* Posts by Ewen Bruce

29 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Jul 2007

Apple MacBook Pro 15in June 2009 release

Ewen Bruce
Megaphone

Limiting choice?

How is Apple "limiting consumer choice" by building the battery in? That sounds dangerously like touchy-feeley marketing-led gibberish to me. You have the choice to not by the laptop if you want a removable battery, but since 98% of laptop users don't buy a spare battery anyway, who really cares? I suppose they're 'limiting consumer choice' by making is silver too; don't people who want pink and yellow stripey laptops have rights too?

Airline websites forced to clean up

Ewen Bruce
Happy

Tell me its not true

Ryanair? Must do better?

Some mistake shurely?

Angelina Jolie spied with Palm Pré

Ewen Bruce
Paris Hilton

That's good enough for me.

If a renowned technology expert like Jolie give it the thumbs up, as far as I'm concerned the debate is over. Where can I hand over the cash?

Slimline iPhone pictures unearthed

Ewen Bruce
Happy

Someone's been busy in Photoshop

And where is the headphone jack supopsed to go? Bluetooth only ? (joke!)

iPhone surfs to mobile web domination

Ewen Bruce
Happy

Crackberry surfing

>>Why aren't BlackBerry numbers reported in these surveys?

Could it be, and I know I'm out on a limb here, because the Blackberry browser is a big pile of steaming unusable crap?

Microsoft SKUs Windows 7 clarity

Ewen Bruce

Futile marketing gibberish

Look MS, its an OPERATING SYSTEM!! It something I only care about to the extent that it provides the platform for the things I want to use. I know you'd really like me to get excited about it, but I just don't give a monkeys. I want one, simple, secure OS that runs my applications; why is that such a hard concept to grasp?

Don’t let Microsoft timescales dictate your Windows migration

Ewen Bruce
Jobs Horns

Whither the benfits case?

"larger organisations that have taken Vista fully on board report significant payback from operational improvements". Really? maybe you should tell MS as they haven't come up with any after 2 years of asking.

Microsoft releases Vista virtualization

Ewen Bruce
Alert

Ignorance is bliss

There seem to be equal levels of stupidity on both sides of the argument; from the MS haters who rubbish whatever they do, and from MS themselves with their over zealous marketing hype (who the **** deploys anything, anywhere, without testing it??).

Med-V is the first iteration of a product based on technology MS acquired last year and it has a role in an overall desktop visualization solution. One of its benefits is the ability to 'hide' the fact that the legacy app is running in its own little bubble from the end-user and give them a seamless interface. Quiet clever actually. Then again, I've actually seen it working, so I suppose that means my opinion doesn't count......

Last major VHS supplier ejects from tape biz

Ewen Bruce
Gates Horns

Really?

"According to research by LG Electronics the average person in the UK will spend £350 ($516) on home cinema equipment this Christmas"

Yeah sure. probably one of the least believable statistics this year. Must be a special definition of 'average' cooked up by LG's marketing department.

IDC sees virtual desktops in corporate future

Ewen Bruce
Unhappy

Whiter Xen?

You have to question the validity of a report on desktop Visualization that doesn't include the Citrix offering but includes niche players like Sentillion and Moka65 alongside VMWare. OK, its difficult to judge without shelling out for the full report and reading it all, but it just looks ......weird. Its a bit much to expect them to include IBM's offering since it was only announced last week. @ Christopher - agreed, it would be good if at least one of the big analysts paid some attention to Sun - maybe Sun need to take them to lunch more often?

IBM takes on VMware virtual desktop

Ewen Bruce
Happy

Linux is the future

"When we look back several years from now, I think we’ll see this time as an inflection point when the economic climate pushed .... Linux.... from theory to practice"

Maybe my memory is going as I get older, but I'm sure I've heard that sentiment before somewhere.

You've got to admire their optimism.

VMware to cut desktop storage by 80 per cent

Ewen Bruce

Unix Scmunix

What's the point in banging on about Unix having had this capability for 300 years? Businesses run on a WIn32 platform - that's what VMWare is delivering to. Is it a 'my Dad's older than your Dad' argument?

Ewen Bruce
Happy

All well and good buy....

...all VMWare have right now is a collection of vapourware. They needs to start delivering some of this in a comprehensive package that businesses can actually deploy, and soon! Citrix are ahead of them in delivering so they better get a move on - if they can come up with something better than Citrix's hopelessly overpriced licensing models they might be on a winner.

Open source fanciers finger Beeb's Win 7 'sales presentation'

Ewen Bruce
Stop

How to make a fool of yourself in on easy lesson

Oh dear, the OSC is starting to look like a small petulant child with nothing better to do than complain about perceived wrongs against its morel high-ground. The fact that it can't even get its facts straight just adds to the embarrassment. I’m more cynical than most (journalists) about the prospects for Windows 7, but complaining about 3 minutes of shallow BBC coverage hardly seems worth the effort of an e-mail.

MP calls for Jezza Clarkson's head

Ewen Bruce
Unhappy

I'm appalled and outraged

Here we go again, all aboard the outrage bandwagon......

Maybe the 'disgusted of Tunbridge Wells' MP should stop generating headlines for himself and get on with the job he was elected to do instead of being offended on behalf of others?

BBC's TV detector vans to remain a state secret

Ewen Bruce
Happy

Vans? Wot vans?

Anyone ever seen a van? Anyone ever had a vist from the 'enforcers'? If yuo have, let this guy know .http://www.bbctvlicence.com/index.htm

MacBook range revamp snippets slip out

Ewen Bruce
Gates Horns

Low end missing?

