* Posts by Andy Moore

23 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Oct 2007

Mole talks up Palm Pré... 2

Andy Moore
Black Helicopters

Already read about this

I have seen more than one article from Palm that they are doing different versions of the Pre at different price points.

Makes sense to me.

There are some articles on Forbes if you do a search for Palm Pre.

Either way it would be nice if they actually started selling them and I can see if I can dump my horrible windows mobile HTC Touch HD, pretty to look at but so slow.

Naming the Palm Prē: Strategy Boutique OD's on joss-sticks

Andy Moore
Gates Horns

Bring it on

I have been playing with my new HTC Touch HD for the last month having dumped by Palm Centro. The battery life and signal of the Touch is great (saying that the Centro and HD really sucked) but in every other way I want Palm back.

I want ANY alternative to Active Sync that works, I want fast responsive tasks and a lot less crashes, everything I have had from Palm from the original Pilot to the Treo 650 (what happened after that I prefer to draw a veil over).

The minute you start selling the Pre for GSM unlocked I am having one (assuming the battery life can go for a good full day unlike the Centro or 680)

Fingers crossed as I want Palm to succeed.

Humax Foxsat-HDR Freesat HD digital video recorder

Andy Moore
Thumb Up

Nice

I have had one for 3 weeks (Belgium), only running it on a single feed at the moment but still very impressed with BBC HD and the whole device is a clear cut above the normal. Really quiet, really good wizard to set up, really good pictures and easy to use as well. Also completely cool when running which makes a change from some of the other heaters I have.

As you say expensive but if you want freesat this is pretty much the best at the moment. The only down side is it takes a while to boot but 30 seconds is not that big a deal to me. You can run it on a single feed but you do need a loop cable (short male to male) which is not included in the box.

Nokia cash for Symbian

Andy Moore
Paris Hilton

Hey Good Looking

How true, I finally took the plunge to break away from Palm, I could not face Apple so plumped for the HTC Touch HD. I say to myself that it has great battery life, great screen etc etc but at the end of the day it is also a lovely looking piece of kit (so is the iphone) and that swung it.

The G1 was one of the ugliest phones I have seen in ages, the new Palm Pre looks nice but I have given up waiting for them.

Like partners you know you should look for the hidden depths, the intellect and so on but if the outward appearance does not attract you in the first place how will you find out the other answers :-)

Paris as I am sure she may have hidden depths but who will find them.

Shuttleworth gets cloudy with Ubuntu 9.10

Andy Moore
Gates Horns

get WPA working

I have various laptops running variants of Ubuntu and the 2 problems are always getting the sound cards to work with Skype and getting wpa working.

It is getting better by the day but wpa is totally essential these days and should be as easy to set up as a wired connection.

Keep up the good work

Mayor Boris backs McKinnon in extradition fight

Andy Moore
Alien

Go Boris

As you say he he a lot smarter than people take him for. This whole scenario is farcical.

Could not resist that avatar

BSA: Turn in workmates, make fat dollar a few quid

Andy Moore
Gates Horns

Warning noted

They are right about the downturn causing people to think again. I have just dumped all versions of Office and installed Open Office instead. Hardly anyone noticed the difference. All I want now is a decent open source replacement for Outlook that runs on Linux and Windows.

Next step is dumping windows and switching to Linux.

Palm Pré WebOS: the UI in action

Andy Moore
Thumb Up

I Want one

Build them and I will buy one.

Palm store now sells catch-up

Andy Moore
Unhappy

Real Shame

Starting with a Palm Pilot I have always been a Palm "fanboy" ,my Treo650 was full of map programs, encyclopedias, foreign dictionaries and it all worked great and the battery could easily do 2-3 days.

Centro comes out and starts locking up, get a 680 instead works but has stupid battery life.

Not interested in Windows Mobile (bad engineering) or Apple (My kit not Steves) so unless Palm get their act together fast (not holding my breath) looks like Google or Symbian is the way to go.

Still I hope my 680 will hold up for another year or 2 so I can sit on the fence for the moment,

RELIABLE, GOOD BATTERY LIFE, Responsive, lots of Apps, and a PIM that is not Outlook. in that order please.

Seagate slashes bare drive warranties

Andy Moore

No Problem

I did not even realise Seagate offered 5 years, I buy them as they are super quiet (Barracuda is anyway) I thought Google had shown figures showing no real difference between HD manufacturers (ok they probably use enterprise drives) and that most discs either fail within first year or go on for 5 years.

Only manufacturer I have had problems with in last 15 years is IBM with the click of death which took out 15 out of 27 drives in 1 year. Other than that they (WD/Toshiba/Seagate) all seem much the same.

Asus: $200 netbooks next year

Andy Moore

Keyboard Size

I admit to only having played with an original 701 for a week but they keys were so small I found it almost impossible to type on.

Are the new generation i.e. the 9 and 10 series better in this department ? I can put up with springy keys and do not expect it to be of Thinkpad quality but I could type faster on my Palm Treo than the 701.

Everything else though was really great.

Anyone got any side by side user experience.

TIA

Palm OS II-based smartphones now due H2 2009

Andy Moore
Unhappy

Come on Palm

With Windows Mobile being slow, buggy and only working with Outlook despite having been an avid Palm user since my first Pilot and having bough the 650 then 680 and now Centro I am now considering switching over to Google for everything and buying one of these Android Phones or something similar.

All I want is a simple desktop planner that works off a thumb drive (like the present Palm Desktop can) and is totally reliable. Palm should either keep up or merge with someone like Google.

Until recently people would see the Palm Desktop get interested then see the phones and all of a sudden the interest was gone. In the last few months though many people I meet just want to know what browser is on the phone and does it work with Google.

