Posts by Thomas Jolliffe 39 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Feb 2007
My Q6600 was released 18 months before the Q8200, and supports Intel VT. The Q8200 doesn't because it was marketed as a low-end quad chip, and as such Intel saw fit to remove the VT capabilities.
Get your facts straight next time.
In general terms, I don't see why XP mode requires it. As others have pointed out, plenty of VM solutions (including Virtual PC, for that matter) run just fine without Intel VT/AMD-V, so why is Microsoft requiring it?
I'll start off by saying I'm an iPhone owner, of both the first-gen and then the 3G, but I don't class myself as a fanboy. The platform has its problems - lack of open-ness is a bit of a problem for me, but I've dealt with it so far and with 3.0 offering the features I really miss perhaps the problem is semi-solved. Anyway, I love much of Android - the idea of hacking together a piece of software for it, as I can on a normal machine, and using it as I like, is just fantastic.
My problem with the G1 is that it's just not consumer-friendly. It's not pretty (and it's competing against the very pretty iPhone), the keyboard looks a bit nerdy, and as you pointed out, the UI isn't as polished. Let's not forget that 'smartphones' (broad label I know) simply were not popular with the masses until the iPhone rolled around, and it's that polished UI which got it where it is today. I don't know how the Android community is going to combat that (and, admittedly, I haven't looked), but it needs doing if it's going to become a truly mass-market phone.
In terms of the keyboard, don't forget that most people you see with an iPhone probably can't type very well on a normal keyboard, never mind a virtual one in the palm of their hand. I've been touch-typing for going on ten years now, and within a day of getting my iPhone was up to speed - it's the use of QWERTY, not the fact that it's virtual, which catches most consumers out.
"Oh for gods sake. People will let the government trample all over their civil rights to the point at which CCTV cameras outnumber people, but when google takes a few censored, easily contested photographs of streets people happen to be using, its wrong?
You can be put on a DNA database for life without commiting a crime, and nobody cares, but someone (potentially) puts a blurred picture of you walking down the street on the internet and theres an outcry?"
Well said that man.
...are we going to hear these so-called 'analysts' say that a cheaper iPhone will materialise? It hasn't happened, Apple are making huge amounts of cash from the iPhone project, they like their position as a premium product, why would they change that? Eventually, yes, maybe, but not yet.
So...what CNN (and a variety of other American publications) says is fact in the eyes of El Reg? Give me a break!
Angela Merkel, Condoleeza Rice (until recently at least), Hillary...female politicians are infinitely more influential than Oprah. Sure, they won't tell you what book to read this week, but if you need that kind of instruction then it probably won't matter what drivel she gets you buying.
...needs more work. I tried out Pages a while back, having never really used any iWork app before, and found it remarkably pleasant to use (much more so than, say, Word 2008 - though admittedly with less functionality, although that isn't a big issue for me most/all of the time). However, it still doesn't have any auto-save or auto-recover functionality...what? What is this, 1995? Come on, Apple, get the basic stuff down! I can't possibly consider paying for a word processor which, if it crashes (and it did), doesn't bring back the file I was working on in a pretty up-to-date state. It's just not feasible.
So, I pay £140 per year for my TV license, and they want me to pay another £10 every month just to watch stuff I've missed? Who are they kidding?
No doubt we'll have the joys of the TVLA as usual (letters, threatening letters, letters saying you're being taken to court, jumped-up 'officers' knocking on the door and forcing their way into your home), regardless of whether or not you've got a TV/have internet access/watch iPlayer/etc.
If it's going to cost me another £120 per year for iPlayer, I say scrap it. It's not worth that much (plus I get it free on Virgin TV anyway).
@Anonymous Coward: "You are a unique special flower"
Stopped reading after this bit, so apologies (well, not really apologies, but whatever) if you actually had something constructive to say.
I think I made it quite clear that I am not in fact anything resembling a fanboy. I don't go around having a go at people who use other platforms, so why am I subjected to this pre-judgement just because I have a Mac (as well, as I said above, as a bunch of other machines running different platforms)? Presumably it's because there's a hardcore of fucking irritating Mac users who bang on and on about how great Apple is and would quite happily be Steve's sex slave for a year in exchange for a shiny new MBP - believe me, I understand the irritation with these people, but it doesn't mean that we're all like that.
When the fanboys come crashing through the wall, imposing their opinions on all in sight, I'm the first to complain. But when I'm attacked purely for using a specific platform, I'm going to have the same reaction.
@Michael: "Protip : if you aren't a fanboy, don't answer to his name."