Before all the 10 year olds start their silly mac-love mac-hate bollocks (too late already I see), I'd just like to say It'll be a shame if there is no low end relatively cheap macbook; not an EEEPC competitor, but something in the range that would compete with the low end HP / DELL kit while offering the non-windoze experience. I know Stevie says he 'doesn't do cheap', but he could surely try it just this once- get the casual purchaser hooked then sell them something dearer next time. C'mon Steve; you know it makes sense.

iPhone secure enough for Japanese enterprise

Ewen Bruce
Alert

Oops!

Either they've found a device encryption product, or they're idiots. I wonder which one it could be?

SCCs, MIDs to achieve laptop-matching sales by 2013

Ewen Bruce
Go

Deja Vu?

Didn't someone say "Laptop sales are forecast next year to exceed desktop sales for the first time ever" last year, or was it the year before that, or maybe the year before......

How much do these people get paid for making stuff up? I see a new career ahead. Did you know sales of small white things are forecast to outstrip sales of larger grey things at some undetermined point in the future, maybe, unless something else happens?

That'll be £500 quid please.

HP loads PC with nonexistent web browser

Ewen Bruce
Linux

Spin spin spin!!!!

An application in a sandbox? that would be local application streaming then. Hardly news is it? Nice work by the marketing department though

Palm launches £399 Treo Pro

Ewen Bruce
Happy

Reminds me of something

No let me see; the styling of the back and the buttons reminds me of something. Can't quite think what is though; I think it begins with an 'i'.......

Nice to see they're being original.

NHS IT: what went wrong, what will go wrong

Ewen Bruce

Never mind....

at least "lessons will be learned......."

Vista SP1 downloaders bite back

Ewen Bruce
Happy

The new rules

So its not "never install a new MS OS until the first Service Pack", that's the golden rule any more, its "never install a new MS Service Pack until the first Fix Pack"

Microsoft buys virtualization tot for help with Vista

Ewen Bruce

Don't mistake activity for effectiveness.

"Microsoft has spent years working on desktop virtualization" . Really? They've been keeping it pretty quiet then. Presumably you mean its speny years buying up other companies and doing nothing much else with them.

It's official: Toshiba surrenders to Blu-ray

Ewen Bruce
Happy

What's in a name?

So, is there another reason that Blu-ray won apart from the fact that it's easier to say than HD-DVD and makes small people think of ray-guns?

The Revenge of the BlackBerry killers?

Ewen Bruce

Get over it....

Here we go again.

While the IT press continues its fruitless search for a “Blackberry Killer”, the rest of the world is getting on with deploying devices that just work without endless hours of configuration and fine-tuning, need little or no maintenance, have a solid and secure infrastructure behind them, and deliver the services that really matter to businesses.

I laughed myself silly reading this article (well, not quite). How can you possibly produce a headline like that and not even include a Blackberry in the comparison. From the opening paragraphs, you seem to have little or no understanding of what large businesses really need from a handheld device, and scant knowledge even of what the latest Blackberry devices look like.

Keep searching, and get back to us when you’ve worked out what it is you’re looking for.

p.s. Did anyone mention Lotus Notes integration? No, I didn’t think so. Businesses don’t use it anyway, ……….do they?

The BBC iPlayer 'launch' that wasn't

Ewen Bruce

Take it away and shoot it please..

As a supporter of the open source community, and someone who’s about to switch from a PC to a MAC, can I just request that the BBC doesn’t spend ANY time and cash on making this pile of b*llocks available on anything other than Windoze, which is exactly where it belongs.

I received my signup mail the other day; bravely ventured onto the site using my supplied username and password and got as far as selecting a program to download before it informed me that Firefox was on it's blacklist of evil software. Over to IE; trawl through the same process to find out that I have to install the player. Done that; back to square one, try the download again and it wants to install a Kontiki active X control (thanks for the warnings and up-front information about this Mr. Beeb). Why does Kontiki make me think of lashed-together lumbering barges? Taking my life in my hands, I install the player and go through the whole damn thing again. Now it wants my username and password, but rejects the password because it too short (insert set of suitable expletives here). Worked out that it wants me to register for an iPayer account and the username and password they sent me isn’t REALLY a username and password (how silly of me to think it was…). Set up the account, log-in, go back to the download and…… it tells me I’m not in the UK and I can sod off until I am. Cripes; that’s going to make it a bit difficult to get to work in the morning; wonder where I am? The iPlayer has seemingly teleported me to another country. Next steps; delete iPlayer, delete invitation e-mail. Problems all solved now.

BBC; go to the bottom of the class. 0 out of 10. Just because it was a good idea 3 years ago, that doesn’t mean it makes any sense whatsoever now. Go away, and don’t come back until you’ve come to your senses.

Apple 8GB iPhone components 'cost $220'

Ewen Bruce

New toys are alwasy expensive

I remember when I got Mouse-Trap for Xmas whe I was six by Dad said it looked like tuppence worth of plastic.

Nice to see El Reg exercising the same degree of in depth analysis.

Thin clients catch VDI for VMware access

Ewen Bruce

Marketing spin

I assume ""In addition, if a customer already has non-OEM licences for Windows XP, they can re-use those for VDI" is a marketing man's way of saying.... "if you buy hardware with OEM licenses (as most corporates do), you'll have to buy the licenses again at Microsoft's extortionate rates if you want migrate to a VDI infrastructure"