@Martin

Touche!

My point is that, I wonder how many people dismiss alternative medicine such as homeopathy, without having tried it for themselves.

If you put your faith in current scientific knowledge, without question, then there would be no reason to try something like homeopathy, because there has been no concrete proof that it works, so far as I'm aware.

However, what about the millions of people who use homeopathy and other alternative therapies in the UK? Are they all deluded, naive, stupid or gullible? I would propose that is mostly not the case. I would say, rather, that they are flexible, open to change and willing to take a risk.

Of course having blind faith in alternative medicine is potentially self-defeating, but I credit most people with enough self-possession to have a feel for whether something it working for them or not.

It seems to me very limiting to dismiss something that Science had not provided evidence for. You can't really know alternative medicine/therapies don't work, until you've given them a go. Can you?

IE8 - what a joke

Just installed IE8, after spending too long on the download site because it loaded so slow and the automatic download didn't happen. And I was using IE to do it.

Oh yes it's still part of the OS, not just an application. How do I know this? Because it took about 5 minutes to install and I had to restart the computer. What other applications require this? Firewalls etc. yes, but no other browsers require this. (and Firefox and Opera take mere seconds to install)

After reboot, started it up and was greeted by pretty much the same as IE7, with "Free Hotmail" link. Good old MS, always trying to punt their crappy wares when they're not wanted.

Best of all, it's still trying to load The Register homepage, and meanwhile I'm writing this in Firefox. Perhaps there's something wrong with my computer. Maybe what's wrong is it's got IE8 on it, 'cos everything else is working OK.

I'll be sticking with my trusty Firefox, I think!

watch out for hidden charges

Plusnet have provided me with good service and friendly support.

However recently I was informed I'd have to pay £20 if I wanted to leave due to a change with BT Wholesale pricing.

What a rip off.

I'd leave for another ISP if it wasn't going to cost me 20 quid!

For £2199

..you can have F4RTY

lower cost producers

Recent experience with Dell laptops suggest the construction is flimsy already so going with "lower cost producers" is not to be recommended!

This was a reason for me to buy an HP one instead, which feels much more solid. If Dell want to compete with HP they should up their build quality, IMHO

Onerous mental tasks

...make you overeat. That's true, but I'm not sure if it's to do with blood sugar levels or not. It's more like, anything for a diversion. Even going for a crap is a welcome respite, although arguably not as enjoyable as tucking into a high calorie snack.

Coat, because I'll be getting mine - I'm only in my office job doing onerous tasks for another week..

Please don't pretty up Ubuntu!

Not everyone wants a "pretty" OS. More important to me at least is speed, usability and simplicity. I fire up my computer to do stuff on it, not to look at it and go "wow aint' it pretty!"

Surely efficiency would win Ubuntu some friends, especially as the main alternative is pretty but sluggish?

Ebay is great for selling 'pooter parts !

I bought a 2nd hand Tosh laptop for £150, used it for a year then the motherboard developed a dry joint which I couldn't fix.

So I took it to bits, binned the Mo'bo', and flogged all the parts for about £140 !

It's just a case of making a good guess at how much you can get for your bits, then selling them using buy it now.

I'll still be checking out the alternatives tho' because I don't like Ebay's monopoly which affords them a certain arrogance, and their customer service is often sh*te..

hitting MS where it hurts..

It's good that customers are voting with their feet and making MS get their sh*t together for the next OS.

Microsoft must be kicking themselves for making XP a decent operating system in the first place. If it had been crap then Vista would have been received more gratefully.

Windows 7 will have to be decent for people to want to upgrade to it. It'll be interesting to see whether they cut the bloat and make it an operating system that people actually want to use.

couldn't care less

I'm not part of their "army" of customers who "care deeply about windows" anymore, in fact I couldn't give a monkey's, as I've been using Ubuntu at home for over a year and I'm quite happy with it. Good riddance to Microsoft! Even when I come to buy a new PC it's good to know you can get them without Windows on now.

abundance of crap

Re. above from "hi robb"

You are an old git. I say that as an old git myself. Modern music does sound shit and lifeless, but I'm not sure whether it's because of the sound quality or because it just is shit and lifeless. Or maybe I'm just too old for it.

The quantity of storage and available music (through downloading etc) has become so plentiful that music has become devalued. There's so much crap music and crap sound quality, it's like the quantity is trying to be a substitute for quality. It doesn't matter as long as you can have 20000 songs on your mp3 player, right? Perfect for the short attention span MTV, iPod, Limewire generation. Now that really is the voice of an old git!

leave us alone

Why don't Google just f*** off.

money for old rope

A $500 cable for DIGITAL signal transmission - would you Adam and Eve it?

Well done Denon for seeing the gap in the market and exploiting it.

There are other manufacturers making "superior quality" digital cables, notably HDMI, but the audacity of charging $500 for a cat-5 is to be aplauded.

alternatively...

You could use Wordpad. That's really really fast and "free" if you've got Windows already. I love it and I use it all the time for basic word processing.

don't be so hard on openoffice

Give OO a break - it is free after all!

I agree it's a bit annoying having to download the whole disto to patch up the vuln, but I'd rather do that than spend hundreds of quid on MS Office.

And it does most of the things the latter can do..albeit slower.

Plus it keeps MS on their toes, which is always a good thing.