Re: Incidentally, my IQ scores...

...stopped reading here. How toe-curlingly embarrassing. I feel a kind of deep pity tinged with horror.

Re: as ugly as Game Center is it does at least exist...

You... *like* this anal carbunkle?... You actually *use* it?? I love me a game of tower defense or whatever, but Game Centre is hated by everyone in my family including four teenage-and-up boys. Are you by any chance one of these 'no good unless it has CoD' types? Just asking!

Re: Newsstand will remain empty ...

Agreed, AC (but why 'AC'?? <shrugs>) And since I like a minimal 'desktop', my iPhone & iPad have always been set up with all but four of the icons moved to the 2nd screen, with just a single row on the home screen. That way, you can show off your nice wallpaper topped & tailed with a row of icons. Dumping everything on the home screen is reminiscent of a poorly-laid-out Windows desktop. You know the kind of thing; 157 icons spilling down from the top-left where users either don't care or don't know how to keep it neat.

Re: MSFT fails to kill ARM

Good post, Shaggsy, except (much as I love conspiracy theories) what seemed to be happening (at least with my punters) with netbooks was 'eh? where's winduz gone innit, can't do nuffink on this'. I actually saw the emergence of XP as a bit of a saving grace for netbooks, a form factor I loved - and still do. I really didn't see any evidence of the 'I'll get you, Linux, yes, and your little dog, too...' kind of thing.

Re: Hotmail - for El reg ID's

@Mr Fogey... Why aren't you using WLM or Outlook or even (shudder) Chunderbird as your mail client? No-one in this day and age should seriously be using a web browser to access their email! I've had a hotmail account since '97 and only point a web browser at it when checking mail while on-site or otherwise away from my laptop. As a chap said earlier, you get 100% portability across ISPs (forever, one hopes). And no ads if you use a mail client.

Oh, and as for the humorous digs about spam levels, MS's junk mail filter is pretty damned awesome these days. Unlike gmail, which I *do* use as my throwaway account; it's spam filters are as much use as a chocolate teapot.

Re: I don't think we got the hint

Don't come here often, I'm guessing..?

Re: Balmer $300

I... just upvoted Eadon... Oof....

Re: Simple

@AC 12:58 Exactly. Technically, broadband may very well refer to the ability to mux voice & data, *but* (as often happens in technology) the term has evolved. It is generally accepted these days to mean 'the next step beyond dual-ISDN'. In fact I seem to remember Tiscali offering a 128kbps service a few yearsa back that they termed 'midband', as they knew damned well it would have been taking the piss to badge it up as 'broadband'. But then, waddoo I know.

Re: Is there a *shrug* icon ?

...you just used it...

Re: Godwin's law self-fail

'I fail to see the fail' - err, you may want to re-read. I said 'self-fail', as in I incurred Godwin myself with the word Nazi. Poor joke admittedly but blimey...!

Re: I hope you didn't just leave them slumped at their desks?

Awesome. And peeps moan at us grammar 'nazis'. Oops - Godwin's law self-fail :(

Re: Time to regress back to childhood.

...or you could just close your account like I did a week ago. Will lose easy means of contacting one or two peeps <shrugs>. Can't actually think of one single benefit that horribly-designed UI ever gave me.

Bittorrent clients == intended piracy

Yar. I keep catching my parrot downloading various Linux distros, not to mention 32 & 64bit Win ISOs and service packs for repairing client PCs.

I keelhauled the scurvy dog, natch.

Re: @AndrueC

Mr C, I'm with you, bro. Don't sweat the DVs! Us oldies gotta etc...

Re: I'd like to know where they're getting a freaking billion dollars

Low as in 'kick in at a low level', not 'low-cost'. Quite the oppo, actually.

Re: I'd like to know where they're getting a freaking billion dollars

Their crap games have very low paywalls, for starters. Have managed to wean some very upset kids off their shitville range, thankfully. I sincerely hope they crash & burn.

Re: MS are committing commercial suicide!

Oooh! A post from Eadon without the two words 'Microsoft' and 'Fail' juxtaposed. Oh, wait...

Re: when did a third party plugin ever load without the user knowing it was going to load?

Not as simple as that. One of my main jobs is removing crap from client PCs. One of the worst to prise out is the Babylon toolbar from Firefox. I'll get plenty of DV's for saying this despite it being true but Babylon, once installed, is very easy to kick out of IE (The Autoruns tool kills it, stone dead), a little harder to dislodge from Chrome, and a bloody nightmare to remove from FF. Don't believe me? Give it a try. After all, you do believe in FF's invulnerability, no?

So it's not so much about users agreeing to install crapware; it's about preventing it's installation, or removing it from the machines of vulnerable users (usually the elderly, whose thoughtful relatives have installed FF in an attempt to tighten their security a little).

So DV away! I only speak from very wide experience, so waddoo I know anyway?

Re: masterbatory suit

I think some of the froth from your lips obscured your eyes temporarily, Mr Earth. Last time I checked (around 35 years ago when I was about 13) there was a U in that there word.

Re: El Reg's subtitle is a bit over the top...

A bit over the top? I refuse to believe it. I come here for the cold, hard facts, and I'll have no comical monkeyshines with my news, thank you very much.

Re: the salty tang of childrens' tears...

I agree. I had to return all four of my new iPads. Damned salt residue trapped under the screens. One of 'em even had a bit of young thumb trapped behind the bezel. Bastards. Care and attention, Apple. Care and attention.

Re: ...the septics are fond of prosecuting you...

