 you've got enough for a decent netbook with all the functionality of this machine PLUS a generous hard drive too. Plus windows (and ubuntu free as well)
So who would buy this?
Posted in TiVo calls time on ageing set-tops
Bad move by TiVo
I think this shows a basic misunderstanding by TiVo of the UK market.
TiVo US clearly doesn't understand that cable in the UK is not universally available, unlike in the US. Getting a new TiVo is not an option. I wish it were. I'd happily pay for a dual-tuner Freeview HD TiVo, and so, I suspect, would the majority of existing Series 1 owners.
For those of you that use a Sky+ or Sky HD box, the TiVo infterface is SO much better! A sky box is like a TiVo with a lobotomy.
That's why there are loads of people, like me, who still keep their series one machines running.
IF we could upgrade we would, but the only new model is a cable only device and I'm not in a cabled area. Nor, according to Virgin Media, am I ever likely to be. (Yes I live in the far-far-away, remote wilds of, erm, London. Zone 2.)
Without the subscription servce my tivo, and everyone else's in the UK, will become large silver doorstops.
We love our TiVos because they are BETTER. By taking the service away and not replacing it will sour the whole TiVo experience.
This stinks.
Posted in The year's best... TV media players
Cyclone Live?
What about the Cyclone Live box?
Only £60, tiny, well built, and handles almost everything you can throw at it! Full HD 1080p too.
Posted in Virgin unwraps three-tuner über set-top
who cares what they look like?
The functionality is the real TiVo plus point as any TiVo user can tell you. There is a reason that TiVo is the number one DVR in the US - it's simple but immensely powerful.
Sky + is like a TiVo that's had a lobotomy, with all the useful bits removed!
It's good to see them back in the UK, but bad (for me) in that we have a Virgin cable run literally 5 feet from our front door in South West London, but Virgin insist that we are not in a cable area, nor will we be for the foreseeable future.
TiVo love.....
"As long as it run's a new UI rather than the bodged implementation that Virgin use,..."
That's the whole point! The TiVo interface is SO much better than, for example, a Sky + that the Sky box is like a TiVo with a lobotomy!
It's as close to a perfect interface on one of these devices that I've found.
Features on the (now ancient but endlessly moddable) Series 1 box include:
When you fast forward (to skip the ads) and press Play, it automatically starts playing from a couple of seconds before you hit play so you don't have to do the FF > Play > Rewind > Play shuffle!
An intelligent Season Pass manager that juggles multiple showings of the same episode so that if the 10 Oclock showing clashes with something else, it'll get the 2AM showing instead.
Wish lists that can schedule across any channel for example "all Dennis Potter plays".
Add ons include
Automatic padding: Add 3 mins to the start and 5 mins to the end of every recording UNLESS this would clash with another programme.
Full web access and remote programming. (with an optional network card)
A happy Mr TiVo animation when you first plug it in!
I love my TiVo and wish they did a Freeview or Freesat dual tuner box in the UK!
Posted in How average is your sex life?
am I the only one?
Am I the only one who did a double-take when I read
"...there is the Durex annual sex survey..."
Oh, it said "annual"!
More affordable?
"....Apple has announced its widened and more affordable MacBook Air range...."
hahahahaha.
Posted in 11.6in sub-notebooks
Good as far as it goes but....
...it would be nice, as well as noting the single core models, to point out what dual core alternatives are available in the same line and their prices. I am looking for a decently specced sub notebook but I don't want a single core model.
I would have liked a comment, where relevent saying something like "while this is the single core model, there is a dual core version with an xxx processor available for £yyy"
Posted in Paris Hilton flashes her Brazilian...
Bending over backwards
In fact the hacks at El Reg will bend over backwards to ensure that there are no double entendres inserted in their stories or headlines.
If they should, erm, come across one I am assured that they would whip it out at the earliest opportunity.
Posted in Apple iPod Nano 6G
Not for me....
The lack of video and, to some extent, the lack of cover flow makes this a non-starter for me.
They should have called this the Shuffle Plus and positioned it at the £79/£99 price point then they would have flown off the shelves.
I'd rather have a 4g or 5g 16gb nano myself.
And what about the Classic? Still the only ipod that stores 160gb. Mine is full to the brim and an ipod touch is simply not an option, especially considering the crappy new camera.
WM
Posted in Sony Walkman NWZ-A845 media player
Does it support disc x of y tags
I have a large library of high quality MP3 files and have found most media players seem to have difficulty dealing with the Disc X of Y tags that multiple disc sets in my collection are tagged with.
I really don't like seeing albums subdivided into Now 75 (Disc 1) and Now 75 (Disc 2) folders when the tracks should all be in the Now 75 folder. ITunes and other rippers use the Disc tag to seperate the 2 discs and it works perfectly on my iPods,
Most MP3 players I have tried seem to list multi-disc albums as 2 x track 1, then 2 x track 2, and so on, which is most irritating.
Can you tell me if the Sony can display the tracks from multi-disc albums in the correct order?
Thanks
do wot?
> even after the newly installed government committed to scrapping the screen...
Posted in Cowon iAudio V5 HD media player
Epic Fail
No ID3 tagging is a game changer for me.
All my MP3 files are correctly tagged and for some stupid machine not to recognise them is beyond belief!
Epic Face Spite Fail....
> I deleted IE a few weeks ago.
> Some of my applications that were tied into IE fail to work properly now.
Dur! That's called cutting off your nose to spite your face!
Posted in Newtonian Rock shop leaks iPad prices
I read that as
"It better be really absorbent and not just exorbitant!"
I read as
It better be really absorbent and not just exfoliant!
Posted in Tories ask: Why BBC3, BBC4?
Leave 4 alone
BBC 4 has some of the most interesting shows around.
For example the French co-production Spiral, which was truly excellent and would be unlikely to get an airing on a commercial channel.
Plus the archive shows that they show on 4 are priceless!
Capital Records?
Sheesh - no the Beatles are not, and have never been signed to Capital Records.
It's Capitol records.
Are you getting confused with Capital Radio?
