Posts by Ian North
42 posts • joined Wednesday 20th June 2007 14:29 GMT
Posted in Belkin LiveAction Camera Grip
Surely this is a little obsolete now that iOS 5 uses the Volume Up button to take pictures with?
Posted in Dell flees netbook market, dumps Minis
"because ultrabooks tend to use faster low-energy chips from AMD and Qualcomm"
I thought that to be branded an Ultrabook, it had to use a specific Intel CPU?
As long as they fix the banking database that's been broken, they could come to work in a florescent pink mankini for all I care!
How the hell did that get past Apple's censors?!
Somehow I doubt this is is a UK exclusive phenomenon. Although I can't say that I've noticed it especially. Like AndrueC, I use Be and I get a pretty consistent level of service from them even in North London.
So what's the difference between one of these and a normal wine box then?
Does it matter? It looks like a laptop CD tray which clips the CD quite securely in place.
There is a lot of active circuitary in the present Thunderbolt cables. There's more to them than dumb cabling which accounts for much of the $50 price tag. Chances are that the optical transceivers will be in the cables themselves rather than in the ports.
Posted in Skype arrives on fondleslab
Facetime...
I'll say this for Facetime, for all of its faults it does seem to produce a clearer and smoother image than Skype does, from the iPhone at least.
I was chatting to my girlfriend over skype the other day, her on her iPhone and me on my computer. We decided to try Facetime for some reason. I could see her a lot more clearly and the framerate was higher. She said that she could see me more clearly too.
Same hardware on both ends, same internet connection.
SMB on Macs
Lion won't use Samba, it's being replaced with an SMB implementation rolled by Apple themselves. This is supposedly to get away from using GPL code.
Hmm
Going by that icon, it seems like they're running IE6 as well!
Posted in Apple vanishes Java from Mac OS X Lion
Not for much longer
"Windoze in comparison can still run win3.1 apps, dos programs etc"
Not for much longer it won't. 64bit editions of Windows already won't run 16bit software without virtualisation and I doubt that MS are developing a 32 bit version of Windows 8
At least...
it doesn't look like complete arse which is unusual for an electric car. And Nissans in general at that...
I can't help but agree with James May about electric cars. They will undoubtably the future in some form but the current implentations are too limiting.
Posted in Bookshop swaps Kindles for real books
Title...
1 and 2) That isn't a failing on the part of the e-reader, that's a failing on the part of whoever did the conversion process. I've got a couple of ebooks with illustrations and diagrams, they were at least as good as the paperback equivalents.
3) That depends on the device, surely?
4) Purchasing an eBook from Amazon uses the exact same process as buying a paper book with the added bonus of getting your new book right away
5) Depends on the book that you buy but I don't disagree entirely
6) With the Kindle at least, all of your purchases are stored on Amazon's servers and can be downloaded and redownloaded at will. The device itself can be backed up onto your computer too. What's difficult to archive?
Posted in Bookshop swaps Kindles for real books
Bloody luddite
Pagers, Laserdiscs and 1990 cell phones all got superseded by superior products, i.e. mobile phones, DVDs and 2000 era cell phones, not because the people didn't like them. I have no doubt that the Kindle will one day belong in such a museum but I don't think it'll be because people don't like the concept, it will be because something better would have come along.
Yes, I like books just fine but the Kindle (and eBook readers in general, lets not be brand specific here) is a really good concept. I got a Kindle for Christmas, I've so far loaded the better part of eighty books on it and can carry those books around with me where-ever I go. Can't do that with paperbacks.
But...
It connects to your phone by Bluetooth which means it has a range of all of six feet. Pretty useless if you have to leave your phone at your desk during said meetings.
Uh...
"Can you PLEASE get rid of any and all requirements for F6 Raid/SATA/AHCI driver installations?????????? What the frack, why is this still DOS? Every and any driver, firmware, software should be able to be installed in a Windows GUI environment as well as be updated, on the fly without ruining prior installations. I don't care how you do it, just do it."
Am I missing something here? You've been able to update Microsoft OS drivers in the GUI since forever. In addition, the installation routine for Windows since Vista has been completely GUI based and you no longer have to press F6 to load third party storage controller drivers. And you can upgrade some firmwares in the GUI as well but that's more dependent on the hardware manufacturer than the OS vendor.
Posted in Firefox wraps its gums around the iPhone
Opera?
"Apps that browse the web must use the iOS WebKit framework"
Does that mean that Opera Mini falls foul of the rules now then?
That's all very well and good...
but how does he get at the home button?
Meh
I don't see this as a huge problem personally. I've had my iPhone since January. I use the cellular network quite a bit (not for video or VOIP though) and so far I've used less than 400MB all in all. Those caps could be a lot worse
Posted in BBC ices launch of free iPhone news app
Same Data, Same Devices
Maybe so but generally speaking the data is presented in a much better way in a native app than on the webpage. There is a world of difference between (for example) the Wikipedia app and the mobile Wikipedia website despite the data being the same. Same for the eBay app, the Independent app etc
Posted in Belkin preps SuperSpeed USB 3.0 adaptors
Extra power?
