Re: Sex and violence
You still have your field of vision with a webcam.
Posts by jason 7
3181 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009
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Five technologies you shouldn't bother looking out for in 2016
Eighteen year old server trumped by functional 486 fleet!
Thursday 21st January 2016 11:36 GMT
Just for reference on time/prices...
..From the December 1995 issue of Net User magazine (Times New Roman and grey were the new black)
4x CD Rom - £117.00
Pentium 133 - £507.00
US Robotics 28K modem - £193.00
17" OEM monitor - 570.00
WD 1.2GB HDD - £266.00
32MB RAM - £821.00!
Diamond Stealth 4MB Video card - £350.00
4x SCSI CD-R - £1864.00
All 1995 prices + VAT at 17.5%.
AMD accuses Intel of VW-like results fudging
Tuesday 19th January 2016 13:55 GMT
@ad47uk Hey I hear you. Old kit is not to be thrown on the scrap heap. I'm running a 2007 spec dual Xeon system and that runs a WPrime 210 benchmark in 6.7 seconds.
The only chip I've had through my hands recently to gain any great difference is the £850 8/16 core Intel i7 5960X that does it in 4 seconds.
You can pick up the Xeons I have for about £30 each on Ebay. AMD or Intel? Doesnt really matter in most cases. The software just isn't there to tax the kit in most cases.
Adblock Plus blocked from attending ad industry talkfest
Tuesday 19th January 2016 13:25 GMT
As I've said before...
...if you have good content and a good community they will pay.
I use a few sites that every year have a fund-raiser week where they ask for contributions to help pay for the site to keep it ad free.
I'm more than happy to chip in $10 a year for the pleasure and I'm sure that more revenue in a year from me than ads would garner.
Trump's new thought bubble: Make Apple manufacture in the USA
Tuesday 19th January 2016 12:07 GMT
Re: Hey El Reg...
Bush Jr would have been fine as a President had 9/11 and all the crap after not happened. In fact he could have done two terms and no one hardly would have known who he was. He would have just signed the usual forms, attended the usual dinners and spent 75% of his time in office playing golf at his ranch in Texas.
He was just a guy to keep things ticking over, not to rock the boat. Unfortunately for him...
Tuesday 19th January 2016 11:52 GMT
Have the Republicans just finallly given up?
I mean with all their candidates as they are, it must be just a reality show called 'Last Clown Standing'?
The comedy value is incredible.
I still reckon Trump is just filming some secret documentary on the while thing and will drop out a day before he has to fully commit.
Server retired after 18 years and ten months – beat that, readers!
Thursday 14th January 2016 09:31 GMT
Hmm 1997!
That summer I bought my first PC (had used Dad's since 1993) and it was a Pentium 150 with 32MB of RAM, 2GB HDD (maybe), Matrox Mystique, CD-rom, generic Soundblaster card running Windows 95. Oh and a 14" monitor.
Cost me £1300!
Haven't spent anywhere near that much on a PC or laptop since.
The rub was I only kept it a year. We took over another small company that had just bought all new PCs that were not the same company standard as ours (read newer and better) so we were quietly told by the accountants to 'lose them!" Oh well if you insist.
No escape: Microsoft injects 'Get Windows 10' nagware into biz PCs
Thursday 14th January 2016 14:53 GMT
"- old versions of Sage don't work"
Well thats a given in any version of Sage. Sage only works after you've called the tech support (hoping you get through because your support ended 2 years ago), told them what error message you are getting and then they let you into the secret patch garden and let you have the specific patch that fixes the problem. You know, it's almost as if they designed that into it.
Thursday 14th January 2016 12:10 GMT
Re: Late last year for the first time ever.
A decent option until they want some IT support that's more complicated than it being dropped in the toilet.
That's been the problem with the folks I know that have moved to Apple. Finding good support.
The Apple Store moves in, takes out all the good independent local IT support for Apple and you are stuck with the hipster in the Tshirt who only know how to swap something or setup iTunes.
Scarface's explosive 'Little Friend' goes under the hammer
Thursday 14th January 2016 13:29 GMT
Re: Gun nut
I was always under the impression that taping a mag to another mag was bad practice as the top of the magazine that goes into the chamber can get knocked and bent out of shape in all the excitement.
Something that only really happens in movies or by guys who think movies are genuine military tactics references.
BBC risks wrath of android rights activists with Robot Wars reboot
Wednesday 13th January 2016 15:41 GMT
It was fun in the early years.
The interesting thing was watching the evolution of the robots from series to series as some thing were found to work and others were discarded or improved. Then towards the end it kind of reached a plateau of what was possible with the tech available and without spending tens of thousands.
However, as other have said I don't reckon on any great leaps in the tech. It will still be quite rooted in tool-shed tech.
2015's horror PC market dropped nine per cent
Wednesday 13th January 2016 14:07 GMT
Yes I shudder to think how many mobile devices I've had in my 2009 Windows PC's lifetime.
Hmmm probably 7?
As you say the PC market hardware is sorted. The fact that current software doesn't tax it at all for 98% of users doesn't help shifting hardware either. I remember swapping my CPU and GPU 3-4 times a year. Now its once a decade almost.
