Posts by Richard

@Haters @Annoyed

It's quite simple. These vendors are jumping on the SCC / netbook / laptop bandwagon that ASUS was brave enough to start rolling last year (and my EEE701 has been turned in to a Car Computer with touch screen, GPS, 3G, ODBII and car-cams) BUT most of these late comers are missing the point and deserve to be lambasted.

SMALL and CHEAP .. those are the simple requirements.

ASUS blew the budget when moving up to a more usable screen size. Acer have got it and have a winner with the Aspire One [typing this on one]. Everyone else either has something too small (screen < 9") or too expensive (> £250).

The battery life would be much better on all these SCCs if the battery factory fire had not happened but oh well that's life.

Ideal SCC spec for me ... an Acer Aspire One size and looks ... 1 Gig RAM, 8 - 12 Gig SDD, 9" LED backlit LCD, 6 - 8 hour battery and built-in 3G HSDPA modem. Oh and all for £230 - £250 inc vat please.

@Mr Spoon

Actually it's the control that the OS gives a user over the power of the hardware. Great kit is a paperweight without a decent OS and UI.

Yeah, blah blah, Apple are bad guys (tm) to limit access blah, whatever. I have an iPod Touch and have a wide choice of software and if not then I can write my own using the free SDK and IDE.

All my computers run OS X or FreeBSD or embedded Linux ... so they are all usable.

Tesco has cheapest Acer Aspire One though ...

The AOA A110L 512Mb 8Gb is available for £198 plus you get 396 id card points (worth almost £4 8-)

Acer Aspire One still discounted to £199 at Currys et al ..

Now that it is clear the battery shortage will still be with us [Bill Withers? - ed] for another 6+ months and the pounds dropped by 12% in the last 6 weeks then I guess now is the time to buy that Acer Aspire One for £199 from Dixons Retail Group (who are surprisingly the cheapest UK place for them!).

I was holding out for the rumoured 6-cell battery before buying but looks like there is no longer a worth while reason to 8-(

Never mind the GUI feel the hardware ...

... no wait, the hardware is just an expensive paperweight when it runs rubbish like Windows Mobile 6.

Sorry but the iphone has the user experience well and truly sewn up.

I'd be happy for Apple to stay niche if it means they spend more time on producing easier to use (and hence more powerful) kit.

I have a draw full of flashy gadgets but rubbish user interfaces. Whereas Apple's touch UI means the kit stays with me all the time ... damn it, yet more fun applications I want to install from AppStore.

@pity...

Radio is an optional extra which you can buy as a shuffle sized remote control + FM receiver. Plus what type of radio would you want? FM, XM or DAB?

Personally prefer my own playlists to some jocko's version.

good news on the touch

Prices down a bit (should be closer to £260 for the 32Gb even with VAT really) but keeps the nice shiny back .. glad they did not go plastic.

Pity they did not add the rumoured GPS .. that would have been the hook for me to upgrade.

My 16Gb touch is being updated to 2.1 now .. hopefully it will fix the random oddities and DRM issues.

An okay update overall but thanks to the rumours sites nothing too new. Nice new headphones but rubbish high price .. I'll stick with my white skullcandy and black sony in-ears for now thanks.

Won't work on iphone/touch then ... unlike BBC iPlayer

I have Joost my laptop at home .. does not work through my home proxy though (obviously) but when it does work the UI is slick but nil content.

The BBC iPlayer (streaming) does a great job on Macs, Linux and now my iPod Touch (it limits it to wifi only and The Cloud also appear to block it at the free McDonalds access points at least 8-). The BBC iPlayer also works through a web proxy so I can stream it through my 3G dongle via my home proxy server (gets around the "0non-UK country IP" issue of most UK 3G networks!).

Without decent content Joost will remain a toy.

bit of a con really

Its just a variation on a flashing LED/LCD theme .. now if the text was actually built up using pixels of ink, not prefined shapes, then that would be more interesting and reusable (reflash the PIC etc). As it stands its just like a flashing T-Shirt. Fun but pointless not really high-tech.

