* Posts by Llyander

30 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jan 2010

TomTom for Android with hands-free kit review

Llyander
Meh

Shame about the screen size issue, guess I'll wait before I try and pick this up for my Galaxy Note II.

Ubisoft: 'Vast majority of PC gamers are PIRATES'

Llyander
FAIL

Once again, Ubisoft display their complete contempt and disrespect for PC gamers. I have over 100 legally purchased game discs in a folder and nearly 200 games purchased on Steam. Ubisoft? They haven't seen a penny from me in years because of stupid comments like this.

Ten... Star Wars videogame classics

Llyander
FAIL

No love for SW: Knights of the Old Republic?

10x power boost for Freeview as London analogue signal cut

Llyander
Happy

Not hugely excited, it was just always a very odd gap in my channel lineup. BBC1, BBC 2.... Then straight to BBC 3, ignoring everything else.... Or maybe my TV's just a snob?

Llyander
Thumb Up

Finally. Maybe now I'll actually get to watch ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. I might even be able to watch the HD channels that neither my Panasonic TV or bluray recorder could pick up.

Pasce Minirig micro speaker

Llyander
Holmes

So does anyone know how these compare to the far cheaper X-Mini range of speakers (£15 each at Amazon)? I have two of those and the sound they pump out is astonishing for such tiny little things.

Sony HMZ-T1 3D head mounted display

Llyander
Meh

Interesting idea, but what about those of us who have to wear glasses? Is there enough room for them or does the headset get in the way?

PSP owners must pay to port games to PS Vita

Llyander
Thumb Down

Well no, not really.

Unfair? Perhaps. Unexpected? Not at all. Isn't this what happens most times you buy a new console? Companies, especially Sony, seem less and less interested in any sort of backwards compatibility unless it's an excuse to make money.

Look at the games on the PSN, or on XBL for that matter, allowing you to pay even more money to play older games on your shiny new system. Hell, MS even charges you to port your saves from your old 360 to one of the new Slim ones, so frankly this is par for the course.

Ten reasons why you shouldn't buy an iPhone 5

Llyander
FAIL

Everything you've said here is also applicable to the iPhone 3 and the iPhone 4. Non-swappable batteries, walled garden, no memory card slot... You just seem to have regurgitated all the hates and quibbles people have for previous versions of the phones and yet folks still buy them. Exactly what new information are you adding to this debate because I'm damned if I can see a single original thought in this list.

Murdoch organ intrudes into readers' private places

Llyander
FAIL

Well...

At least they're being refreshingly honest about it.

Coder cracks iPad 2 jailbreak block

Llyander
FAIL

Be nice if it worked...

Failed on both my iPad 1 and my iPhone 4, both running iOS 4.3.3. I've emailed the developer about it and we'll see what he says.

Has Steve Jobs killed the consumer hard disk industry?

Llyander
FAIL

Citation Needed!

I'm sorry but what?

I really am struggling to following the reasoning behind this article.

"Windows must follow suit, embracing what Apple is calling the post-PC era, not wanting to lag behind in the ease of use stakes. Thus, consumers won't buy so many PCs,"

Based on what, exactly? I don't recall seeing any figures backing this up. I own a tablet, and a netbook, and a desktop PC. Neither the netbook nor the tablet nor, for that matter, my phone is in any way an acceptable substitute for a proper PC.

Are you saying that people are going to stop buying PCs because they can store all their data on the cloud? Really? Considering the restrictions most British ISPs put on bandwidth, I fail to see this being a reliable or acceptable substitute for locally stored data. Given the Amazon cloud outage, which lead to some folks data being lost without hope of recovery, are you honestly trying to say this is an outcome people will want or embrace?

And what about gaming? While I am aware OnLive is attempting to punt a streaming games solution, many of us have no interest in that, and certainly refuse to pay a subscription to access their content, are you saying that the cloud is a viable solution for gamers?

Nope, sorry. Utter nonsense from start to finish. The only part of it I DID agree with was your comment about the uptake of flash drives compared to platters, the rest is just pie in the sky nonsense with nothing to back it up.