What are the molex and AC adapter ports for? Will USB3 ports be able to provide more power to devices than USB2?
re: "Say What?"
"It's a gaming device, not a general purpose computer. Does Microsoft allow all and sundry to develop games to run on the xbox360?
No. No they don't."
Actually, I think they do. They have the XNA Game Studio which allows anyone to write and publish games for the XBox 360 via XBox Live.
Posted in Hisense 1080p Media Player
uPnP
Does iTunes count as a uPnP server that this thing can use?
Uh...
System Mechanic recommends you disable automatic updates and BITS? Are they crazy?
Posted in TomTom goes Jock to abuse English 'bas'
Meh
I got an email about three hours later from a Bas Komen apologising for the Dear English Bas mail. Seems to me that someone got their Mail Merge fields badly mixed up...
Posted in AppleT&T's MMS legal woes double
Who uses MMS?
Probably those people who don't have iPhones or other smart phones with unlimited data plans but have access to cheap PAYG or low-end contract phones. Not everyone has access to their email accounts everywhere and all of the time. Not everyone's phone has an email client. But most phones available now have colour screens and can receive MMS messages. Sometimes it's nice to have MMS in those cases.
Example, when my niece was born last year, I was in the middle of the French countryside with no internet connection. My sister still managed to get me a picture of her by MMS. If she'd emailed it to me instead, I wouldn't have picked it up for another week.
WTF?
It's a bigger WTF that he was using Outlook Express, surely?
Posted in Where has all the bad storage gone?
RE: RAID 1
Cris Wilson, RAID1 is not a replacement for a backup, merely a complement to it. It won't protect you against file or operating system corruption, it won't protect you if your computer gets destroyed or stolen. Solely relying on RAID 1 for disaster protection is an exercise in foolishness.
Hmmm
"The vulnerability affects Enterprise and Ultimate versions of Vista in both 32 and 64 bit flavours of the operating system"
Possibly a daft question but does this mean that it hasn't been tested on the other editions or does it mean that the other editions don't have this flaw?
Posted in Microsoft sneaks out Silverlight 2
Multi OS Support
Silverlight already works in IE and Firefox on Windows and in Safari and Firefox on Mac. There is also a Microsoft sanctioned Linux port called Moonlight which works with Konqueror, Opera and Firefox again. I don't see what else they can do to make it much more cross-platform than that!
Posted in Dell offers XP option for £44k
Re: Or (radical plan here)...
"...avoid a new Windows license altogether, get a Linux box and run Windows as a virtual machine if you need to."
Running Windows on a VM doesn't avoid needing to buy a Windows license...
Posted in Apple sued over 'inflated' iMac claims
20" iMac
I kind of agree with Thomas Reynolds although I don't love Apple quite so much. I have one of the new generation 20" iMacs too. I use it with a Dell 2001FP screen and there is a noticable difference between the two screens, the Dell is much nicer. That said, I'm not too bothered. The iMac's screen is good enough for my purposes and lets face it, 20" 8 bit panels are getting to be like hen's teeth these days anyway.
Posted in Apple updates laptop lines
Macbook RAM
"Again, 2GB of 667MHz DDR 2 memory comes as standard."
Not according to the Apple store. The base model still comes with 1GB.
RE: Logo
"i bet there's some bloatware windows version of logo nowadays, isnt there?"
There are several Windows versions of Logo available. One that is quite widely used in schools is MSWLogo and its successor, FMSLogo.
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=149686
MS HD-DVD Drive
"Curiously, the EHPG is nonetheless quite happy to include Microsoft's HD DVD add-on for the Xbox 360 games console in the debate, so we can only hope the organisation is praying the software giant chooses not to release a second-generation 360 with an HD DVD drive built in."
I suppose that the difference is that whoever decides to buy the HD-DVD addon for the XBox 360 is only going to use it as a HD-DVD player being as no software is going to be released on HD-DVD for the XBox. However, with the PS3 you get a Blu Ray drive whether you want to use it as a Blu Ray movie player or not.
Posted in Microsoft shouts 'Long Live XP'
RE: Downgrade Rights
Matt,
As long as you buy the PC with Vista Business or Ultimate or have an SA agreement to get Enterprise, you do have downgrade rights. However you don't with the Home editions.
Posted in BOFH: You think you know a guy...
A3000
According to Wikipedia, the A3000 did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes
Slot loader
"The M1330's optical drive is a slot-loader"
It's about *&@#ing time! I would really love to know why slot loading optical devices have been installed soley in Apple laptops for so long. For a laptop, they are such a superior design.
RE: compatibility
Jeremy,
There is an Office 2007 convertor available for Office 2003. It is available for download here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/HA101686761033.aspx
It works with all versions of Office dating back to Office 2000.