I'd buy a copy if it were in the UK though .. if only to resell it on eBay in ten years 8-)

@Scale

My 3G "smart" phone does not do anything other than data .. who wants to talk to people when you can email them?

Admittedly the data bit drops off thanks to Winblows Mo-bile and only gets fixed by refitting the removable battery (try doing that on your iphone .. oh wait, it just works)

Battery non-issue

Oh please ... the only reason to have a replaceable battery is to swap out batteries during the day .. personally never had to need to do that on any phone as I stick my phones on charge when travelling in the car or at a desk or at home etc. Having a separate battery means extra batteries to recharge anyway .. Nokia used to do separate chargers but I've not seen any separate charging units for standalone batteries for years.

Apple will replace the iphone battery, when out of warranty, for £62.29 inc VAT ... and that is a professional fitting with guarantee etc ... okay the downside is that it takes 5 business days to get it back once you send it off. (http://www.apple.com/uk/support/iphone/service/battery/)

Wait a couple of weeks ...

and see if the rumoured new iPod Touch comes out with lower pricing !

The touch is really very nice and a joy to use. I picked an almost new 16Gig one up on eBay for £155 and combine it with a samsung blackjack smartphone for wifi->3g tethering. (hint: posted this from it 8-)

Rumour has it ...

.. that the 6-cell battery will make it to the "standard" builds and be at or around the same price as the current 3-cell versions. Take as much salt with that as you can stomach though 8-)

My seashell white baby has just turned up and it looks like its getting ubuntu installed on it over the weekend, along with a RAM upgrade (left over from another upgrade) and an extra SDHC card.

The power brick is 19v / 1.58A and I think I have a car charger that can do that .. so recharging on the go as well.

I did wonder about making an "emergency" power pack out of NIMH AA's lashed together but 19v is a bit high and would need some pumping-up regulator/xformer to get it to that voltage (only to be cut down to 3.3v/5v again inside!) .. wonder if there is any power regulator that could be bypassed ... hmm maybe too dodgy for me to try 8-)

@another popular program removed..

Umm, nothing to do with Apple ... more to do with Lucas Arts ...

http://themacbox.co.uk/2008/08/phonesabers-future/

It still exists on my iPod Touch, so no "kill switch" either.

Still, don't let facts get ... and all that.

redesign it more like the iphone or iPod touch

I've just bought an iPod touch (eBay cheapy) and the new software and app store is excellent! Last year it did not have enough software going for it but now the new applications are great and as yet I've not had to buy anything as I'm still working through the freebies!

The builtin sensors are excellent and a number of the games make great use of them ... A bit wii like 8-)

Apple are on to a winner with this new platform. The interface is a joy to use, effortlessly simple, even the touchscreen keyboard (used to write this).

Sure it needs flash support or a workalike to make the excellent browsing experience complete and I'm sure someone is working on it.

If people try it then they might actually like what they find .... even for an Apple product!

hydropower massively expensive?

okay, i'll bite. just how expensive is hydropower compared to nuclear then? and please factor in the real cost of ownership .. build cost, cost of foreign nuclear fuel, safety running costs, disposal costs, cost of compensating blighted local areas, cost of all the monopolistic foreign companies taking their profits away to countries with lower company taxation etc

i'd quite happily live next to a hydropower plant ... great views, waterfowl and lots of water ... can't say the same for notclear or gaz or cole ... don't mind a wind turbine though the whoosing side is quite soporific.

Mod it and encase it in a cut-away of a real book 8-)

Best of both worlds then ... a hardback eBook reader!

Actually, I would prefer an A5 colour tablet with touch gestures (ala iphone) and it would double as a wifi/bluetooth tethered web browser ... hmm, Mac'e'Book ... plus you can edit and scribble on the ebooks to make notes .. link to other passages etc. All very doable and does not have to be too expensive either.

