Re: Hope it's true
Bad news.
55 publicly visible posts • joined 10 May 2011
Probably.
I have no real problem with a company not wanting or being able to support its products outside their home country, it's an expensive job, especially for a small organisation.
But when that product is hyped by all and sundry without mentioning the drawbacks that is a problem as people will buy it and end up with a door stop.
When manufacturers make claims about waterproof equipment I'd be much more impressed if they quoted the IP rating.
IP44 or IP55 for this kind of product would be great.
If it's only IP42 it's much less impressive.
<see ratings here if unfamiliar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_Code#Code_breakdown>
Or, put another way, if a similar app asked you to give your online banking password so it could log you in, would you let it?
Fundamentally this is no different.
Personally I'd be OK with something like this as I'd never use it for something sensitive. For waiting on hold for Vodafone/Sky/British Gas and the like it seems a good solution.
With the Honeywell CM927 available for between £90 and £130 (eBay to Amazon price range) you really have to want the iPhone integration for it to make any sense.
Anyone looking for a proper home automation job won't look at this anyway they'll buy something that integrates with existing HA protocols.
The thing I don't like about this system is that you have to mount two boxes to the wall.
I have a Honeywell CM927 which I prefer as I can move it around the house and the RF receiver fits on a standard backplate with no need to recess a box into the wall.
If you've an existing, surface mounted 'stat I can't imagine it's easy to cut a recess into the wall without risking cutting the cables. It's certainly going to be a harder job than replacing a standard room stat.
Being able to move the thermostat about means that I can put it in the kids room at night and be sure the temp won't drop below a minimum value.
Being non-movable, for my usage, is a massive downer on this unit.
Surely 'thin enough' is sufficient?
Presumably the engineering effort to make it thinnest has a bearing on price and for what - nobody cares that it's 0.1mm thinner than something else.
Just make it powerful enough, reasonably priced and not too heavy and it'll be fine.
Funny, the way I see it you're less likely to get attacked as you won't be carrying any real money, only money loaded onto a phone that only you can use.
I can see it both ways but if muggers start to realise that nobody carries cash any more, then, eventually, opportunist theft should go down.
Does rely on the electronic wallet being secure though.
Many companies pump out DVB, ATSC, CMMB, ISDB etc demodulators for the (very price concious) TV and STB market, it makes no sense for this kind of product to use anything else.
The few multi-standard demodulators that do exist are generally software defined receivers, these are very expensive in comparison and generally only go into expensive test and measurement equipment. Look up Rhode and Schwarz test equipment as an example.
So, it's not very hard to do but it is very expensive.
Then you have to think about why you'd want to make such a thing, the number of people who need multi-standard receivers is pretty low so you end up with an expensive thing that only is attractive to a handful of people, not a great business model (unless you're R&S).
C'mon Doug, be reasonable.
If a device goes back under warranty it could well be because it's _broken_ in which case the previous owner couldn't erase his/her data.
At this point you would like to think that the people responsible for repair and refurb care just a little bit about doing the right thing.
I've seen a superb demo of similar technology, it tracks your eyes to see where you're looking on the screen.
Web pages scroll as your eyes move, icons can be selected by sight and the advertising possibilities are endless (sadly).
This was with low resolution cameras too. I'd imagine kinect style technology would have no problem with it.
The days of the scrollwheel could be nearly over.
There'll most likely be a handful of variants, LTE, CDMA, etc. There's already a CDMA iPhone for Verizon so the precedent is set.
There's no point fitting expensive LTE chipset for phones destined for non-LTE markets.
For the relatively few people who'll be using it to roam it'll be mildly annoying but what other phone maker sells LTE phones in non-LTE markets?