@JEDIDIAH

"You're just out of touch with the vast bulk of PC users out there."

The vast bulk of PC users run Windows on a laptop with a fairly fast CPU, a slow HDD with not much on it, and quite a few crapware installations that thrash the disk and make it even slower.

"A lot of the hyped benefits of SSDs come down to certain operating systems doing poorly at what is basically 70s style multi-user concurrency."

The cause of HDD-as-a-bottleneck doesn't matter. It's a lot easier to fix it by installing a SSD than by switching OS or redesigning Windows.

@James O'Shea

I, for one, set my machine to back up overnight,so I don't _care_ if backing up slows it down.

Leaving the laptop on overnight is inefficient and forces you to remember to leave it. With a SSD a full system image backup can run at any time without affecting the user - no heat, no noise, no slow down, no risk.

As for the 'very few laptop users need anything like 1TB'... what planet re you on, mate?

Most users don't have 1TB drives and what they do have is nowhere near full. 95% of users could fit their entire music, photo and video collections in a few hundred GB. Whenever I fix the laptops of family and friends the hard drives are mostly empty.

Re: @Aoyagi Aichou

Aoyagi, I don't think you understand: if the phone provides "nice animations" while doing something, then it is being responsive, not "lying" to you.

Lag and stuttering are signs of a defective OS, not a feature.

Re: Cost per Gigabyte? Yes.

For the average user, the performance difference between SSD and HDD is close to nil: slightly faster startup, almost unnoticeable program load improvement.

The average user would get much more benefit at a lower cost by increasing the RAM to have more caching.

No way is this right. Wait until the average user's anti-virus or backup kicks in and see how responsive their laptop is. Try searching for a file at the same time and tabbing between windows. This is hardly "power-user proposition" and the difference is huge: with a HDD, the experience is awful; with a SSD there's no noticeable slowdown at all.

Even cost isn't much of an issue now: HDDs have high fixed costs, whatever the capacity. Very few laptop users need anything like 1TB, and as fewer of them are purchased, the economies of scale will fall away, giving SSDs the advantage.

@Aoyagi Aichou

WP8 has not only failed to innovate, it took massive steps backwards from WM6. It seems fast because of long pretty-looking animations. What has the "power" is the hardware, not the OS. WP8 deserves what it gets.

If it seems fast to the user then it is fast. What other criteria is more important than having a happy user?

Counting cores and claiming a phone is better is pointless willy waving.

Best of luck to those running off to BT, but I fear most will regret it.

After 16 months of using BT FTTC at work, absolutely no regrets here. Not a single outage and no traffic-shaping that we've ever seen. Fast, cheap and (touch-wood) 100% reliable - what's to regret?

@JDX

True enough, but if you've been irritated by O2/Be's lack of FTTC and crappy iPlayer service then the move to Sky may be the final straw.

We switched (to Plusnet), and when we said Murdoch was the reason for requesting the MAC, the O2 elf didn't sound even slightly surprised.

Off-topic: it's nice that the loathing of Murdoch can unite us all, Windows, Linux and Mac users ;)

@JEDIDIAH

The end user is generally not responsible for building a PC.

Indeed, and a vanilla Windows PC is most unlikely to crash. It's been decades (literally) since I had a Windows box crash because of the OS. That long ago, the Linux and Mac OS PCs I used shat themselves on a regular basis, too.

If your wintel boxes crash, they're built or used wrong.

i.e. faulty hardware or someone's been playing where they shouldn't, like the registry.

Re: They need to reduce their product portfolio.

Then they should bring out a high-spec version of the Wildfire/Buzz... Within a week it'll be shitting money.

They should bring out a high-spec version of their low-end phone?

because I know what I'm talking about

Yeah, right.

@reno79

The market is going to be all over it. There's simply no question of Apple paying off the bonds - they have 145 billion in the bank and earned another 9.5 billion in the last quarter. Anyone who questions their future ability to pay 16 billion - even if they literally just burn the bond money - is simply fantasizing. Bonds aren't equivalent to shares, let alone shares in an IPO.

As for my vitriol, Shagbag has earned it. Have a look at his posts - he's not only an Eadon-like fantasist, but also rather rude. If he can dish it out, he should be able to take it.

Not send from an iPhone 'cause I prefer Android & WP.

Re: I prefer to use a slightly old version...

Why not install Flashblock or NoScript? They'll do the same thing and won't mean keeping an old and risky version of Flash.

Re: "The market is going to be all over it,"

"We at El Reg know that Apple's new product pipeline is looking quite poor "

Who's this "we", fandroid?