Common Apple bring out the newton killer .. you've got enough case to experiment.

@Ouch

Hmm ... what about, from the same site, the following statistics (all from over 6 years ago of course) ...

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir-crime-murders-with-firearms

Big difference there eh?

Or even ...

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita

Still if you catch them you can lock em up ...

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-prisoners-per-capita

Does not stop the notion that guns are dangerous in human hands though ... give them to the machines instead 8-)

Use keys not passwords and run SSH on non default port ..

.. in addition to not permitting root logins obviously 8-)

There is really no need for login passwords on SSH anymore, so turn off normal password authentication and only use RSA keys.

May not be statistically significant but ...

It supports my own personal theory that O2 and/or Apple are deliberately restricting access to a Pay&Go version to force those people who believe they must have the iPhone 3G NOW!!! (AGPS + 3G + v2.0 OS make it an attractive pull) to buy it on a long term contract (not even just 12 months!!) and hence milk the marketing for all its currently worth.

Combine this possible strategy with a limited supply (plus bit of a spending downturn 8-) and there is plenty of scope for consumer backlash where people (like me) will just ignore the launch and wait for PAYG version closer to Xmas anyway.

I'm feeling let down by Apple the same way I did when the G4 CUBE was announced ... I wanted one (and would have been a new Apple user then) but the price was too high ... however a few years later I got my hands on one for a very cheap price and love its design 8-) So I'll probably wait or buckle and get an iPod Touch v2.0 just for WiFi use ... the whole iphone/touch platform does look very good and the SDK is really good.

O2 are money grabbing ....

Its pure greed ... oops I mean pure marketing! They are milking the early adopters (for iphone 2.0) by restricting access to cheap(ish) and unlockable iphones.

So as I don't need one but only wanted one and certainly not on O2 then I'm going to pass and use my Three 3G modem on an Acer Aspire One instead until O2 or Apple come to their senses and offer reasonable handset prices which can be unlocked (somehow anyhow!).

O2 are a good carrier for voice but their 3G network is apparently minimal ... tried their 2.5G/GPRS a few times but the handset sucked so gave up and just use it for voice/text. "Three" on the other hand are excellent and their 3G broadband just works for me and is CHEAP (although not unlimited but in reality you don't need that much data when mobile!) and so I would love to use an iphone on Three even if it means using a TurboSIM approach.

stop buying microsoft and use open source ... works for poorer governments

Seriously, how many civil servants actually need a full OS and big desktop apps? Give them thin clients running a free embedded OS and have ALL data centrally served with central backups and encryption and just give them a slimmed down office style application and web front-ends to databases and workflow apps. For legacy windows apps use a Virtual Desktop approach with things iike VMware/Zen/Wine etc al and only pay for concurrent licences.

Pull ALL windows laptops from officials .. they can't be trusted with mobile data and instead give them wifi and 3G cloud computing with strong authentication and encrypted VPNs back to the central cloud. Then they could use much cheaper laptops with a minimal OS that is locked down so they cannot muck about with them but just do their jobs.

Sure it will cost and will take some time to implement but why not actually start planning it now?

@Play.com

You will pay more than £199 even if Play have it because you will get whacked with import duty ... to quote their terms and conditions:

"37. If your delivery address is outside of Jersey, you may be subject to import duties and taxes, which are levied once a shipment reaches your country. Any such additional charges for customs clearance must be borne by you. You should note that customs policies vary widely from country to country; Play.com advises each customer to contact their local customs office for further information."

And so you WILL pay more as you will pay duty and VAT and Royal Mail will also charge a handling fee of around £8. Its only worth buying something up to £18 from any company on Jersey and even that might get fixed by GB wanting to lower this level thanks to lobbying by UK retailers.