Daleks given a well-earned break

Llyander
WTF?

Oh come on...

I'm sorry but... Too scary? Did these people ever SEE the classic series? People being strangled and stabbed, lobotomised, electrocuted, dismembered, cybermats poisoning people, the Master reduced to a rotting skeleton, a bodycount well in excess of double figures in some stories.... Dr Who has always been scary!

This is just yet another, "WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDRENNNNNNN!" knee jerk reaction from people who have apparently totally forgotten what it was like when they were kids themselves.

Nintendo blames puzzled public for 3DS sales shortfall

Llyander
FAIL

Ah yes...

When in doubt, call your customers stupid. A tried and true marketing ploy. "No, really, it's awesome. You're just too dumb to understand that! Wait here while we get some more flipcharts and adverts to prove how awesome it is!"

Alternatively it could be that those of us with perfectly serviceable DS Lites simply have no interest in this overpriced gimmick they're now trying to flog us.

Apple sued over iPhone location tracking

Llyander
FAIL

So then....

If the information is false, as the possibly real Mr Jobs claims, why don't Apple just explain what it is and then this will all go away? If it's innocent and nothing for people to be concerned about, then just explain what it really is. Then the problem goes away.

Oh but wait, I forgot this is Apple we're dealing with. Someone could ask them if the sky is blue and they'd probably refuse to comment.

Ten... over-ear headphones

Llyander
Alert

Nice list, but what about....

A nice selection of headphones there, and good to see stuff like Shure and Bose included, but where's the love for those purveyors of awesomely retro gear Grado? I own a pair of their SR80s and they offer some of the best sound quality I've had in any of the over-ear headphones I've tried to date. Treble is clear without being shrill, the midrange is solid and the bass is meaty without being muddied and indistinct and at a hundred quid or so, they're definitely one of the cheaper sets compared to some of the ones listed here!

Admittedly, being open backed they're not a whole lot of use in the street as they simply don't pump out the volume, or isolate the sound well enough, to overcome background noise. But for use at home I'd highly recommend them.

Videogame TRAINS TERRORISTS, yells pundit

Llyander
Flame

Siiiiiiiigh.

Because, of course, a game where you walk around shooting people in an airport trains you perfectly in how to be a suicide bomber. I mean the connection's so obvious!

Morons. Standard media hysteria, stirred up by people with an axe to grind and only two braincells to rub together.

Mass Effect 2 for PS3

Llyander

What about the comparison?

So what about a comparison to the 360 and PC versions? Is it worth picking up? Should we not bother? Okay, glowing review, but there's been other versions of it available for near a year now so how about actually telling us if the gameplay is any different, if the graphics are any better, if the loading times have changed....?

Channel Five to air Walking Dead

Llyander
Thumb Up

FX...

To those people going on about it being shown on FX, you really do need to look a little more closely at the part of the article that says "Zombie hit shuffles toward Sky-less tellies".

In other words, those of us on Freeview or "council" telly, who don't get FX.

As for the series itself? Wonderfully done, "Egg" is really brilliant as Rick, though I find their decision to pad out the episodes with events and characters that never showed up in the comic as slightly odd. I mean it's not like they're short of original source material...

Roll on the next series!

Shell's London office UNDER WATER and besieged by GIANT EELS

Llyander
Paris Hilton

Do we know...

If they're Shrieking Eels? :)

And Paris, because I'm sure she'd have an eel as a pet.

Virgin demands ISPs end broadband speed 'con'

Llyander

Clarification

It varies from site to site, and I know that's subject to a number of factors entirely outside of Virgin;s control, but I've also been checking it every day with speedtest.net at different times of day.

For example this lunchtime speedtest claimed I was getting 18Mb. Yesterday it was 17Mb. Tuesday was 11Mb, Monday was 25Mb. (I've been keeping track, just for my own curiosity. You'll note most of these tests are still barely 50% of what Virgin claims to be offering.)

Downloads from, for example, rapidshare, megaupload and so forth tend to top out at 40Mb, except for that one day where I did actually get pretty much my full bandwidth.

