A review of 3G in Manchester?

That'll be handy then!

Over here in Yorkshire, I get very little 3G from my O2 mobile. From my Three dongle, 5 bars, lightening quick. Same while on holiday in Orkney - surprised I could get anything at all, but Three were great. Only problem was the 3 foot thick walls, so needed a USB extension.

Switching my Blackberries to Three when the O2 contract expires.

Just a shame the Three Wifi thingy is £40.

More importantly

Who made the HDD? I'm not a fanbois (no apple stuff at all), but I'm pretty sure they don't make HDDs.

Don't mind

So long as I can keep my orange tan and scary white teeth topped up.

Groupon was great in theory - people clubbing together to get bulk purchase discounts. As soon as services were offered, it was all downhill.

Paris - she's open to offers too.

Google?

Nah, don't use them.

Hippies

I had a meeting with Greenpeace in London about 5 years ago. First time I'd seen a bandana in a long time.

they still think wind turbines are good. Just ignore them.

Price?

£1200 - you must be joking. Every other tablet thing is at £400.

I'll stick to my £169 Playbook with RDP.

How about some interesting games?

Games design has ground to a halt. all that happens is that the graphics are updated for the latest graphics card.

Single player games would still do well if someone could come up with a new Command and Conquer, Civ or Sim City rather than just making them prettier and over-complex.

So many fps games that are all the same - set piece battles, wonder around for a bit, then another set piece - think about the puzzles that were around in the likes of Doom - you would play it multiple times just to try and get 100% on each level.

Good to hear

Anything other than another 3rd person shooter,

Privacy

So after all the discussion on privacy this last week, we now have an app that needs access to:

location

camera

email

sms

and then stores it all in some web portal

No thanks

Never thought the day woud come

But, I trust Microsoft a lot more than I trust google!

Consultation period

Has anyone ever been involved in a consultation period that achieved more than delay redundancy? Always seem like dragging out the pain to me.

with only high margin and high-end items?

That'll be the Kindle and Kindle Fire? Both sold at or near cost price?

They'll need to see a load of cases and chargers to make any money, but is that high end?

Google & Privacy

If you're worried about privacy, why are you using any Google services? 'Do no evil' has been long forgotten.

I'll stick to Firefox with Ghostery & DuckDuckGo, and a Blackberry Bold. Just need to work out how to add extra search engines to a PlayBook - hopefully in OS2.

IE Starting to look a good alternative

Never thought I'd say it, but I keep looking at IE and thinking - give me a decent ad blocker and I'll switch.

Strange

Have you noticed how people who have used and/or bought a playbook think they're great.

Which can only bring you to the conclusion that those who don't like it are speaking from ignorance.

(Yes, I'm a happy playbook user)

Blackberry?

Anyone know if using the Blackberry network gets around this? My BB on O2 wasn't showing anything - would love to know if due to being on the BB network or just a coincidence

DuckDuckGo.com

No tracking, Good result - nuff said

replace ageing Tablet PCs.

Which Table PCs would they be then? Only place I've ever seen them is at Microsoft HQ!

Wordwise

Wow! Blast from the past. I typed my girlfriend's (now wife) dissertation using it in 1988.

I still bear the scars from the decision of the designers not to prompt you before quitting if you hadn't saved your work. Far to easy to do when everything was done by quitting the typing bit, then using a menu with numeric options for save, load, quit etc.

Lovefilm User

Biggest problem for Lovefilm is the dreadful way that it recommends films - it doesn't take into account anything you've rented or streamed, so is utterly useless. At the moment, you can only view streamed titles in order by user ratings or release date (usually wrong).

It's obsessed with martial arts movies, and the filters are too blunt to be any use.

I'm a mostly happy Lovefilm user, but unless they sort this out soon, I'll be looking carefully at anything netflix offers.

Open source devs

Look forward to seeing the documentation then.

More privacy trouble

You used to be able to report a picture of your house and have it removed - only option now is to blur it. Looking at my street, the only pictures they've updated are those of the houses. The rest of the road still dates back to 2009.

Spying bastards.

£55?!!?

I don't take much notice of iphone stuff, but I pay £50ish per month (+VAT) and get 2 Blackberries, with data, plus a SIM only phone. Free blackberry every 2 years, 2nd one for about £100.

Is this really what people are paying to play games?

Bunch of geeks

What a horrid selection, how about something a little stylish? Don't women carry laptops too?

I'll stick with my Bridge briefcase thanks.

Tried alsorts

I have loads of DVDs as iso images, so wanted to watch over a streamer.

Started off with a cheapo £20 to see if the concept worked - it did, but not well.

Then tried a Seagate streamer thing. Dreadful UI, juttery video. Few updates, then they bought out a new version and forgot the old. No iplayer.

Then a ACRyan - worked well some of the time. UI update made it too slow. Then they brought out a new device, then another, so I flogged it on ebay. No iplayer either

Biggest problem with them all was that any problem was impossible to diagnose.

Finally a £120 PC, plus a copy of Windows 7. Perfect. OK, I still need some decent library software, but I can play anything, and fix most problems. Little wireless keyboard. Got iplayer too.

Waht difference does it make?

If they don't sell my data, they'll only lose it.

My 3rd Computer

Couldn't afford a BBC Micro, so had a 48K Spectrum at first. Then my Dad won an Apricot (remember those), and swapped it with a computer shop bloke he knew for a BBC B with just about every option available.

I was still using it in 1989 to type my girlfriend's (now wife) university dissertation.

Thanks for the memory.

Remember Novell

Sounds an awful lot like Novell's attempts to integrate with Windows for security in the late '90s. Worked well for a bit, then Windows got better and Novell became irrelevant. I'm sure there are still hybrid Novell/Windows setups out there, but I doubt there are many new ones being planned.

Save 24p

NDSI stylus pen, reduced from £1.24 to £1

Rest of it's a load of crap for Wii, and (inexplicably) a face recognition terminal for £500.

Ugh

Eclipse and the equally horrid Net Beans are what keep me working in C# on Visual Studio.

CDs

Do they still make them?

Or

Just buy a bluetooth keyboard for your smart phone. Why make life so complicated?

Question

Does anybody actually use voice stuff after the first 5 minutes of playing around?

I have it turned off on both Windows 7 and my Blackberry, just annoying to use - and I'm in an office on my own, hate to think what it would be like in a 'proper' office or a train.

I can see its usefulness while driving, but we've had voice dialing for years, can't see me p*ssing about tweeting while driving.

Alpha

Alpha product asks for my facebook account information - where could that go wrong then?

They must be joking!

I'll stick with separate user names and different passwords thanks. How long until someone leaves a usb stick with half the country's user info on a train?