Posts by Inquisitive

Looks like fingers crossed for Win 10 then.

Basically Microsoft has a long way to go and all seems to hinge on Windows 10 and having just dipped a toe into the Windows 8.1 water with a Hipstreet W7 tablet from Carphone Warehouse for £49 I now have a little idea of what all the fuss has been about with W8. But the device I have just bought is not much good beyond surfing and checking e-mail as I have just found out you can't move some of the apps onto the memory card or indeed download any apps onto a memory card. That's not to say it doesn't work well for a £49 device but up to now I've been running Win7 and have an Android tablet and phone and have always had enough space to download stuff and move it around but although the Hipstreet W7 says its 16GB It's just about full running what it has already.

Apps

One major complaint with Windows hardware is the lack of apps compared to other OS's well for me having just bought my first Windows 8 flavoured gadget, a tablet, I take a different aspect to this problem. The Windows store is sparse in comparison to my Android tablet and phone but having said that I have found that I have the apps I need on my new fangled Windows tablet to do what I want and I question all the apps I have downloaded on to my Android stuff but never use. I'm not a gamer or Facebook/Whatsapp or other social media junkie I like news and so have news apps, sport, I have sports apps and access to my One Drive for documents, photos and such, oh and I still take pictures mainly with a DSLR. I am now looking at the recently released Microsoft 535 phone which is on sale at Argos for £90 which I am lead to believe after yesterday's Microsoft presentation will be upgraded to Windows 10 for free, maybe just for one year but that is yet to confirmed at the moment I believe.

Looking at my Android tablet, Galaxy, I have 12 apps there that I haven't used yet this year so I have to ask do I really need them but on the plus side I can move some apps to the memory card, on the Windows tablet I cannot, which is stupid. I hope Windows 10 rectifies that and I'm not sure if you can move apps to a memory card on Windows phone which will be a minus if you can't so will have to check that out.

Hipstreet

Mmmm this gadget looks suspiciously like the Hipstreet W7 I have just bought from Carphone Warehouse for £49 very similar in many ways. Win 8.1, Office 365 for a year all in a 7 inch model but my first taste of Windows 8 in any flavour as I run Windows 7 and have a Galaxy Tab 10.1, my phone is an Android too. I must say that after some fiddling about with the set up, mainly downloading some apps I wanted and deleting others I didn't then getting use to a Windows 8 tablet set up as being use to my Galaxy, I find the Windows 8.1 experience not all that bad.

Granted I'm not a power user or technically advanced like some posters on here but for a casual surf, check e-mail, write the odd Word document and look at stuff in my One Drive the Hipstreet is quite passable. I have added a 32GB memory card and one of the daft things compared to my Galaxy Tab is that you cannot move any apps or download any apps to the memory card, I have Googled the subject and it seems you just can't, most odd. So pictures and documents only on my memory card at the moment for but £49 it has given me a insight to all I have been reading about concerning Windows 8 and all the woes.

£400 to £500 for a phone? No way.

I never have and never will pay some of the prices being asked for a top spec phone, I don't care what system it runs I just find it crazy to pay something like £400 for a phone. It's the same with tablet computers, for what most people want a low cost, in the region of £200 say, is sufficient for most of their needs. I learnt my lessons when buying desktop computers, wanting an updated powerful machine was something I wished for and having paid nearly a couple of thousand quid to get it I find that only a few weeks later there appeared better spec machines at lower prices. As I say never again, I learnt the hard way.

One thing.

We are supposed to be reaching saturation point for mobile gadgets in the West it seems, be it phones, tablets whatever, but I don't see a glut of 1 or 2 year old gadgets for sale anywhere. And in some of those 'pawn' shops, if you call them that that these day, prices are still pretty high, so where are all the replaced gadgets? Yes some get passed down to family members but not all surely even E-Bay ain't all that cheap these days.

A genius amongst many geniuses.