It's like buying a car. Even the cheapest new car you can buy will have electric windows, CD player, airbags and get you from A to B reasonably safely and comfortably.
Microsoft’s Get Windows 10 nagware shows signs of sentience
Tuesday 12th January 2016 23:23 GMT
Re: GWX isn't the problem.
May I just point out that I don't run a enterprise support setup here with standardised builds I can clone across and just pick up the past months updates. These are domestic and small business jobs that all require individual builds from scratch. So my experience is probably different to most running support.
Tuesday 12th January 2016 16:51 GMT
GWX isn't the problem.
The main issue for me rebuilding customers Windows 7 machines is the fact that Windows update for anything but 10 is pretty much borked. Before 10 came out I could update a clean 7 build in around a hour or two. Hit update, a minute later the list of 200 updates would appear, click install and go get on with something else for an hour or two. Not anymore. Takes over two hours for it to start even pulling in any updates then it usually craps out after installing them on the reboot and has to revert and by the time you are back to the desktop, 4 hours have been wasted. Been going on for a good few months now.
Amazingly Windows 10 installs and updates in less than 45 mins.
Boozing is unsafe at ‘any level’, thunders chief UK.gov quack
We're all really excited about new smartphones, laptops, tablets – said no one ever
Wednesday 6th January 2016 09:57 GMT
I've side stepped.
It was 6 years since I last bought a laptop and it was decided this Xmas to get a new one (the old Dell was and still is fine after many upgrades both software and hardware).
Did I go Windows? Nope.
Did I go Mac? Nope.
Did I go Android hybrid? Nope.
Decided to get the new Dell 13 Chromebook with i3 CPU. Fabulous bit of it, just works out of the box. Super fast and good build quality too. Upgradable SSD as well! Very pleased.
Got a pricey gaming desktop from PC World for Xmas? Check the graphics specs
Saturday 2nd January 2016 12:07 GMT
Re: Not all bad..
Unfortunately you try stating the 'UK Sale of Goods Act' to manufacturers and they tell you to f**k off. They have read the small print and just tell you to go away.
I had a £250 Brother laser printer that had done around 2000 prints was 13 months old and the fuser roller went lumpy. Called up Brother and they just refused to deal with it. Quoted the act etc. and they just said it didn't apply etc.
Called the registered service agent and they told us it would be £200+ to repair and in actual fact they had four of the same model in for repair with the same issue. They told us not to bother. We took their advice and bought something else.
Friday 1st January 2016 11:32 GMT
Re: Its in the PSU.
The efficiency of PSUs has improved greatly over the past 10 years. You now have Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum (iirc) ratings.
Plus the things with PSUs is, if you buy a really good one it will probably move to your next build and maybe even the next. Whereas the CPU and GPU...probably not.
Friday 1st January 2016 01:06 GMT
Its in the PSU.
I always say never skimp on the PSU but so many people over spec them in terms of the wattage rating.
I've built machines with overclocked CPUs, dual GPUs and running benchmarking software at full pelt...380W!
Most (not all) machines, even the so called 'enthusiast' ones would run just fine on a quality 500-600W PSU.
I blame the tech websites as all they get in to review are mainly 1000w monsters. Most of us just want a really good and efficient 500W job.
Google probes AVG Chrome widget after 9m users exposed by bugs
Wednesday 30th December 2015 12:47 GMT
Re: IT Crowd
Windows Defender for the general virus/trojan stuff.
EMET on max settings for the Zero Day stuff.
Unchecky for the adware/installer stuff.
AdBlock/NoScript etc. for the web stuff.
Cryptoprevent for the Cryptolocker stuff.
Well its what I use mainly. Big bonus is none of it is nagware or shoutware either!
Bah humbug. It's Andrew's Phones of the Year
Tuesday 29th December 2015 18:21 GMT
Re: Funny world
Why would anyone want to brag about owning a iPhone...when so many have one?
It's NOT a status symbol. Owning a iPhone is the same as bragging you own a Toyota Corolla.
I see an iPhone and I just think it shows a little lack of imagination and individuality. Nice phone and all that, but just very boring and much of a muchness.
Tuesday 29th December 2015 11:44 GMT
Re: LG G4...
Oh you get rid of that crap too. But most of what the folks on XDA do is total crap too. There are probably 5 or so that know what they are doing and do a valuable job but the rest just dick around thinking they are tech gods but just making it worse. They think that the only way a Smartphone should run is to stuff as many tweaking apps as possible on it and then wonder why they only get 3 hours of SOT rather than the 6+ if they left it stock.
But you can't leave a phone stock cos that means you don't know anything about tech or smartphones.
Monday 28th December 2015 14:00 GMT
LG G4...
...I get plenty battery out of my £350 LG G4. Three days if I don't use it like a Gameboy and interact with other adults like we did in the old days. Not a problem. Usually the ones that moan about battery life are the total phone fiddlers that load up their phones with battery optimisation bloat and all sorts of crap they don't need. I run 100% stock. Go looking for help on XDA? All you'll find there are people who mostly don't have a clue and spend all day looking for ways to cripple their phone.
Great phone.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