There's no risk in a bond issue for $16 billion when Apple already has nearly 10 times that in the bank and another 10 billion coming in every quarter.

Hate Apple (and MS...) all you want - it's your right to be pathetic - but try to stay vaguely attached to reality.

Re: Given that the US dollar is actually worthless

"Given that the US dollar is actually worthless"

If that's the case, then I'll happily give you £1 for every 10 of those worthless dollars you can find. If you prefer, I'll give you the equivalent of £1 in gold or bitcoin instead for those 10 dollars.

If you're not happy to take that offer then you might be full of shit...

@Shagbag

I was burned by the WinPho7 Lumia 800 not being upgradable to WinPho8. So I sold it (£250)

Really? You sold your second hand Lumia for £250? That's more than they cost new six months ago when WP8 was released, so you must be quite the salesman.

Even before WP8 non-compatibility was confirmed the 800 was going for less than that in any colour you like on eBay (I know 'cause I was looking).

Re: 'and also we presume in penance for his part in cinematic outrage Pearl Harbor'

Affleck went to the New Zealand and UK embassies asking for food, but they turned him away...

@bailey86

"All apps are on the front screen"

Um, no, they're not. Apps are only on the start screen if you pin them there and there's nothing stopping you from removing and rearranging them. It's better to think of it as the area to keep apps that you want to get alerts from (weather, messages, facebook etc.) or need instant access to (maps, dialer etc.) All apps are on another screen (swipe right to left from the main screen).

The Android way definitely has it's pros & cons and I can understand why someone might prefer it. Personally I dislike the iOS grid of icons as it's unstructured and communicates little information, the worst of the three, in my experience.

@Kevin 6..

Wow, that comment was simply insane.

What D.C. (finally) does get is that the competition is unfair - purchases from a bricks & mortar store have to include sales tax while internet purchases don't. How on earth is it "dumbass" to level the field?

Regarding your beliefs on employment: economics doesn't work the way you think it does! Read a 101 textbook, for god's sake, before commenting about it again.

Always told people putting a dumb fuck politician from Illinois (land of corruption, just look at how many politicians end up in jail, and they are mostly democrats...) in the white house was the worst decision imaginable.

Yeah, we need fewer disasters like Abe Lincoln and more Texas successes like George W. Bush, right?

Re: @Dave 15

Ah, my mistake. I thought when you said that you "just can't tap the right part of the screen consistently enough" you were referring to something more difficult than picking up a call, which requires a crude swipe across the screen on my phone. Dialling requires hitting a clearly marked area of about 10 square cm, so not too difficult, either.

And NO it does NOT work in the car, bus, train - the shaking and wobbling ensure you don't get the right places.

Maybe if the bus is the back of a ute heading down an Andean dirt track, otherwise you're making the tasks hundreds of millions of people do without thinking everyday seem extraordinary.

If all you need to do is place and answer calls and you can't do it on a touch-screen, then the problem lies with you. You're clearly unhappy with a tool that works for most people.

@Dave 15

The problem with ALL modern phones is that they've all gone for touch screens - these just do NOT work in mobile situations - walking, on a train, in a bus, in a car... you just can't tap the right part of the screen consistently enough.

If you want to fiddle with your phone and you're walking, then stand still. If you're in a car, be the passenger. If you're on a bus or a train, no problem, it works fine.

Your brain can't deal with navigating and operating a phone simultaneously and do both well, so it's not the fault of the touch screen. Pedestrians have wandered into busy roads while looking at there mobile since well before the iPhone came along.

Smart phones are awesome, but there're plenty of dumb phones around if that's what you really want.

Re: It is really fixing something that was in the grey area

Of course the opposition will make a bun-fight over this. That is all the opposition ever does

You say that like it's a bad thing.

It is telling that the broken law was introduced when the opposition was in power.

The PM & govt were in power at the time the Dotcom affair happened; it's their mess and their responsibility.

Re: Very much a "no shit, Sherlock" moment

"The US and Japan are actually quite a small and insignificant mobile markets"

Yeah, compared to Bhutan and Guyana, the #1 and #3 economies in the world are "insignificant" markets... You do know that 450 million very rich people live in those two countries, right?

@Eadon

Where is the usual army of Astroturfers tell us how GREAT Win 8

If there's an MS article there'll always be Eadon along to knock Redmond... Like the slogan says, Eadon, you're an [astroturfing] Army of One.

Can't wait for the Reg to implement the "ignore comments from Eadon" feature.

Re: Unsecured loans

Credit cards have some uses, +1.