I posted a comment back when the ASUS was first announced saying that I bet it was £199 + VAT ... looks like I was right 8-)

I like it ... looks like a reasonable media PC / TV / all in one

Get the price and size right and I'll buy one as a second telly.

And that from someone who has a black macbook, imac G5, imac G3 (nice blue one and nice flower-power one), mirrored G4 powermac, mac mini (small and cute serving the TV), G3 ibook (great 12" portable running Tiger), clamshell ibook (lovely piece of kit and running fine) and a design classic a G4 Cube (got cheap from work and still quick enough to use) ... all running fine after many years of good service and although I could get a great return on eBay (where Macs sell for good prices) but they are just too nice to use and look at to part with. And yes they all get used regularly ... tying yourself to one machine only is soooo passeee 8-)

The only Windows machine in my house is the 6 year old IBM Thinkpad T23 which is for work and still runs Win 2000.

Not just for DS ...

Obviously it can be used for any pointy device input and I *must* have both packs!

I think its more sad to say sci-fi related gadgets are sad on an IT news/geek site 8-) Bet you like "football" though? (even more sad for technologists!)

Memory failure ??

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7457653.stm

If otherworld aliens existed there would be some, any, physical evidence ... not just things people thought they saw.

still misses the point

Its getting in to full size laptop territory with the price but not with the specs. I want SMALL and CHEAP, not smallish and not that cheap. So my current Asus eee 701 and the Acer Aspire One are still at the right level for a portable internet unit ... which is essentially what the sub-sub-notebook genre should be for. XP is simply not a requirement for an internet device as its overkill and the simplified linux that both the Asus and Acer use is certainly suitable for most people.

Assuming the £199 price of the Acer stays (and I've already seen it listed as £235 (i.e. +VAT) then that will become my 701 replacement simply due to the screen size nothing else.

Unknown unknowns

How do you know there is no local encryption? The WWDC keynote specifically mentioned remote wipe, Cisco VPN and certificate support to name but three security related features of the iphone 2.0 software ... which is not specific to the upcoming new hardware and will be available for existing iphone users as well.

A number of significant companies were shown on a video on the WWDC keynote talking up the security features ... no mention of this in your article, just some analysts premature pronouncements.

As the iphone os is based on OSX, which has built in encryption support then it would be highly unlikely to note include it even if its only in the SDK for 3rd parties to create a whole collection of tools.

As someone who does not own an iphone, I found the WWDC announcement very interesting ... not for the iphone hardware itself which apart from rather classy looks is fairly standard on top-end smartphones ... it is the SOFTWARE (iphone 2.0) which looks extremely good and appears to be a mobile developers dream. Ive downloaded the SDK (for free) and will have a play around to see what is in the API (which does appear to be comprehensive).

The fact that the iphone 2.0 SOFTWARE comes with support for Exchange and push-email, calendaring and a cheap enterprise development model seems like a clear push for the business space.

You simply cannot believe analysts on their own (anyone can do their job!) .. you have to look for yourself.

re: re: "Mac OS X-addled machine."

I mean the addition of "addled" to imply (or allow the inference of) something rotten or confused and vague about Mac OS X ... which seems odd considering your normal Apple neutral alignment and good custom of Apple Inc.

Has something caused a new cut (bias 8-) to the fabric of your Apple world?

Whoops .. forgot the "Joke Alert" icon.

Is there a version for OS X or Linux or *BSD ? Plus a solution.

Oh, no wait, don't bother answering that 8-)

I would feel very sorry for people if they didn't have a useable alternative operating system that had better default user access controls and did not have junk such as Active X.

Oh well each to his own ... good luck losing CPU and bandwidth to pointless technology.