Maybe you have a point, but I'm sick of this assumption that everyone who's ever used a Mac has horns growing out of the side of their head and will defend their beloved Apple to the death. My post wasn't about defending Apple, it was about not standing for this apparently-fashionable hatred of all things Apple (justified or otherwise).
I gotta say, I'm getting bored of this anti-Apple stance which seems to be so very popular at El Reg Towers these days. I primarily use OS X at home, though still use Windows and a variety of Linux distros on a daily basis - but, because among the various machines I happen to use, there's a Mac, I'm a fanboy?
Wake me up when this place employs some (more) journos whose heads aren't stuck up their own rear end.
Replace the 945 with G45 and they'll get a truckload of sales methinks. This thing would be nigh-on perfect as a media centre - pretty cheap to equip, very small, very quiet, low power. For those of us with plenty of other opportunities for network-attached storage, there's little more to ask for.
What an absurd accusation. I'm no great fan of the App Store but at the end of the day Apple provide the hosting, handle the payments, provide links directly onto every iPhone and its owner's desktop...it's not a bad rate, IMO. Certainly not something which should be compared to the fucking mob.
No, you can't take your business elsewhere, but that's your problem at the end of the day. You want to develop for the iPhone, you have to pay Apple for the privelege. How's that so different from any non-OSS development model? Yeah, OK, they've 'got you by the balls' as it were, but those people making large amounts through the App Store will not react well to a rate increase - and Apple NEEDS those devs.
My phone went off with a text from O2 at 08:42, I headed straight from my bed to my PC, got straight on the site...and I still haven't managed to get an order in.
Looks like all the 16GB are gone, and possibly the 8GB as well. You can bet your bottom dollar I'll be at my local O2 store on Friday to raise some hell if they won't let me upgrade there and then.
There was recently an article on the Mail website about THE CULT OF EMO O NOEZ, so I not-so-politely sent a comment ridiculing the whole thing and saying that the poor girl who killed herself probably did so because she had serious issues, not because she listened to music which drones on and on about how the singer's girlfriend left and wore a lot of black.
They published.
(Paris, just 'cause this whole thing is unbelievably stupid)
If you have a cable service, Virgin LEASE you the box for free. It's not yours.
If you have Sky, you OWN the box. They may well give it you for nothing, but it's still yours.
The issue is not so much with the physical act of modding the box, the issue is that by doing so you can quite easily steal services from Virgin.
@Greg Fleming:
You said "That's their problem. It is surely like leaving your front door unlocked while you go away on holiday for a fortnight. Insurance companies would call it “contributory negligence” and wouldn't pay out your insurance."
Yes, but the people who come in and burgle the place still get convicted and sentenced.
@Martin Edwards: Really? I tend to find most are either set up by someone who vaguely knows what they're doing OR by someone who doesn't know anything and thus studies the manual in great detail. Most (if not all) router manuals stress from the get-go that wireless needs to be secured - having once gone wardriving for a laugh, every single Home Hub was using WEP - while that's not necessarily with the stock key, I'm willing to be it is in 99.9% of cases. There are always a few NETGEAR, belkin54g, etc unsecured, but they really are in the minority.
It was exceptionally slow all evening, so I was suspicious, but thought it was just my wireless playing up. Naturally though, it went down, the router started getting a 192.168.100.10 IP and the modem logs told a tale of woe. It came back up half an hour later, though...then went down again, in a slightly more worrying fashion (the modem appeared not to operate at all - the router wasn't being assigned any IP whatsoever). Looking at the logs on the thing talks of software upgrade files and it just hanging onto the end of an unresponsive network. Not good.
If there's one thing I can say about cable, it's that when stuff goes wrong for me it does so catastrophically. The last time we had a problem was a couple of years back when some idiot with a JCB went through a rather expensive fibre somewhere in East Leeds (or so I'm told) - not exactly their fault, though it did take out TV, internet, phone...AKA everything. But as I said, not their fault.
Even this problem last night didn't really bother me, if I'm honest - as I said, it's a rare occurrence round here. What really grated with me was the fact that both the 'Service Status' and 'Faults' telephone lines returned 'Your call could not be connected' and 'Customer Services' was engaged. Yes, ENGAGED. How on earth can customer services for a multi-billion pound corporation be ENGAGED?!
Let me guess, the same people who screwed up last night are responsible for the incoming call routing as well.
