Posts by Ross Beavis
34 posts • joined Monday 15th January 2007 14:38 GMT
Posted in Canon Pixma MP560
If you have a semi-pro digital SLR
... then chances are you're going to be post processing before you do any printing. And chances are you have a semi-pro printer to print them on too.
Still, if the card reader presents itself to the OS via USB, then that could be a good way to de-clutter your desk.
And what's with the 15 page tray underneath? Is it really 15 or 150?
Posted in Is LTO-5 the last hurrah for tape?
Manufacturers
I think you're forgetting that there are other manufacturers who make LTO4, namely Tandberg, TDK and Sony that I know of, so it stands to reason that at least some of these should continue to make LTO5 as well.
Good grief
'"Members of the public and the media do not need a permit to film or photograph in public places and police have no power to stop them filming or photographing incidents or police personnel," it says.'
It almost sounds like the Police have finally realised that we have rights and they have no right in law to remove or overlook those rights. But I'll believe it when I see it.
Let's hope this guidance propagates to all the Police forces quickly.
Posted in ATI FirePro plays leapfrog with Nvidia
Re: Today's To Do
Did you not read the article?
"...for CAD, Digital Content Creation (DCC) and oil and gas professionals... for corporate installations that require high-end graphic performance."
and
"The V8750 is for pro users who need hyper-accurate 16-bit RGB color and 2560-by-1600 multiple-display resolutions."
Believe it or not, there are some people who do need this kind of performance.
Posted in Digital Vision GiGo DV-DTR1 USB PVR
GiGo
What do you mean "there's no 'garbage in, garbage out' about it"?! It's freeview! Scratch that - it's TV! There's always garbage!
Posted in Wyplay Wyplayer
Shame...
It's a shame it's not really suitable for the UK market and that there are problems with the GUI, because the box looks nice, the GUI looks nice, and would provide the exact functionality I want - dual TV recorder unit with media playback (mostly MP3s and DivX) functionality.
Posted in eSATA: A doomed stopgap?
Poor maths
Poor maths there...
4.7Gbit/sec ≠ 470MB/sec
4.7Gbit/sec = 601.6MB/sec
Seriously, it doesn't take much to do (4.7*1024)/8.
On another note, I would say eSATA is more likely to die than FireWire. eSATA is a one trick pony - it does storage only. As good as the transfer rates may be, it's not as convenient as either firewire or USB. Firewire 400 still beats the pants off USB 2 for sustained data transfer, despite having an 'inferior' specification, and it has many uses which USB can't match, most notably digital video (DV) and high end audio (see products like the DigiDesign Pro Tools 003 rack) - but it obviously does much more than eSATA and is well established, so is more likely to survive.
But having said that, if eSATA 3 matches the SATA 3 specification for speed, then I'm sure that purists would much rather have the speed of 768MB/sec (which is probably more guaranteed than any 'burst' speed supplied by the inferior USB 3 specification). This will be especially important for those doing (again) digital video, especially HD, and high end multitrack audio. The other benefit of eSATA is being able to put the external drives into a RAID, which you can't do with USB (or at least, not in the same way, and not without taking a hit to performance).
I'll switch...
... to energy efficient light bulbs when they make them dimmable, and fit in a small screw cap fitting, and make them the same colour temperature as tungsten lamps, and remove the 'warm up' time, and until then, they can get stuffed.
Posted in Apple updates full desktop Mac line-up
Mini
Does this mean that the Mini is dual screen capable? If so, I'd actually be half tempted.
Posted in Gov portal hits Teletext and Freeview
"advice on keeping your house warm"
Oh joy. Do they really need to launch a freeview channel telling me to turn the heating up and shut the windows?!
I know the state of society is declining et al, and people are getting stupider, but really, is it THAT bad?!
Surely they have better things to spend money on in the middle of a recession?
Paris, cos even she knows how to keep warm.
Fuzzy logic
Is it just me, or does it not seem that if making the battery removable would take up precious chassis space, it would make more sense to have non-removable batteries on the MB and MBP15, than on the MBP17 where there is far more chassis space available?