Woah there, buddy! There's no need to call our Merkin friends diseased, now!

Re: I think Win 8 will be seen as a classic in years to come

Err... no, I really don't think so. Unless in years to come the meaning of the word 'classic' has evolved to become 'gigaturd'. Incidentally, just to prove I'm not hatin' on MS, I likewise refute the 'dog' tag (hur hur) you attributed to Vista. With both SPs 1 & 2 installed it contains the W7 driver model & is nippy as you could like. Just my ten quids' worth.

Re: totally unacceptable in security devices

Agreed - I see Barracuda potentially losing some major blue chippies from their client rosters (but possibly gaining sales from those that enjoy close ties with dodgy guvmints - not excluding ours of course!)

Re: even the Microsoft astroturfers love my warm and empathetic personality

New kb pls kthxbai

Re: Can someone enlighten me?

Mr Think, it's really the docx thing in my experience. I've many custs who have never even enabled the display of file extensions; they don't even know what a .doc is, let alone docx. On top of this you have to then explain how to export using an older format labelled 'Office XP / 2003' or whatever. It just makes their eyes glaze over. All quite deliberate and cynically planned for, of course.

Re: It's like trying to make an elephant into a mouse

Compromising on a beaver isn't so bad...

Re: Which app do you use in the Android marketplace to do it?

I was playing Borderlands 2 today on my Nexus 7, running on my PC but streaming to the tablet over WiFi with SplashTop (Google Play free or paid). It's not perfect (have to muck with the aspect ratio some) but by god is it fun! Incidentally my XBox 360 controller was plugged into the usb port of the tablet, btw, not into the PC.

I'm not sure if you were trying to be sarcastic or not, so I'm hoping you were simply unaware of solutions such as this.

Re: Hoist the Grammar Nazi flag, for Great Justice!

Funny gag, Mr Monsters, but actually that appalling grammar actually hurt my eyeballs, even as I agreed with the sentiments expressed by the poster. Not understanding the difference between 'of' and 'have' is pretty bleedin' fundamental in English, and it's actually not all that Hitlerian to expect the technically literate to also be - er - literate... or something.

Re: @Eadon "Internet Explorer isn't that bad nowadays" - Yes it is.

Madra, you'll only encourage him.

Re: Internet Explorer isn't that bad nowadays

Mr Spartacus, you're gunna get DVd like there's no tomorrow for balanced commentary like that, I'm afraid. IE is indeed far from the spew-covered monstrosity of old and I feel no less secure using. However I also have FF, Opera and the chrome-plated one simply cos different sites render better in different browsers and you learn which over time. Some sites only render properly in Chrome, some in FF, some in IE. Opera has a lovely 'block' option on the right-click, but can be sluggish. I generally prefer Chrome over IE cos of the way it handles downloads, but you can't set the 'New Tab' option to open your home page which annoys the living fuck out of me. Ah well.

Re: got a nasty at work - we think it came in via java in browser

now the boss has (I hope) woken up...

ftfy!

Re: Yet another Microsoft Security FAIL.

Eadon, I always admire the way you capitalise the word 'fail' It never fails to make me pay more attention.

Re: You guys are nuts

Actually, Mr Nobby, my home desktop is a W8 all-in-one. I really like the USB3 support mentioned above, the new 'fast start', the way my selection of 'More Details' is remembered between copy operations and the ability to flip hidden files on/off fast via the ribbon. I like many, many things about W8. I'd probably be a raving W8 fanboy if it weren't for the things I hate with a passion, such as the hard-to-discern current window focus, the loss of a process counter in Task Manager, the occasional bug where bulk copies of many gigs can result in a crash, the loss of UI beautification and (of course) the un-turnoffable tiles and the relegation of the desktop (the meat-and-potatoes part) to the status of a bloody app.

But balanced praise and critique gets me the tag of crybaby, it seems. Ho hum.

Re: Another day, another win 8 hater story on the reg

As an MS fan of more decades than I care to count I always feel disconcerted when my huge disappointment and frustration at Balmer's intransigence gets me labelled a H83r on a site with an otherwise high-quality level of commentardos.

There was even the time I got accused of deliberately lying and distributing misinformation about Windows 8, as if I were a rabid fanboi. So I'd have to say there are also 'hater haters' (or if you prefer, haters² or possibly even haters³ ) out there!

Re: A little misleading

Hmm - quite the opposite here in Blighty, actually. Nary a Win7 machine to be found since around a month before Xmas. So on balance, not misleading at all. Every UK channel seemed to have its orders to bury W7 kit. It almost happened overnight as I recall; the weekend following the W8 launch there were no W7 jobbies in the local megastores. Not even discounted end-of-line stuff. It was very, very spooky and cunningly orchestrated...

Re: is the video chat rather pants?

Which? MSN's or Skype's? Both are really rather good. MSN's video chat was *always* better on a low bandwidth connection though.

Re: who has ever really cared about start up times?

Well, I'm no W8 lover as you may know but boot times are pretty important in the field. Which is why I was excited to scarf the last W7 SSD Ultrabook from John Lewis in the Jan sales. 15 second bootup and boy am I chuffed with it. Sadly my wallet and my wife, not so much.

Re: Too many pubes

Fairy nuff. Didn't actually read the tagline but tbh most kit these days is a grease magnet, specially ultrabooks. I have to keep a cloth in the bag and use it pretty much every day. Which makes me a bit OCD I suppose... I jumped on the pic mainly because of the unsightly hair, which I *hope* is an eyebrow hair or eye lash!