I Pity XDA

I can see it now in 10 years time a whole raft of frantic posts/threads on XDA Developers forums from 17 year old kids who have bricked their parents cars trying to be l33t.

All in very, very bad english.

I've been a Virgin Mobile customer for many years now. TBH, their service has been reliable and I've never had any qualms about the speed of the data connection. As long as it will continues to be reliable, sync my mail and allow for some browsing and emergency tethering (which I can still do!) I'll be happy.

Do I need more than 2Mbps to my phone? Nah, not really.

This feature has been in since the Developers Preview was released

The factory reset and restore functionallity has been in since the Developers Preview was released. I've even done an instructional post about it last September! (http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-8/82530-how-refresh-reset-windows-8-a.html)

It is a good feature, but in it's current form still asks you to re-register (enter your serial number etc.) Windows for some strange reason. I look forwards to the beta cleaning up the process a bit though. I also couldn't comment on how long it would take an average desktop PC to retore itself as I was doing my trials on a relatively low powered Atom tablet. Still, it did exactly what it said on the tin, you just have to make sure you de-register any applications that require it (Photoshop Elements and the like) before you start.

Not sure

There are a lot of factors to consider here, but for me primarily there are 2 main points.

1. If it was shot down or fell out of the sky for whatever reason, it would be trashed, totally, and not just the hidden underside. As it is the one being displayed is in far too good a condition for this to be the case.

2. If it was 'hacked' or the Iranians had somehow taken control of it, they would need indepth knowledge of how to actually fly the thing and send the correct command/control signals i.e. what makes the flaps and other fight controls work. You can't just use a cheap joystick and FSX plugin to do this (although if this was how it was controlled, heads are going to roll somewhere in the US!).

By all the noise (or lack of it) from the US operators, they probaly have lost a drone. But is this the one being displayed? I remain skeptical.

Windscreen arial!?

As a long time user of the Pure Highway DAB radio I found the arial they provided you with that you stuck to the inside your windscreen next to useless and getting any kind of reliable DAB signal was almost impossible. The purchase of the £15 external arial however removed all fo these problems. i would suggest to anyone looking to purchase an in-car DAB product to look at getting an external DAB arial. It also means you don't have to spend a day trying to remove the horrible adhesive that gets left behind on your windscreen when you remove it!

Best music app I've tried yet

I purchased this last week and have installed it on my Wits A81E which I use as a large screen sat nav and in-car music system, and the sound output/quality and features are by far the best I've seen an any Android music player yet. It's also stable as anything, as some other plyers are, how can I put it? Flakey to say the least?

Anyway, thanks El Reg, a cracking recommendation.

Oh, and it also has the great feauture of starting off where you left it when you have rebooted/shut down, instead of having to navigate back to where you wanted it to be.

8 Million smokers....

That’s a hell of a proportion of the population, and given that yes, some will want to quit, they are still imposing a hell of a restriction on 20% of the population who, for the most part, don't want that restriction. Imagine restricting the various holy books used within the UK to having plain covers and only being sold out of sight? I'll bet less than 20% of the UK populous is church/temple/mosque going. There would be riots (albeit polite ones with harshly worded letters to the editor of various daily papers), and much mutterings about living in a dictatorship etc.

Also, given that the huge tax take that smoking brings in is something no govt want so see vanish they will then have to load that missing tax from every lost smoker onto non-smokers, coupled with the now aging population that will now require extra care/pensions. It’s a bloody stupid idea introduced by a government that didn’t take the hint from the drubbing Labour suffered that we want a government that does things for us rather than too us.

P.S. All those whingers complaining about the smell of tobacco smoke and how they ‘don’t like it’ I suggest they pay more attention to the fumes from traffic as they will be doing you are (and constant) harm, especially those of you based in London (itself like having a 40 a day habit!). Mind you, you're proberbly the kind of people who visit the countryside and complain about the smell of farms, livestock, trees etc.

Happy birthday old friend

You were my first computer, you gave me a spark which lit a fire and gave me the wonderful career I now have. I wish, like many of the more foresighted and prudent people here, that I'd kept you in a box in the attic, but sadly I can't even recall what I did with you. Sure you had your faults, but you also helped to create a whole new generation of coders and IT luminaries that would have otherwise never realised their potential. I'll be raising a glass to you this weekend you can be sure of that.

