Posts by Bassey

Pot, Kettle, Black

Your theory is kind of spoilt a little by the UK's dismal showing. You know the UK? That offshore Tax Haven

In their defense, I've been with smile since they started (about 2 decades?) and this is the first issue I've ever had. However, it's a pretty huge one. We're in the middle of moving house and being unable to make payments to surveyors, advocates etc is a nightmare.

I worked in banking for 13 years and frequently tried to convince the powers that be that a Bank is simply an IT company whose services involve moving money. IT should be funded as the main priority and technically knowledgeable people should be on the Board. This was ignored and the bank went under about 5 years ago - although not IT related. Damn it.

But, unfortunately, Banks are run by bankers and accountants. It is incredibly rare to see an actual IT person at board level (the IT "Director" usually has no background in IT) and therefore IT is regarded as a burdensome cost; until something like this happens.

Alternative interpretation

You are assuming some malicious intent which seems unfair. The Nun could simply have been taking a Goat's head to her preferred place of worship for a perfectly normal religious ceremony which happened to required the use of a goats head. She dropped it on the way past Weatherspoons and, having realised her mistake, popped back to collect it. Nothing weird, awful or nefarious to see here. Please carry on with your ordinary lives.

Naming confusion

I've read both the reviews and yet, mere seconds later, I couldn't tell you whether the XS or the XR is supposed to be the high end one. Yet I'm one of the very few people on this planet sad enough to actually give a shit. Apple may annoy the living crap out of a lot of people but marketing is something they have always done brilliantly. Their new ads are awful and even somebody with a general enthusiasm for this nonsense can't make head or tail of their naming.

Something is wrong.

Excellent phones

I've been using Xiaomi phones for a few years now. They are generally excellent and we'll supported with updates and security patches. Indeed, my entire family is now in Xiaomi phones and fitness bands/GPS watches. The one downside though, if the MIUI launcher. The interface is nice and there are some useful fwatures but the power-saving is over-the-top and then some. For example, try using any app that needs to have the GPS active and MIUI will helpfully kill the GPS service after a few minutes to "save power". And it isn't a trivial matter to turn this off. They are brilliant phones and hard to beat it n terms of bang for your buck but MIUI is certainly "quirky".

Mind your head

I once cracked my head on a "please mind your head" sign at a Doctor's surgery.

No better place to do it!

Test Area

I worry that they will do as they did with Freeview and use us poor sods in the Isle of Man as the test for switch-over. We don't really have DAB yet, just as we didn't have full Freeview - only one of our two transmitters had been enabled for Freeview at the time they did the digital switch and even that was missing most of the channels. Imagine my relief when, six months later, we finally got an (almost) full digital TV service and it turned out I hadn't actually missed anything important.

Red Snow

Pretty sure that snow is meant to be red. Looks like the photo was taken at sunset and the snow is just reflecting the red/orange light of the sky. In fact, wasn't that the point of that promotional shot? To show the camera picking up detail under far from ideal lighting?

School Days

I was at school in the early eighties when we received a Mac Classic. And I distinctly remember, as part of our very first lesson, being taught that you could pick the mouse up and move it without the cursor moving. Of course, we were kids and had figured this out through experimentation (messing about). But the "IT" teacher - a Maths teacher re-trained - clearly thought this was beyond magical.

That was back in the days when you had to regularly clean the balls on your mice to prevent an accumulation of fluff.

House of Cards

That music seemed to "Borrow" quite heavily from the House of Cards intro. Let's hope that isn't an omen!

Best is sometime

They've been improving for a year or more but this was the best in many many years. Loved it.

Xioami Redmi 3S Prime

The Xiaomi Redmi 3S Prime is available for about £125. It has almost identical specs to the £189 version of this with fast charging and a 4100mAh battery thrown in. And it arrived from Gear Best with an English ROM and all the google stuff. Been using mine since early August and it is fantastic value. Although, I must admit, some of Xiaomi's default choices in terms of battery saving are a bit "aggressive" to put it mildly. Like, turning GPS off whilst using SatNav if you haven't touched the screen for over 1 minute. Easily rectified in the settings but I can imagine some less technically minded people reaching for the industrial shredder.

Redmi 3S

It looks and has VERY similar specs to the Xiaomi Redmi 3S - which is absolutely no bad thing at all. It seems to be about £30-40 more expensive but you're getting local support, a local ROM and that brilliant screen replacement offer. I'm happy to import from China and pocket the difference but for your average Joe this does look good. Other than waterproofing I look at my Redmi 3S and wonder just what it is that a £600 iPhone/Galaxey/Xperia etc. has that I might be missing.