If they can fit the same spec of the MBP17 (i.e. Core2Duo, dual graphics cards, HDD/SSD, optical drive and RAM) into a 15 inch chassis, would that not leave them with loads of space to spare, to fit in an even bigger battery AND a release mechanism for it? The only component that might take up more space is the inverter for the larger LCD.... oh, and that generous extra 1 USB port.
Posted in Supermicro does micro server for SOHOs
Would be a winner
... if it weren't for the 2GB RAM limit. I'd like to see at least 8GB so I can run some VMs on there. Then SOHOs could run multiple servers on one box and make a saving in hardware and energy costs. Seems like a missed opportunity, especially given it's got massive storage potential with 4 drive bays and RAID 5.
So, it would make a useful storage box but not a lot else.
Shouldn't this story be under reg hardware?!
Mine's the one with a copy of VMware Server in the pocket.
Posted in Fujifilm FinePix S100 FS digital camera
Focal length
7.1-101.5 mm focal length, equivalent to 28-400mm on a 35mm camera???
That might seem impressive, but that's one tiny sensor if it's got a FOVCF (field of view crop factor - see http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Canon-Lenses/Field-of-View-Crop-Factor.aspx) of 4x.
That's an 8.8mm sensor, vs 22.2mm on the Canon 400D and 450D.
The smaller the sensor, and the more megapixels, the more noise you'll get on your photos, and the less sensitivity there is because less light falls on each pixel.
Bait
The new macbook is less bait than the old one. Sure, it might look more attractive, but the extra £250 on the price tag sure doesn't.
A Mac Mini revamp would be welcome, seems to be the only truly affordable Mac these days, unless you build your own and bodge OS X onto it...
Fuzzy terrabytes
The wording of the formatted capacity is a bit fuzzy. To clarify, it is not formatting that results in a loss of ~100GB of space, (meaning the OS used to format is irrelevant), rather it is the fact that all HD manufacturers (as Parax pointed out above) lie about the capacity. 1TB to them = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. 1TB to the OS = 1,099,511,627,776.
Of course the latter figure above is actually 1TiB, not 1TB, but the confusion is caused because Windows and other OSes refer to drive capacity and file size in MB, GB, and TB, but they *actually* mean MiB, GiB, and TiB.
So their 1.5TB = 1396.9838619232177734375 TiB.
Alien, because these measurements are alien to a lot of people.
Posted in RM Asus miniBook Plus netbook
Re: AC - Another fundamental mistake
What is it with the Linux trolls? When will people realise that Linux is not the be all and end all? It's not the perfect operating system for every situation. A lot of schools and corporations are locked into Windows either by the software that they use or over controlling execs, leaving the IT dept with little choice in the matter.
El Reg even made that point pretty clearly in the article.
I agree that Linux should be an option, but if it's not, just get over it.
Sheesh.
Posted in Panasonic shows world's smallest DLSR
Wouldn't want one...
...purely for the fact that if it has no mirror, it won't have the satisfying 'click' when you press the shutter release... which is surely the only reason for buying a DSLR?!
Posted in Pioneer Kuro PDP-LX5090 plasma HD TV
Pioneer plasmas
This is all well and good, but aren't we forgetting to mention that Pioneer no longer manufacture their own plasmas?
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/03/07/pioneer_ends_plasma_panel_production/
Posted in LaCie's rugged rubber drive hits 500GB
Wouldn't trust it
Not since I've seen two Lacie drives go up in smoke, literally. Plus it has a Hitachi DeathStar in it - never a good start!
Posted in Asus launches second-gen Eee PC
XP Pro
Can't we get XP Pro? Some people need to connect these things to corporate networks - so why XP Home? It's not like using Pro as standard would rob home users of any functionality!
Binary turd
"lay a small binary turd".... this one had me chuckling for quite a while...!
O2
Not only do O2 have a 3G network, they also have an HSDPA network which was recently extended, as I noticed my reception outside of London went from being 3G to HSDPA.
The limit that Steve Todd refers to is actually 128kbps which is one that O2 have placed on all their customers, which can, apparently, be removed upon request. Note that 384kbps is actually the maximum speed of 3G, and 1.2Mbps is the maximum speed of HSDPA.