So what this survey actually says is....

...Joe Public think we spend all day staring at company issue iPads and engaging in various types of social media. Boy, are they in for a shock!

Apple get cheaper?!!

'The new model, then, will be lighter, cheaper and more functional.'

Lighter, yes, more functional, for a second generation device I would hope so. But cheaper? This is the same Apple we are talking about isn't it?

Unless they really slash prices I think that the Android tablets are going to more than fulfil users’ needs once you ignore the poseurs market. Even if you acknowledge that the iPad is a fantastically designed and implemented device (and it is) more people would rather look at the price vs. feature point than an expensive locked in device.

It's hardly a surprise

We at EduGeek have been saying this for quite some time. It is to our great shame that the UK has the best IT equipped schools in the world, yet the curriculum is completely useless in its realisation of the skills required in the real world. Secondary school children are taught what would have been called 'office skills' (Word, Excel, PP etc.) by a collection of former English, maths and science teachers. Very few schools are lucky enough to have 'techy' teachers who know anything beyond point-and-click. I left school at 16 in the mid-80's and had taken 'computer studies'. This course dealt with all aspects of computing including having to learn a programming language and produce projects using this language (BASIC), how processors and other components work, how computers operate in larger environments and a whole raft of areas that no longer get taught in the ICT curriculum now delivered in our schools.

Partly this is down to the lack of specialist talent teaching the subject in schools, and partly to the curriculum which doesn’t demand that talent needing to be present in the first place. I recall once being told that ICT in schools is about ‘teaching and learning’ and that the pupils learning of processes and problem solving were what mattered, not the fact that they were being taught a subject that overlooked 90% of what it should be doing.

A timely reminder?

Is it any coinceidece that R3play, the retro gaming and arcade expo is taking place in Blackpool next weekend?

Oh great........

I have a personal account with Halifax and my business account with Lloyds TSB. Now I can look forward to several years of 'This site is down for maintenance' messages whenever I try to do online banking!!

Had one for a few weeks

You really get whet you pay for here. It is cheap, it is cheerful, but it does one thing wonderfully well. It allows you to dig around and experiemnt with Android in a real world (not SDK) environment. There are plenty of forums and custom ROMS to play with, and you will really get a feel for how Android works and how to 'fettle' it without borking your own prized Android handset. If you look around on Ebay you will seem many 'shanzhai' (Chinese knock offs\cheap imitations) Android tablets out there. I even got a 7 inch Android 2.2 tablet with GPS built in (£150) and now have a large touch-screen sat-nav\media player for the car. The Next device is surprisingly robust for an all plastic shelled device as well!!

Go symbol because you get what you pay for and it gives a bit more once you've scratched the surface.

I thought I was Generation X?

At 40 (born 1970) to baby boomers I'm pretty sure I am one of Generation X (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_x).

As for why they are topping themselves? Perhaps a legacy of finacial ruin, CCTV, junk food run amok and the dashing of the hopes and dreams of the following generations may be reason enough? It's a gross over simplification of course, but I await with glee the enforced guilt dramas about the nastyness of the baby boomers in a series of BBC dramas over the coming years. After all, it's only fair that whilst they made documentaries and dramas making my generation feel bad about slavery, racisim, the empire and a whole raft of other subjects we had nothing to do with that perhaps it's payback time?

They had no choice...

...It was either do this or have their benefits stopped!!

Joking aside, that is one job that I don't think anyone in their right mind would do, so well done guys, and so long as you're doing it, it means teh rest of us don't!

Alternative compensation

As regards to the free giveaway of the bumpers. There is a parcularity of the US legal system whereby 'compensation' may be offered without the guilty party ever having to admit liability. This compensation, once accepted, whether cash, gift or otherwise is then classed as having closed the matter and no case can then be brought. This happened to my company where a large US based publisher was (as far as our research pointed) at fault over a particular matter. We were then offered a quite attractive proposition as 'compensation', which we took as it was good for both parties. It was only later when it was explained to me why we got such a deal that the penny dropped. The actual act of offering this 'compensation' is, to my mind a way of them offloading their legal worries, as long as people take it up en-mass.

I almost brought one lat week!

I was in Best Buy in Denver last week and saw a Kin avaiable for sale. I wish I'd brought it now as it can join my Google Phone as a collectors item\curio in the future. Mind you, my Nexus One is a great business phone and I suspect I'll be using it for quite some time to come.