I'm looking forward to this film having just finished the book about Bletchley Park, The Secrets Of Station X, a fascinating read. Without doubt Turing was an exceptional person with immense brain power but he was surrounded by other very able people who together made a formidable team. People like Dilly Knox, Gordon Welchman, Tommy Flowers, Bill Tute, John Tiltman, Max Newman, and many others who worked tirelessly to break these codes. But the book, whilst paying tribute to these brilliant people, also highlight the immense contribution made by the many women working at Bletchley at the time. They were the ones that had the gruelling task of sorting through all this mass of intelligence, logging it, putting the messages in legible ways and then not being able to be mentioned at the end of the war for all their efforts.

And of course it wasn't just the German Enigma that was being broken, the Japanese codes were also being broken and messages read and at this point the American's were very interested. They eventually got involved and even they were amazed at the organisational set up and after the war heaped praise on the help and co-operation they got but of course this too was kept fairly quiet from the outside world. If the film is anywhere as good as the book then I shall be pleased but as to whether the film sticks to the facts as known or just concentrate on other none existent aspects and embellish the story somewhat I will have to wait and see.

Oh dear!

Can't Microsoft just concentrate on stuff they already do and make it better, safer and with less bloat unless this is another business tool that us everyday folk have no interest in.

Freeview, a dissapointment.

For me Freeview falls well short of what I was expecting when there was a change to digital. I find it, at best, a bare bones service despite the advertising and an annoying thing is that even though some channels show up on the programme guide they do not appear when chosen. No I wasn't looking for a Sky equivalent but what is on offer is tepid and I regret getting rid of my old large old style Sky dish. Yes I could get dual LNB's and other none Sky equipment but I just can't be bothered I'll watch You Tube instead or just read a book.

Who do you think you are kidding Mr Hitler .............

Glad I visited when I did, it did turn out to be one of the best days out I have had Colossus and all the other stuff was fascinating. Why oh why cannot a compromise be reached, or is it, like most things these days just about money. At the moment it is a scruffy collection of huts, some all boarded up, but to me that is part of the attraction of the place but maybe it doesn't fit into how museums or exhibits should be these days.

I've read many books about the exploits in these ground by the best brains we had at the time and it took a while to grasp the significance of what actually went on. But some of Turing's writings were on display and though I accept that I would never have been considered for employment there, what he wrote was so way above my head that even after 4 or 5 readings I was still no nearer understanding what he had written, such brain power.

I got talking to someone who told me that Turing had moved on after the war from decrypting codes to the workings of the human body and how things could be improved to make us live better, even here he had some far reaching ideas. Great place, shame it has come to this.

Unjust conviction on many levels despite being 'right' at the time.

The British class system alive and well it seems, whereas Alan Turing was trying to save lives with his brilliant mind, other brilliant minds and well known homosexuals, were quite happy to give away our secrets to the Russians for many years. But though they were known homosexuals they were never arrested for such crimes of the day as was Turing.

Burgess, Philby, Maclean and Blunt, and few lesser known spies, were all, baring Blunt, 'allowed' to escape to their chosen utopia it seems and it was only Blunt who suffered any sort of humiliation when his knighthood was rescinded. It was a well known KGB tactic to entrap homosexuals because it was a criminal act back then.

Having visited Bletchley Park and having seen some of Turings surviving writings it was all so way above my head as to be sci - fi. I was told that he had moved on from this war time work and was working on other far out stuff, for the time, to do with brain functions and what could be done to help the human body be better, it is well worth a visit to Bletchley and Enigma is not the only reason for going there.

Sorry to pee on the party here but someone mentioned Microsoft Works, mostly derogatory, but for me it was an uncomplicated suite of programmes that was adequate for my needs. Much like that other underrated Microsoft piece of software, Office One Note, its an amazing piece of software and because its Microsoft its written off. No I'm not a Microsoft troll or apologist but I do believe that occasionally they do get things right and One Note is in that category.