Shame really, as the OP said, will there be any users left by the time the new OS comes out ?

Windows Vista has been battered, says Wall Street fan

Andy Moore
Thumb Down

Waste of Money

I use Ubuntu/Vista/XP/2K and am no particular fan of any of them but can say that Vista would not be my OS of choice. 2 Identical laptops one with XP other with Vista and oh my what a difference. Vista is slow, often refuses to install such dodgy programs as MS Autroute 2007 and Coreldraw whilst XP runs fine. Swapped OS on each of the laptops and the problems followed the OS.

Ubuntu considering it is free suits for some things though personally I would put it on par with 2K in ability.

All in all I think of Vista as a complete waste of money.

Palm's new OS not dead, just going Nova

Andy Moore
Black Helicopters

Keep Going

From a Palm Pilot to my latest Centro via IIIc Tunsgten C 650 680 and now Centro.

Everything really good until the Centro which had the odd problem with customer names that had an umlaout in but other than that a much better phone than the 650 or 680.

Come on Palm, whilst you still have a loyal customer base get cracking and start competing hard against the iphone and the Blackberry (Both of which I am eyeing just in case Palm give up)

Black Helicopter because I am sure MS and Nokia are conspiring to ruin Palm :-)

Garage sale genius juices software-hawking eBayers

Andy Moore
Thumb Up

Good Man

Well Done, nice to hear of a win for the ordinary consumer. Some of these companies forget we are not all copying criminals, but people who when we buy something tangible believe we actually own it.

UK's most popular Wi-Fi router defaults to insecurity

Andy Moore
Black Helicopters

Keeping jobs for the boys

Whilst in no way questioning the intellect of the boys at this Security think tank, out in the real world I see few unsecured networks anymore.

At a friends flat in Streatham, London a total of 17 networks are visible on my thinkpad and the only 1 not secured with 128bit WEP or WPA (most were WPA) was the local Oxfam shop (Yes I went down there and helped them get WPA up and running).

I agree most were running default SSID but does that really matter that much. I use WPA2 with AES but stopped hiding my SSID in the end because it was a pain having to type the SSID and the password on my N95 :-)

This security think tank sound a bit like the Government to me, lets scare everyone than we can get more funding.

London store brews £50-a-poop cat-crap coffee

Andy Moore
Joke

Proof

That it is not just BMW who can pile it up then charge a huge price for it

Palm to bring latest Palm OS smartphone to UK

Andy Moore

Great News

At last, always liked Palm. and this is just what I have been waiting for to replace my trusty 650.

Centro a bright spot in Palm's quarterly results

Andy Moore
Unhappy

Damn Shame

I have always been a major fan of Palm since my original Pilot and at present have a Treo 650.

Unfortunately for Palm as soon as they started mucking around with Windows Mobile I started looking elsewhere.

I loved the fact that every time I have updated my Palms I have just pressed the Sync button and all of my address book has moved onwards and upwards.

Making this complicated with conversion programs just makes me think of looking around at all the competition. I have played with various Windows Mobile devices and am not yet impressed. I bought a Nokia N95 as a second phone but though reliable it is so slow compared to the Treo, mind you all the other bits like brilliant camera, GPS, WIFI are really nice.

I think Nokia are looking favourite at the moment to take over the Palm mantle. Real shame though.

MoD budget train crash behind Brown v forces rumpus

Andy Moore
Unhappy

Same as always

I served in REME from 80-86. I still remember the beauty of the Nimrod trials and how much that cost the taxpayer for utter rubbish. Even better was the joy of the 1 tonne landrover each costing more than a Rolls Royce and 6 times the price of the Willys Jeep (same capability). (And boy of boy was the 1 Tonne Rover a classic piece of British Leyland rubbish)

The problem with this so called British developed kit is the cost if so high that the army get much smaller amounts, the Politicians love talking about home grown defence industry but the only thing that should matter is giving the guys on the ground the best kit and plenty of it.

Access Palm OS now available... for Nokia!

Andy Moore
Thumb Up

Great Hardware and OS

Having been a user from a Palm Pilot onwards including varieties of III/C/Tungstens/V/ and now with a Treo 650 I have to say IMHO they are the best Smartphones around.

Instant response (long before Steve Jobs claimed this for the IPhone), reliable (try using any Windows Mobile devices (though I have not tried the latest v6)) and just so damn good.

I try and play a video on my shiny new N95 and eventually it starts, I drag and drop any avi file to Mplayer on my 2.5 year old Treo 650 and it plays perfectly and instantly starts.

I leave it on for months at a time without any problems, I use it every day for work and home, no problems.In essence it just works. (Camera is rubbish though :-)

I just wish Palm would stop F**** ing around and just develop a good OS that works well and preferably with backwards compantibility so the hundreds of pounds worth of databases I have for my Palm carry on working.

Teen accused of hacking emergency 911 system

Andy Moore

Idiot

Normally I love reading about the exploits that hackers get up to but this was a really stupid thing to do.

Hacking a bank is an admin problem, getting armed police running around the countryside is akin to attempted manslaughter.

IMHO the boy was an idiot and deserves a slapping. (Mind you the manic US lawsystem will probably put him away for 999 years which is a little OTT as well)

Fraud abroad drives up card losses

Andy Moore

Or just better detection

As someone who travels 9 months a year on average and uses the card in virtually every EU country the systems that some providers like MBNA would do the job nicely. Any transaction that does not match an obvious pattern i.e. buying 500 euros worth of kit in Bulgaria automatically triggers an automated call to my mobile asking me if this is OK and for a password.

Low cost to MBNA and the algorithms on their system are already in place looking for patterns.

The providers complaining about the losses are always the ones who do the least to try and work WITH their customer, they also seem to be the ones who are quickest to try and blame the customer.