Llyander
FAIL

Pot, meet Kettle.

I've had Virgin's XXL service for a month now. 50Mb, supposedly. Oh, I'm sorry, UP TO 50Mb.

Have I ever got the 50Mb I'm paying for? Once. Very briefly, on a Sunday morning. Most days my connection wobbles anywhere between 11Mb and 40Mb depending on the time of day and the site I'm trying to access.

I'd hardly call that a satisfactory state of affairs, Virgin, and for you to call on everyone else to stop this "up to" crap just reeks of hypocrisy of the highest order.

And don't even get me started on the bull with them throttling Wow-related traffic on what is supposedly an unrestricted connection....

NEC intros Android tablet 'cloud communicator'

Llyander
FAIL

Ewwww.

I have to agree with previous commenters here.

That thing is freakin' hideous. Call it what you will, throw as many arty-farty phrases and management buzz words at it as you like, it's still ugly,

Virgin Media begins 100Mb upgrades

Llyander
FAIL

What's the point...

Of claiming that people will get 100Mb when they can't even reliably provide us with the 50Mb we're paying for now?

On any given day I can get as little as 5Mb or as much as 40Mb, at no point have I EVER got the 50Mb that I'm actually paying for every month.

Virgin Media introduces P2P throttling

Llyander
FAIL

Time to find another provider.

So in other words if I buy games online, they'll throttle my bandwidth. If I buy movies online, they'll throttle my bandwidth, If I download a large patch (Like the new content for Warcraft, as an earlier poster commented), they'll throttle my bandwidth.

These limits are pathetic, completely devoid of any connection to reality.

No one needs Blu-ray, says Microsoft exec

Llyander
FAIL

Nonsense.

Rubbish. The UK simply hasn't the infrastructure to support this sort of content on a mass scale and likely won't for years.

As it is, most ISPs seem to struggle to stream the sort of content people are watching now, I'm supposed to have a 10Mb connection but often I'm lucky if I get 1Mb at peak times, how on earth am I supposed to download and watch a high-def movie?

And not only that, for all this talk about MP3s and streaming movies and blahblahblah, I would STILL much rather have a physical product in my hand as opposed to a file that can only be used when and where the download provider says.

Panasonic DMC-G2 interchangeable lens camera

Llyander
Thumb Up

Tried one...

I tried one of these at the Goodwood Festival of speed last month, Panasonic were handing them out for people to trial for a couple of hours.

If I didn't already own it's little brother, the Lumix FZ18, I'd be buying one of these in a heartbeat. It was astonishingly easy to use after just a couple of minutes instruction and I had lots of fun playing around with the touchscreen and folding it out to help me get shots over people's heads and so on. It even managed to get some fairly decent shots of cars screaming past at over 100mph.

Love it. Would seriously recommend this for someone who wants more than you can get from a regular compact camera but isn't quite willing to shell out for a full SLR.

IBM wrings more profit from revived IT market

Llyander
Unhappy

And yet...

All we hear is how there's no money for bonuses for staff, no money for pay rises, no money for new equipment or software licenses, no money for social activities, no money to subsidise the canteens properly...

But there's still PLENTY of money for huge customer events overseas and for IBM to keep buying up other companies!

Mafia Wars dons deprived of pit bulls

Llyander
FAIL

Mixed Messages?

So the game promotes pitbulls as weapons, mirroring the idea that these dogs are status symbols and have indeed been trained and used as weapons by some aspects of society and PETA is up in arms and gets it yanked....

But it's apparently still okay that the game promotes the mindset that criminal acts are a good thing and killing people and stealing things is just day to day business?

PETA: Totally missing the point since 1980!

Samsung N140

Llyander

But is it worth an upgrade?

I own an NC10 and adore it but it does struggle with playing movies at times and the sound from that mono speaker is pretty weedy, but that aside it does everything I could ask it to do and everything I would realistically expect from a netbook.

All these Samsung models, is it actually worth upgrading to any of them if you already have a perfect good NC10?