So many are forgetting that with all ISPs, the area in which you live makes all the difference. My parents have the 20Mbps Virgin connection, and consistently receive that speed. It's always been quick, the TV set-top-box has only broken down once in ten years and four different boxes (analogue, Pace digital - which broke, Samsung digital and Scientific Atlanta V+...note that the Samsung is still going strong in another room). The only time we've had a real problem was total loss of all service (TV, broadband and phone) when someone put a JCB through a backbone in east Leeds and knocked out the entire cable network for some thirty miles around.
"Some folk have speculated that Sony might be about to drop the Blu-ray Disc drive from the low-end product, which could have a big impact on pricing. But that seems unlikely given Sony's keenness to use the console to drive take-up of the next-gen video disc format."
...yeah, and it could also have a big impact on users...in that they wouldn't be able to play games on the damn thing.
Great rumour. Really great.
...so many simply do not understand the way in which adverts work on the internet. You have a choice? Why? You're visiting the website, they're putting adverts on (in many cases as their only form of revenue), so what gives you the 'right' to decide?
I agree that some of the flash ones are a problem - especially ones with sound, or which expand over half the page and are nigh-on impossible to close. But there's a reason that they're there - they bring in the most cash. If a company is providing a free service, funded by adverts, the choice of the user should be whether to use the service, not whether to display the revenue stream or not.
People have gone on about 'Well, I wouldn't buy anything from an advert anyway', showing sheer ignorance into the ways of the advertising world. It's not all about click-through rates, much of the revenue from advertising comes from sheer exposure.
I've intentionally not used AdBlock because, as a webmaster myself, I'm aware of how much benefit advertising can bring to people like me. Does that mean I support intrusive adverts? No. But equally if the adverts are too much of a problem, I won't use the site. Simple.
The people who bought the PS2 'because everyone's got one' (a very, VERY large chunk of users) have already gone out and bought 360s. I've done the same. Don't get me wrong, I adored the original PlayStation and the PS2 was everything I wanted (more or less) and I much preferred it to the Xbox. However, the only reason for me to buy a PS3 over a 360 is because it's technically 'better'.
I don't need Blu-Ray (or HD-DVD for that matter) in my console.
I don't need a Cell processor which is horribly underused.
I don't need to connect it to the PSP which I don't have.
I do need it to be somewhat affordable.
I do need it to have a wide range of games, including GOOD exclusive titles.
I do need it to be a games console, not a PC for my living room. I've already got one of those.
Point is, they tried too hard. Sony should have stuck with the formula which made its PlayStation line so damn successful - good games, features which were WANTED, lots of choice and a decent price-point. They didn't do any of that, and I seriously doubt that they'll pull it back. SCE's going the way of Sega, methinks.
"It sounds like preferential treatment but its not. They are separated as putting them with the other inmates is too dangerous. Stick a Police Officer or Mob Boss or celeb in with regular hardened criminals............not going to last too long in there. Big fish outside suddenly becomes tiny fish amongst sharks !!"
They should have thought of that before they got caught.
...is that for years schools have been teaching primarily metric measures. Fahrenheit means nothing to me, if I'm honest - someone stated that it's more accurate, well that may be so, but Celsius just makes more sense. If I wanted to be so correct I'd use Kelvin.
Same goes for billions, trillions etc. To me, it just goes up by a factor of a thousand, that's it. Fair enough, traditionally it was a million millions etc, but the world works with the American style. We lose nothing by accepting that, so why not?
Serve beer in the same glasses but instead of writing 'Pint' on them, write '568ml'. Or, change the definition of the word 'pint' to mean '568ml'. Not very hard.
This is a rather strange review, methinks.
- The resolution on the screen should be commended. Not only is it a standard resolution, it's most commonly found on 22" monitors. This is a 15.4". Good, no?
- If the resolution was raised, the next level up is 1920x1200, most commonly found on 24" monitors which cost upwards of £500. Plus it'd be impractical.
- Supposedly the gaming performance is lacking. Well duh, it's a laptop. It uses the second-best laptop graphics card available (it's narrowly beaten by a Go 7600GT if I remember correctly).
- To summarise the review by saying it's not 'an instant must-have' is very odd. Of course it's not an instant must-have, high-end products never are. You don't see anyone saying quad-core processors are 'an instant must-have', do you?
- Yes, it's expensive. But it's got a damn Lamborghini badge on - it's for those who have money to throw around and acts as much as a flagship for the Asus brand as a direct money-maker.
So in essence we have a 35% drop for it being a bit on the pricey side. Over the top, no?
I'm not trying to attack the reviewer here, but it really does seem like this is a pretty short-sighted review. Interesing that the article page shows four comment titles but only three are displayed. Do I smell conspiracy?
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