Re: what are you on about...keep up the MS banging

OK, ignoring the grammar and spelling, when a new OS is in the planning stage it is often well before the launch of the latest version (apart from that large gap between XP ans Vista, but there is a good example of what happens when you don't practice!). Any 'leak', so long as it being authentic, will be quite well into the development process by now and reletively accurate, admittedly though, some features may be dropped and some added. That is why leaks are leaks. Otherwise they would be a Microsoft released feature list.

Besides, El Reg don't just bash Microsoft, they bash everybody equally....almost ;)

And they wonder why they lost the election!

And the Labour party wonder why they lost the last election so horribly. Well, that and the huge financial mismanagement of the economy, increase in the states interference in our lives, and the attempt to turn us into a failed soviet style state which they almost had us all stubling blindly into. Not Blunkett though, he was there anyway.

Best value is not the same as cheap

The problem with IT outsourceing is that may senior comany execs think that a server\service in India is going to be the same as the one you have here. You simply cannot transfer 10 years+ of customised IT experience via an SLA. Is it any wonder many are now reconsidering these decisions?

That's my birthday

And I intend to do something more worthwhile with my time than order a comedy sized iPod Touch. In fact, the first person I know who buys one of these will find themselved bombarded with emails containing links to Flash based sites and Java games. The sad thing is that this product won't bomb (like it deserves to) because Apple fanbois really will buy anything regradless of real functional ability.

Not for business

Quite a few people here seem to think it would make a good business 'companion'. As a former sysadmin I'd have to say 'NO, IT BLOODY WELL WON'T!!'

There is no way to purchase the apps in bulk, or store\deploy them centrally, and the task of managing a small flock of iPads would just take up too much time of any IT department. As a busines poseurs 'accessory' though they might look good. Unless you busniness web portal uses Flash, or Java. In several weeks time I have visions of sales people and minor execs enterign their IT deparments clutching their iPad and uttering the dreaded words ' I don't need my laptop now, I've brought this. Can you set it up for me?'

Apple have really failed on this (from a technical point of view), and it had the potential to be so much more. I now wait with baited breath for the W7 based tablets from HP et al to deliver the goods that Apple left behind.

@Successive Govt Failure

'Well at least the UK still make shed-loads of guns, ammo, and other military paraphernalia which we *could* use to defend ourselves (although I'd gladly see the back of this trade's exports).'

Actually we don't. Our last military grade munition factories have been largely shut down and our rifle cartridge production capacity was shipped to India a few years back. We also don't produce tank rounds any more which means the UK's tank fleet now has to have new barrels fitted so as to allow them to fire rounds purchased abroad. We make very few fire arms, although we do make some very nice speciality weapons such as sniper rifles, and our heavy armour production capabilty has almost vanished. Do try to keep up, becuase when some nasty men come kicking down our doors, we literally have no means of holding them off on our own anymore without assistance from willing countries. Thank you Labour, you finally managed to prepare our country for rule by foreign powers. In the cold war it was the Russians, and now it could be anybody.

Just a matter of time

I too have a Nexus One, and a very capable handset it is too. But I have to admit is it not quite up to the standard of the iPhone.....yet.

However now the OS has been open sourced it is only a matter of time until features are added (especially origional ones coming from left-field) and certain current aspects get polished. The Nexus One and indeed Android OS are the base of something that is going to be quite huge. This is what Apple have seen, and indeed are afraid of.

Pot this is kettle, colour check, over.....

Didn't Apple Computers once promise (via a legal agreement) Apple Music that they would in no way ever get involved with music, in any way shape or form?

Oh, that's right, they did.

Finally Apple release a turkey

iMilleniumEdition?

The fact that they have seriously misjudged just what the consumer and teh IT world wants means that the smaller Windows based tablets soon to be released have time to correct any shortcomings that teh iPad has revealed. An 8" Windows 7 based tablet with built in 3G that I can put in my inside jacket pocket and install pretty much all of my current purchased software on . yes please. A (admittedly nice looking) 10 inch slab that pretty much doesn't allow you to do anything well. No thanks.

To big to be a travel companion

I was hoping the iPad was to be a 7" device, something I could take on overnight business trips, so I could browse the web and answer some email on the train with a few multimidia features thrown in, but the fact that it is too big to fit in a inside jacket pocket keans I'm back to eyeing up a Lenovo X Series tablet. At least I'll get some freedom of choice out of that!