My partner works for an airline, which means that we get cheap standby flights. Unfortunately, planes tend to be pretty full these days and with no guarantee of getting on board*, it's prudent to buy a whole lot of tickets to avoid being stuck halfway. Paying for them all on c/c is easier as the money isn't taken until the bill is due, by which time the airlines have usually refunded the unused tickets and it's a wash.

* Air NZ once offloaded me and a 1/2 a dozen other staff in HK in order to fit more mail on the plane. The bastards departed with 15 empty seats.

Re: No swappable battery, no sale

Not when you're camping in a field, trapsing half way up a mountain, sunning yourself on a beach or on a long flight it's not. ... Useless on a long train journey when my only entertainment is my phone.

Do you do any of those things at home? To repeat myself:

"a spare battery is useful for the times when you're away from a charger, which doesn't include when you're at home, right?"

We actually agree! :)

Then there's the fact that batteries lose their change over time.

That true, but it's beside the point. I'm not arguing that being able to swap batteries isn't useful, just that swapping batteries when one gets home is more hassle than simply charging the phone.

Those external battery/rechargers are so slow, it means leaving your phone off for at least an hour before things become useful again.

Not in my experience. Your phone will still work while being charged, and even so, do you use your phone continuously when you arrive home? Why?!?

The activities that draw more power than the charger is providing don't make sense at home; if it's sharing a 3G connection, why not use the WiFi? If it's watching videos or gaming, why not use the TV or PC?

Put the phone down and walk the dog, wash the dishes, talk to the kids etc.! ;)

Re: No swappable battery, no sale

Actually, I have an Xperia Arc S that very occasionally will drain more than the charger can provide

I guess that's due to the limit of the USB spec., but like you say, it only happens occasionally.

People voting me down: surely a spare battery is useful for the times when you're away from a charger, which doesn't include when you're at home, right? Plugging in a charger is surely easier than swapping a battery.

Re: No swappable battery, no sale

Hmm, was I voted down because I pointed to a Nokia-brand charger, or because I suggested leaving the phone to charge for 1/2 an hour while doing something else?

Even if one can't put the phone down, it's possible to use it while it's charging, after all...

@Aqua Marina

What hardware did you buy? We haven't had much luck with the audio for our group conferences (done in meeting rooms).

Re: No swappable battery, no sale

Just out of curiosity, do they make USB chargers that can affix to bicycle wheels so that they can charge the phone while you ride (as well as provide a little extra load for a workout)?

Nokia do, though it's the Nokia-style connector, so you'd need to be handy with a soldering iron to connect it to most phones.

When I get home with a depleted battery I can drop in a fully-recharged spare and carry on using it

"drop in" is really shutdown-remove-plate-swap-batteries-start-up-again. It's easier to leave it to charge up a bit while having a shower, making a sandwich etc., no?

Re: Well if they erver have asperations of

Maths fail, spelling fail, grammar fail, shopping fail...

A 256GB M4 costs around £150; a 2TB HDD around £70. £150 is not the same price as £280 and a NAS won't fit in your laptop.

PS - writing "spinning rust" is like saying "meat-space"; only geeks will understand you, and even they will think you're weird.

Re: Is ADO still incompatible?

Fixed. Look here.

@m a d r a

Clearly you missed the bit where I said "Anyone interested in how mobile phone cameras work", you tool.

Re: So

Anyone interested in how mobile phone cameras work, here's a good article on AnandTech. It's quite astonishing how many layers they can pack into that tiny space.

@ribosome

It was a Samsung-branded charger, though it came from one of those amazon sellers, so it might well have been a fake. Thanks for the Trading Standards tip - the amazon customer service rep seemed remarkably unconcerned about selling exploding chargers!

Re: Oh come off it..

Last week a phone charger I bought off amazon exploded - literally - in the office. It left scorch marks on the adjacent plugs, blew the fuse on the UPS, left pieces around the office and scared the hell out of everyone nearby.

So, no health & safety is actually a pretty good reason to be strict about office equipment!

Re: The customer defines value

The customer defines value

No, it takes both a willing seller and a willing buyer. You might think my house is worth 20p; it doesn't mean I'm obliged to sell it to you for that.

Absolutely. The truth is that in the modern world, an album or movie is simply not worth £10-20 a pop.

In your opinion (and I happen to agree), but that doesn't mean you're entitled to get it for what you're willing to pay for it.

@M Gale

It's not like a bunch of C++ source code for a project really takes up all that much space

Wow, that's remarkably ignorant, check out the size of the boost library and platform SDKs. Consider what happens to .cpp files - they get compiled into object files which take up a lot of space. How about the different flavours of Visual Studio and all the supporting tools (SQL Server, VMs).

80GB? It might last me a few weeks. 80Gb? Probably a few minutes.

