t-mobile

Why would you sign your life away for 18 months? Just buy yourself a prepay dongle, £29.99 gets you 90 days of "unllmited" access and a dongle. At the end of the 90 days just buy yourself a new dongle or have a look around for a better deal. Sell the dongles on ebay to recoup some of the money.

To anybody suggesting giffgaff, give me a break. I have a giffgaff sim in my phone and the data service is appalling.

Now this is a good idea providing the HD copies

1. are in 1080p

2. contain proper 5.1 surround

I'd gladly pay $5 per disc to upgrade my DVDs to HD.

tried poweline

I had some powerline adaptors I was using to stream video, wifi reception was too poor so this was a good alternative. It worked great for about 12 months then one day the adaptors started showing average or poor signal suddenly it wasn't possible to stream even low quality iplayer, let alone full bluray rips. In the end I just put in a run of outdoor coax, gigabit speeds, perfect reliability.

Forgot the customary moan

1366x768? On a 14" screen? This laptop is not for watching films. The screen on this should be 1280x1024 or 1440x900

Is there money in it?

That's the question to ask,

Selling the big issue is fine because it is possible to make money selling magazines on the street, it's a business model that works.

I just can't see that this is a business model that works, who are you targeting? Can't be mobile phone users, if you can get on the mobile network then so can they. Can't be laptop users, to use a laptop to any degree you need to be sat down, if people are sat down, get them some chairs, sell them coffee and attach your wifi to a pole, much cheaper than a person. So that just leaves tablet users who don't also have a cellular connection on their device.

I think that puts this firmly in the degrading camp and is probably a step down from begging.

search box

The search box is still there and still works as a run box. Hit the windows key or click the non existent start button and start typing. They've messed one thing up though, in windows 7 you can load programs, documents or control panel just buy hitting start, typing the thing you're after and hitting return. In Windows 8 if you're looking for a control panel item, e.g. you're after power settings so you hit start type "power options" and hit return. On windows 8 if you do this you're told there are no results because by default you can only select the programs loading a control panel item or a document requires a click of the mouse.

I disagree with the author about the metro start being better for finding apps, where are the nested folders?

clever

So now Apple can have the networks annoyed at them for allowing tethering that hasn't been paid for and they're missing out on 30% of any subscriptions to the app.

Of course this is easily solvable by Apple, is there a need for open incoming ports on a phone?

desktop apps on touchscreen

Microsoft need to take a look at how the Citrix client works. I find that works pretty well on my xoom, it displays the mouse pointer and uses the whole screen as a mouse pad.

HP have had same density for years

The HP blade system can also fit 32 hosts in a 10U chassis. Difference being that HPs layout has 16 half height blades each one containing two, two socket servers. Still if you're aiming for this kind of density I doubt you're buying your servers in 1s.

Cost

Looks great from the spec, but what's it going to cost?

1920x1200 screen is great for Android, gives enough room for 16:9 movie @1080p + enough spare pixels for the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen.

The only thing that annoys me about my xoom is that it won't play back h.264 at more than standard definition unless it's encoded in a very specific way. I don't need HD for watching on the tablet but it means that I need to transcode any HD movies I have so that I can watch them.

This all sounds great

Except.

1. You still need planning permission to put up all those masts and even though

more masts=less radiation people will still oppose them so you won't be able to get the coverage.

2. 100Mbps speed or anything approaching that will only be available if you live under the mast (see 1.)

3. any mobile network based Internet is going to come with tiny bandwidth caps, e.g. 10Gb per month so with your 100Mbps it can be used in 1'40"

Do people buy basic?

I haven't seen a copy of 7 basic. With Vista basic used to appear on crummy laptops that weren't high enough spec to worth buying but I've only seen Home Premium or starter on netbooks.

Also if Ultimate is dropped how will the paranoid home user encrypt their drives?

another ultrabook another rubbish screen

I think this would be my choice of ultrabook, I can get it for a decent price and it has a good selection of ports and a proper SSD, only Toshiba decided to fit it with a stupid low resolution screen.

Aimed at business

If it's aimed at business, why does it have a 16:9 screen?

Smart Drive

So this is different to the red lights on bad drives green lights on good drives?

Not much to see here

So to perform this hack you need physical access to the phone? Turns out that if you get hold of my wallet you will have all my credit card numbers, my driving license with my DOB and address. That sounds like a far easier way of obtaining this information.

Of course a nefarious app installed on a rooted phone is a bigger problem has it opens the potential for a remote attack. However I've yet to find a situation where pay by bonk is in any way better than cash or chip and pin.

Nobody will buy this

It's not apple and It's too expensive.

I picked up a Motorola Xoom when they were £250, that is the kind of ballpark price tablets need to be in to succeed on any great level. Otherwise they're just a niche product.

I have an idea

You know those radio signals that our phones are using to transmit our speech and text messages. What if the mobile providers allowed us to use those to send and receive data? Then we could use the net anywhere we had a mobile signal. Just an idea.

I'm a Giffgaff customer because it's cheap, but because I'm a giffgaff customer I have to endure O2's shocking data network. It's fine for checking the odd web page and my email works OK but there are loads of things that just don't work. I can't download anything, apps, music, all fail yet work fine over wifi.

Software

So the Lumia, and the Blackberry get negative comments because you have to install their software to get video off of the phone. No mention of the required iTunes infestation in the iPhone review. I also think more needs to be made of the hideous rolling shutter effect; it's very pronounced on the sample video from the Nexus and quite a few others.

All in all though a pretty good round up, I'd say the iPhone's lack of continuous autofocus works in its favour. Some of the other phones, particularly the Lumia seem to struggle with constantly refocusing on the wrong thing. The sensor size of these cameras means that apart from extreme close ups the depth of field will take care of most focus issues for you.

A bit disappointing not to see some gig footage shot with each phone. I find this is a huge test for a phone, flashing lights are tricky for almost all of them and the ability of the onboard microphone to deal with a really loud sound system should have been mentioned.

More powers needed for the ASA

Rather than fining companies or banning adverts the ASA needs to be able to prevent companies from advertising.

1. ASA needs to offer a service funded by the advertiser to get their adverts checked in advance

2. Adverts not checked in advance that are found to be in breach of the code will result in removal of the right to advertise for that company for a period of time.

3. Repeat offences by a company result in longer bans

4. Repeat offences from ad houses result in the ad house being banned.

No fining or retrospective slaps on the wrist required.

On the plus side, it's a nice shot.

resolution madness

So Samsung are quite happy to produce a tablet with an 11.6" screen and a crazy high resolution but their "ultra"book is limited to a paltry 1366x768 on a larger 13.3" screen.

They obviously see the need for larger resolution screens and they are producing them, how about a bit of joined up thinking to put the two together. This screen in an ultrabook would be worthy of name.

hybrid analogue/digital tuner

Is that a dual tuner or single? Is it DVB-T2 or plain old DVB-T?

I'm guessing it's a single analogue tuner and a single DVB-T. What a waste of time.

Superman

As anybody who has watched superman will know, time is governed by the rotation of the earth. Therefore it's the atomic clocks that are wrong so it is imperative that we keep the leap second.

Have you seen my phone?

Looks like a mess to me.

Which part rings? What happens when you take the screen to work and leave the other part at home? How big is the hub? Why would I want to carry and charge two gadgets to do the work of the one I have now? What happens when the girlfriend wants to watch TV but I'm out with the phone? Or use the computer whilst I'm watching the TV?