I've heard of Disgo

Oh yes... Had one of their mp3 players for about a day, if I remember rightly. That should say it all.

Questionable

The instant scanner's a load of pants. I have just tested it against one of my sites that I know for a fact has elements IE6 bodges rendering through not supporting at all, and there's not a glimmer of a warning. As others have suggested, everything seems to be about getting it looking right on mobile devices (which it already does, TYVM) and Windows 8.

Better than the Gadget Show anyway

(as if that's difficult, these days)

Their small tablet comparison ran to the iPad Mini and the Kindle Fire HD, and that's yer lot... I guess Apple and Amazon paid them not to include the Nexus 7, which would have wiped the floor with both of them. I can't even remember which one won, so irrelevant it became in an instant.

Shame

Couldn't have happened to a nicer company.

Upgrading and compatibility

Looks promising that they have included a facility to transfer data across. Hopefully that applies to paid purchases as well as saved game data. Shame it looks like compatibility is a bit of a mode-based fudge though - this could have been a real winner if designed so that it was essentially an original Wii with some extra oomph, which could have meant that any title could seamlessly play on any generation device, but with extra features, detail etc enabled on the U. With consoles typically sold as loss leaders, that could have played very nicely into the hands of Nintendo, and ease across a customer base that might take a little bit of persuading to make the jump otherwise.

"using cellular merely to fill in gaps"

"using cellular merely to fill in gaps" - quite. But try telling that to the vocal minority on giffgaff who consider it their enshrined right to download gigabytes per day over 3G, and who stormed off in a huff when the tariffs were adjusted to make that at least remotely sustainable for the more reasonable masses...

Novatech

For cheap but hopefully not so nasty, please can we have a review of the Novatech "nFinity" ultrabooks, as previewed way back in March? The me-too-resolution screen would seem to be the only downside to the specs, and quite possibly liveable with for the sub-£500 asking price. TYVM.

Double dip

Why sell one iPad Mini when the fanbois will also buy its retina replacement in a year's time, and double the already exorbitant profit? In any rational world this would be an issue, but ... yeah, well there you go.

Category icon bottom left in the screenshot?

Is that for tits or ass?

New resolution

Yes, it is about 25k pixels (2%) higher resolution, but 1280 x 800 is by far the more useful in practice, and lends itself to significantly more portable devices.

Predictably...

.... quite a lot of curved corners even in the early models.

contractual responsibility to deliver messages which have been paid for

If SMSes are unlimited, what is the unit cost per message to be refunded in the event of filtering?

(Yes, I know there are other ways of looking at the maths)

Third-party analytics

They also certainly used to use third-party analytics, and claimed there was no issue with doing so. No idea if they still do since I blocked THAT little feature, obviously.

Hypocrisy?

Apple ... said it removed all applications with pending lawsuits attached to them as a matter of course

Applied entirely fairly, and to hardware as well as software, Apple disappears into a singularity, right?

USP

From several years' experience of various different PVRs, a USP to me would be reliability - that's to say, the certainty (barring mechanical failure) that a recording set will in fact record at the appointed time, and not instead be forgotten about because of some arbitrary system reset, re-scan or lock-up the unit decided to initiate just to be bloodyminded. Sadly that kind of knowledge only comes from extensive use, so never makes it into reviews, only retrospective support forums.

Fossil?

I didn't think creatures trapped in amber were fossils, since they are not replaced by stone, but rather are preserved basically in stasis.

Of course Berwick wasn't first, either

Small areas of the UK went digital-only as much as a couple of years before Berwick, where active relays were in use for tricky terrain/geographic reasons and residents had to choose one or the other, unsurprisingly opting for digital. This was the case in part of my home town, and I very much doubt there weren't other similar areas around the land.

Who knows?