Unless you're recording media, video at that, how do you (permanently) use up 80GB in a few minutes?

people that actually use their computers for stuff. They don't just sit in the corner looking pretty and occasionally get switched on to edit a text file.

Yeah, cause that's *exactly* the work process of a software developer...

M Gale = Eadon?

Re: NERD Alert!

Battery? Surely a thermocouple - noodle powered iPhone :)

Re: A few questions

1 640K is more memory than anyone will ever need

3 see 1

That's a pretty good analogy. Back in the days of the 640k limit (1985, let's say) your modem would've been around 2400 Baud. So, both the PC and the modem were slow and limiting and this was obvious at the time.

Five years ago, home broadband was at least a few Mbps (unless you were unlucky) and a PC would have a Core2 Duo; most people would get by just fine on that same equipment today.

IMHO, the jump from 1Mbps to 1Gbps would be nowhere near as beneficial as the jump from 1kbps to 1Mpbs was; sure, it'd be nice to have, but what's the killer application that justifies the huge cost compared to FTTC?

Really? You're volunteering to spend a week digging ditches with a shovel and lifting concrete slabs? That kind of work isn't much fun at the best of times, and it's snowing outside right now.

This is what makes getting FTTP for everyone tomorrow a pipedream - laying down the cable involves a lot of work, a lot of disruption and a lot of money.

FTTC works pretty well, in my experience. New builds and areas where it's reasonable to upgrade should get fibre, of course, but 1Gbps to the home isn't a human right and no one should expect Openreach to throw away the cost/benefit calculations just so they can have fast broadband while living in the middle of nowhere.*

(*Yeah, I know there are some areas which have been unjustifiably ignored, and that sucks, but in general the prioritising makes sense; greatest good for the greatest number and all that.)

Re: Elephant in the room - only Windows needs AV.

Are you [Eadon] that blinkered by MS/Hate that you think there are no other threats to other OSs'

Yes, yes he is.

PS - prepare for your token downvote from Eadon, it's a badge of honour :)

@Eadon

The quality of the comments on El Reg is just appalling.

Ironic, huh?

@Moeluk

You clearly woke up on the wrong side of the bed then... (and george michaels bed by the sound of it..)

What a strange thing to say. As I wrote above, the iPad was my girlfriend's (now fiance's). But even if I was gay, why would that be a problem for you?

What is so difficult about

3) Using the iPad

Bollocks. This was an original iPad (all of 2 years ago) and you could get no further than the power-up screen without a PC, iTunes and an internet connection. That is shitty.

The irony here is that you wrote a list of instructions; Apple didn't, they used a few runic symbols, because presumably Jobs didn't want to spoil the purity of the experience with actual printed words.

but you carry on with your rage....it won't shave precious hours off your life at all...

Like I said, I thought it was poorly done, but millions of people have bought them and been happy, so what do I know? No rage here, but you do seem to be trolling and not doing it very well, either.

Re: Consider me baffled

What the...why would you get your mum an iPad if she didn't have the Internet?

This can only be trolling!

Looks up, sees a ceiling instead of a bridge, nope - I'm not trolling! :)

It's turning from a rant to a boring story, but we didn't set out to get her an iPad. My partner got given one at work as a bonus but she didn't want it; we tried to get rid of it on ebay, but gave up due to the faffing about with verifying bank accounts, which was required to sell expensive electronics with only a short transaction history. As it was xmas, giving it to my mum seemed like the best option.

In any case, that doesn't matter, I stand by my argument that the iPad experience sucks. The IKEA-style , the endless requirements that aren't written down, the unnecessary steps... What anyone wants with a shiny new device is to plug it in, turn it on, and do something! Not piss about endlessly!

Re: Consider me baffled

My father bought a Kindle HD the other day and remarked at how bad the "out of box" experience is.

My girlfriend got an iPad from work, which we gave to my mum for xmas, and I couldn't believe how bad the out-of-box experience was when setting it up for her:

1. A single cryptic page of 'instructions'...

2. Work out how to turn it on and find out it needs to be connected to a PC...

3. Connect it to a PC and find out that the PC needs iTunes...

4. Go to internet cafe, install iTunes on a PC, return home and find out it needs an internet connection...

5. Drag mum, laptop and iPad down to the internet cafe, and then find out it needs a credit card number for some bloody reason...

Honestly, I thought it was awful, yet millions of people buy them and are very happy, so what do we know?

Re: VAT

All taxes are added into the price of the goods, so the consumer pays it..

You don't understand corporate tax.

Tax is paid on profit. Even if the profit on doing business is lowered, as long as it is still profitable, a company will provide that good or service.