If I were Grisoft I would change the functionality to combine a default database of known infected sites and use that to mark the search results with a cross for bad ones and a question mark for unknown ones (no extra hits on sites required) and then only apply the linkscanner technology when the user actually clicks on the link and block it if it finds a problem and then add it back to user's copy of the database and send an update to Grisoft so it can be double checked and added to the default list that everyone downloads periodically. All automated and Grisoft could even offer webmasters an alerting function which would allow them to get an email if their site is marked as infected. Grisoft can automate the removal of sites that are now okay to visit and the user's database gets reset whenever a new database update is downloaded from Grisoft.

No problem with availability because its too expensive!

Make it less than £250 and you've got another sale (as a 701 upgrade) anything above that and Acer have a look in with

Hell, its even worth having an iPhone 3G with unlimited data for £99 + (18 x £30) = £639, against £319 + (18 * £20) = £679 for an Asus with 3Gb / month on O2!

@Lozzyho

"And all the OSX fanbois can just <redacted> - it's a piece of piss to rip off Linux"

Shame, you are showing your ignorance here. Mac OSX is based on Steve Jobs' NeXT Computer Inc's NEXTSTEP OS and as such combines a Mach kernel, Display PostScript and a BSD unix API and subsystems ... it originates from 1988. [Tim Berners-Lee developed the worlds first web browser on a NeXT box at CERN in 1990]

Apple bought NeXT in 1997 for the NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP OS that OSX is directly based on and back came Steve Jobs ... the rest, as they say, is history.

Linux was started in 1991 by Linus T and has no connection with OSX. Just do some research and lookup the history of Unix-like operating systems.

@Tom

Umm, did you actually see the launch? One of the many applications demoed by Apple was to quote Macrumors ... "An independent developer, MooCowMusic from the UK developed Band that includes a virtual piano, drums, 12-bar blues "instrument", and a bass. All of the instruments sound very impressive and what you play can be recorded."

Note the "independent" and "UK" developer bit and this is at the iPhone 2.0 SDK launch !! Plus the Developer programme is currently Beta and hence has been restricted but it does not stop non-US people signing-up to the programme (just tried it myself).

Downloading the SDK is free and means that any developer can have a go at creating software which runs on a emulator ... just paying the small $99 programme fee gets you full Apple technical support (like their other more expensive developer programmes), ability to install direct on an iphone and the power of Apple's worldwide portal to host, promote and distribute your code. $99 for a great hosting arrangement and credit card processing (if you charge for your application!) .. peanuts ... sign me up!

Pay as You Go prices?

What about O2's pay as you go prices for the handset and tariff ???

How much data is actually used by the average iphone user a month? 1 Gb, 3 Gb?

So would it be cheaper to buy an iphone handset on Pay & Go and then swap it for, say, a £10/month for 1Gb of 3G with Three ?? As an existing 3 USB modem user I can currently get another SIM with 1Gb of 3G for only £5/month ! I'm not interested in voice!

There is also a "SIM unlocker" device which only costs £15 and supposedly works with the original iphone ... so might work with the new iphone as well ... hmm, many possibilities for cheap iphone service me wonders 8-)

New £30/month O2 tariff in the UK

O2 have revamped the monthly tariffs ... no word on the PAYG tariff yet though.

The cheapest monthly tariff is £30/month and gives 75 minutes and 125 texts included ... more than enough for me who does not like talking to people but loves unlimited mobile data 8-)

So minimum cost for a monthly contract is: £30 x 18 months + £99 for the iphone = £639 ... or £35.50 per month.

I'm a cheapskate so its still more than I want to pay (I get 1Gb data via a £10/month Three usb modem buts it lacks the iphone GUI 8-) but I will get hands-on with an iphone and then finally decide. I don't think people can slam the iphone (or any phone) without actually trying it out.

@USB @You Was Robed?

To use via USB they would need to put in a USB sound card in the speakers which would lower the considerable profit margin!

And yes, they was "robbed" 8-) If someone thinks £30 is a good price to lose an item ... they are overpaid!!

For laptop-only users with rubbish built in speakers you could drop £3.81 on the following ...

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/102424

Note sure about the "chic" tag though 8-)