Seeing reports of people specifically claiming individual messages are missing from private threads and appearing publicly in the timeline instead. Do remember that Facebook's social graph doesn't really discriminate between different kinds of objects, whether public posts, private messages, users, scams or whatever. They are all interconnected. For a private message to be revealed to the world would just take a careless intern programmer (or a glitch in the distributed data model) to accidentally change some arcane property they'd not read the documentation for. It would not, as Facebook techs suggest in their "refutal", require a deliberate data move between tables, because a message and a wall post are not fundamentally different types of data within the system. Bear in mind not dissimilar things have happened intentionally, such as group notes being converted to wall postings without any prior warning.

So really who knows... In the meantime, it's quite fun being voyeuristic.

Sony

I supposed it's inevitable, having borrowed the design of the iPhone off a Sony prototype (sorry, inadmissible evidence, too damaging to the plaintiff) in the first place, that they now follow Sony's trend of using 16:9 screens and will probably claim it as innovative/patentable.

Could be good

From experience with Pure, this could be good. No PVR has ever been perfect at launch, but Pure have a good track record of understanding issues and making new firmware available, with a proper appreciation of the British market. The fly in the ointment is that two years down the line when its successor is launched, it will be abandoned and they will expect you to buy the new one if you wish to maintain the level of service to date.

Any word on whether that's an optimistically-rendered matrix display on the front, or just a logo? I'd certainly be expecting some visual feedback at that price point.

Free advertising

This has all been fantastic free advertising for Ed Sheeran, as if he isn't attracting enough interest already with the forthcoming Hobbit movie.

Digitiser grid

Is it safe to presume, given no mention in the review, that Archos are finally sourcing better touchscreen technology? All theirs I have ever seen in-store are blighted by a horribly visible digitiser grid looking like chicken wire laid over the panel.

Crapware

It'll be the combination of O2 and Sony's crapware that tips the balance, then. Reports are that although ICS likes a gig, it will run perfectly happily in half that in its purest form.

Bit late

They'll probably be told off for being too late, should have mentioned it before, etc etc, then still get awarded several more squillions by California's fundamentally biased legal system. I really don't see such a great difference between all this and Israel's convenient decision that Rachel Corrie wasn't murdered by them - except that no-one can bring Rachel back, whereas the sane world could make some redress if need be.

Whose ADSL network is it anyway, mostly?

Hmm?

"necessary to drive improved profitability and significant savings"

"necessary to drive improved profitability and significant savings"

and that's just for the customers, no longer over the barrel with ridiculously-priced consumables...

Shame most of these don't have SSD

SSD is the winning feature on any netbook, making it nigh on indestructible short of intentional abuse. OK, so I had to replace the one in my £120 AAO because it was just a bit too cheap, but it's totally convinced me for on-the-go usage, and I'd be very wary of anything spinning anything more than a cooling fan now. Besides, who on earth needs 500GB on a netbook? Between the SSD and the semi-permanent SDHC expansion on mine, I've got 24GB, and really struggle to make even a blip on that with my usage pattern. I'm sure others may use more with media etc, but really the huge storage should be on an opt-in basis rather than the default.

Incredible features

I liked the way the dpreview feature on this hyped up the removable memory card and battery, as features few smartphones have - I guess that is indeed the case if they can't see beyond the Apple logo on their iDevice.

Battery life

Given that it includes FM reception, what're the odds that the 60 hour life cited is in that mode?

" no known effort to trace or audit "

Or no known agreement to cooperate with often rather flawed and agenda-driven surveys, like the Greenpeace one that Nintendo usually bottom out in simply for refusing to submit?

Summary: Nintendo are probably imperfect, but no worse than anyone else except possibly in admitting it.

Design theory

" The design theory is that the intake air compression resulting from supersonic flight is sufficient to run the engine without the moving parts needed by conventional jets "

I thought it was more that there's plenty sufficient air intake, indeed that there's too much when that air's coming in at supersonic speeds. Hence SC (supersonic compression) Ramjet rather than a normal ramjet, which would be able to self sustain as described with subsonic airstream that wouldn't basically extinguish the engine.