I took the leap last night

It had to be done, I'm just sick of Windows Mobile 6.1 thwarting my every attempt to do even the simplest of tasks on my Touch HD. And it's a couple of hundred quid cheaper than the iPhone and Droid. Beware though as they don't tell you about the extra cost for the UK charger ($19 IIRC) and shipping price until checkout!

I've got one!

I purchased one to demonstrate at the BETT show in January on the EduGeek stand. What I see the best use of these kind of devices is for holding referance manuals on. How many times hove you puchased a device or piece of kit and the only thing you get in the box is the quick start guide? The main 500+ page manual is on a PDF on a CD in the box, and isn't much use when you need to go offsite to look at or configure kit. The ability to fit the manuals for 100+ applications and pieces of hardware is great.

However, it isn't cheap, and is lsuggish. A firmware fix may adress this in the future, but I have to admit to being very impressed so far. It does what I intended it to, and very well indeed.

Remember Boddingtons?

It's a bit like when they move the brewign of Boddingtons from it's home in Manchester to Wales. It used to be called 'The cream of Manchester' now they have to call it 'The Cream'. Shame it now tastes of crushed slugs!

Just like when they try and brew foreign beers in the UK such as Red Stripe, they come out as pale imitations of their former selves. This is what happens when buisinesses try and run regional delicacies they have no connection with.

If it's as good as the Green model count me in!

I have the 2TB Green running on my media PC at home. it may be a 'green' model, but it is totally silent and the performance is plenty good enough for it's purpose. If the Black model is as quiet I may well invest for my workstation!

Amateurs!

Pah, whilst in the army on a visit to Berlin in '93 we acquired a 12 inflatable dinosaur from outside a cinema that was showing Jurassic Park!

How we got it back to Sennelager still inflated I'll never know.

The sad thing is...

...someone actually sat down (just one person mind) worked this out and then thought 'Well, that sounds like a reasonable alternative!' and then expected everyone to be OK with it!

Steve Jobs, because he would have charged double, had old buses painted glossy white and would have filled every seat with fanbois all going on Apples 'journey'.

Improved customer service!?

It's hard enough to get them to do anything when they are in the same building! Lord knows what it's going to be like when the support are almost 1000 miles away from the servers!

They are killing my connection!

I've been suffering from really flaky connectivity recently (I live in Preston) and last night it was down to between 30 and 40K, I wouldn't care, but I'd not been on all day, hardly download anything and pay a premium for a 10Mbps 'service' which is being restricted for no reason at all.

In my personal experience they are blanket restricting users and not targeting individuals.

Paris because she's not inhibited in any way.

Please don't blame the techies (yet)

Blaming the network staff here is a little premature I think. Many times the advice of network managers and other IT staff is ignored and it is very possible the 'IT Change Advisory Board' has no one with any technical experience at all, or the senior IT bods on the panel are so out of date to be next to useless when forming any kind of sensible decision.

Please don't blame the techies. Chances are they know exactly what they need to do and how to do it. Unfortunately the 'customer' and management may be getting in the way here I suspect.

Breaking Vista to make it work

I've been using Vista as my media centre at home for the past year or so, and right up until I got my LG Blu-Ray ROM drive it performed flawlessly.

My pC sits in a very svelte case under a TFT TV and connects via a HDMI cable to an Onkyo AV amp and from there to the TV. As Vista Media Centre does not support HD DVD\Blu-Ray natively you have to download third party patches to enable it to recognise the disk and fire up whatever HD disc content you want to play. Fine I thought. Microsoft are a little behind on this. It was the part where I tried to play a disk and Vista threw up a message claiming that my amp was classed as a HD repeater device and will not play DRM content through it. WTF!!!

So to actually use Vista Media Centre is any reasonable way I had to download Slysoft's AnyDVDHD which basically turns off the highly restrictive DRM content in Vista just so I can play my legally purchased media over legal connections! Many aspects of Vista are poorly thought out (as a sysadmin, the frustration of actually trying to access network card properties in a quick way is something to behold!) and lac of new 'useful' features show that Windows 7 needs to be re-worked in a major way.

Gives a whole new meaning to 'Jolly Rodger'

So that's how the flag got it's name!