More details on the limits here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/09/o2_speed_limits/
Posted in Comcast acquires BitTorrent for $53bn
Too obvious
It's a shame Cade Metz made this article too obvious an April Fool, as up until the 4th paragraph it was quite funny! Aquiring Apple and IBM is just over-doing it on the April Foolery!
Posted in Jimmy Wales resigns from Wikipedia
You know it's an April Fool
...when it claims to be a Reg exclusive!
Brings its own bugs
It seems to fix these bugs and security issues in a very unique way - on all the machines at our office that have been updated, it's actually uninstalled the Adobe Reader 8 application completely.
Perhaps not the intended result, but certainly seems to fix the bugs from previous versions!
Posted in eBay employee 'torpedos' fraud trial
NI
@Neil Weller - we're technically the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - so NI is included in UK, but not GB, regardless of what your passport might say.
I'm with Martin Benson on this. I've had a flawless experience with ebay, in excess of 180 successful transactions all with 100% feedback. The fact is most people that have commented will have done so because they wanted to moan about the fact they've been defrauded. The ones who haven't had problems mostly can't be bothered to pipe up. You're going to get exceptions of poor customer service no matter which shop you buy from, be it Harrods, John Lewis, dabs.com, ebuyer, ebay, Currys, etc etc. No where is perfect.
Posted in T-Mobile UK slides out latest Sidekick
It's hideous
It's hideous! Why would any self-respecting 15-30 year old be interested in a two-handed device when they're proficient at using a normal phone in one hand without even needing to look at it? And why would 15-30 years olds be interested in mobile email/IM? It's what texts are for. Any 20-30 year old who needs mobile email is going to get a Blackberry from work anyway!
Pointless and fugly.
What's the point?
At the moment, you buy a CD to avoid DRM and to get it in the highest quality possible. What's the point of going into a shop and buying some low-fi MP3s badly encoded on a read-only (I presume) USB stick that's not going to fit nicely into a CD rack, only to get the same shabby quality you can download from iTunes?!
They tried replacing CDs with the minidisc - and that flopped. What makes them think this is going to fare any better?
Posted in BT home router wide open to hijackers
@@@WEP
Having an 802.11b adapter doesn't necessarily limit you to WEP and exclude WPA. I have a Wii (which by the way comes with an 802.11b adapter), which connects by WPA2.
@Paul Thomas - he wasn't talking about the Wii. His post clearly mentioned the DS, and not the Wii.
Say no
I while ago I discovered a handy dandy website:
http://www.saynoto0870.com
You can search by company or number to find geographical numbers for non-geographics.
Posted in The Revenge of the BlackBerry killers?
Blackberrys
My company uses Lotus Notes and Blackberrys integrate perfectly with it (from an email point of view, at least - database integration is another matter entirely), I can't see a Windows Mobile offering that kind of integration with Notes any time soon...
Collect @ Store
Last time I tried to buy something on their website and collect at store (a Wii Nunchuk), I succeeded in reserving the item, went to collect it, only to discover that it wasn't on the collection desk. I asked a member of staff (they were all hanging around by the tills having a laugh together - heaven forbid they should help a customer), who went to check the warehouse - none there. Their computer said there were two in stock, and their website certainly indicated that they had stock, so either they had over sold, had some nicked, or the monkeys didn't know where to find them.
Hardly surprising
This is hardly surprising news when I'm running a fairly high spec PC with 2GB RAM and a 3.4GHz P4, and whilst it runs vista quite adequately, it's using 50% of the RAM just to run Lotus Notes, Firefox, IE and Messenger.
Time to buy up all the stock of XP copies while you can...
Ethernet cables
Some people so easily overlook the value of traditional old ethernet cables. I had 4 links laid from my server cupboard to my office in my new flat and it's far better than wireless or powerline as it's at full gigabit over dedicated CAT6 cables. It cost about £80 including labour of an electrician to put in, cable and wall boxes which is a fraction of the cost of powerlines.
Sometimes a simple 5 or 10 metre run of cable is the easiest and most secure option and it's really easy to run round skirting board/architrave or through walls and doors. Even easier if you have dry lined walls.