US Data Rates seemed rubbish

I've just got back from a trip to the US travelling around New York city and then upstate. I used a UK 3 SIM with the "Feel at Home" package which used T-Mobile for roaming. And it was shocking. In New York City I was getting a full 5-bar signal with 4G but it often wasn't fast enough to load google maps. Even getting enough data to call a cab on Uber was a few minutes wait. Upstate things were a bit different. It was often 3G rather than 4 (and occasionally Edge) but at least there was enough bandwidth to get actually things done. But in and around the city (Harlem, Central Park, Upper East Side, Lower Manhatten) data rates were shocking to none-existent. I actually gave up on using mobile data and was just relying on "borrowing" wifi from nearby stores and cafes.

Security Updates

Whilst I've had plenty of phones from Manufacturers who don't update their phones (Huawei being the worst) Sony have been fantastic of late. I've had the Xperia Compact Z1 since release nearly two years ago. I've lost count of the number of updates since then. It is currently on Android 5.1.something. The amazing thing is, though, that despite the fact Sony have not put it on the list of phones receiving an update to 6.0 (and I didn't for one minute think they would) it IS still receiving security updates. I've had two in the last few months, the last just a couple of weeks ago. For a phone that has already been superseded a couple of times and is no longer receiving OS upgrades I think that's worthy of praise.

Solution to taking up an extra plug

We got a wireless door chime from B&Q a few months ago. Whilst the cheapest one they had required the chime part to take up a mains socket, on the next one up (which we went for) the Chime part had a 2.1A USB port. The Chime is in the living room and has a micro-usb cable permanently attached for use by, well, whoever needs it at the time. Very handy.

On a related, albeit off topic, subject my youngest has got himself a Goodman's radio alarm clock with two USB sockets, both of which are rated at 2A. Brilliantly useful.

Taking your argument further....

If we take your argument and apply it to another of the proposed problems, the existence of Cowell, I think most would agree he exists because a large group of today's youth are driven by the media to aspire simply to "becoming famous". Therefore, following the Free School Meal solution, we must either meet the incentive or remove the incentive. Making everyone famous is not realistic so we need to remove the desire to become famous. I can see two ways of doing this.

1) Careful regulation of all media to show how becoming famous is not the be all and end all of existence and that the famous are generally no more happy than the rest of us. This all seems a bit far fetched and I don't really see it working in practice

2) A hunger games style elimination of 100 "celebrities" each week or so. That should cut down on the number of people wishing to become a celebrity, provide TV far more watchable than X-Factor or BGT and, as an added bonus, should I be allowed to create the list of "celebrities" I have a sneaking suspicion Cowell will cease to be a problem.

Ahh, economics at work!

The opposite solution

I've almost gone the opposite way. If there is a film or TV series I want to watch out of casual interest I'll find the cheapest DVD copy on eBay, usually for less than £3, watch it and then immediately flog it again. I often break even, rarely lose more than the cost of postage (90p) and occasionally even make a few quid. When they arrive I'm careful to open the jiffy bag without ripping it so I can just pop it straight back in.

The stuff we REALLY want to watch tends to be series on netflix; House of Cards, Orange is the New Black and plenty of others.

Bloatware

Slightly ironic that you praise them for keeping Bloatware to a minimum and then praise them for the inclusion of Bloatware (SwiftKey). SwiftKey is still Bloatware. The fact that YOU happen to like it and find it useful doesn't change that.

If it's cultural impact

If they are after games that have had a massive cultural impact then wouldn't Angry Birds be a pretty major contender? It was the first significant game on mobile phones and, as such, has kicked off the next phase of computer/video games.

For the last 40 years or so, your age and the machine you/your friends had access to is going to define what you saw as culturally significant. As a ZX Spectrum gamer from the early eighties it would be manic miner for me. The significance of Angry Birds was that it was almost instantly available on a few billion devices and seemed to be played by all generations.

Bumper cable

Now if the "Grip bumper" thingy was also the USB 3 cable then that would be excellent. As it is, £10 for a coloured bit of moulded rubber is taking the piss.

Love them

I've been using the original T100 for about 18 months now. It doesn't quite cut it as a main machine (10" screen, only 32GB storage) but it is small and light enough to go everywhere and gets used more than my desktop by a long way. I used to use the full-sized USB port on it quite a bit but I can't actually remember the last time I did. Like the reviewer, all my stuff is on a server and in the cloud. It really does make a decent large tablet AND laptop but, due to the size, gets used by like the original Netbooks. Email, internet, the odd edit to a Word or Excel document etc.

I might have to take a trip to PC World and have a look at this and the Chi 100 as that 32GB of storage is now down to 1.4GB free and there is nothing on there I could remove.

Not just the Qashqai

Nissan are just making bloody good cars at the moment. Two of "The Wife"'s last three cars have been Nissans. An Almera and an X-Trail. Both were eminently practical and really quite good fun to drive too. Neither of them ever broke down and they only got replaced due to changes in circumstances. A friend is the senior local traffic copper - the one that gets to drive the serious VIPs when they visit and so gets sent on all the advanced driving courses. He and his wife have owned only Nissans for the last ten years or so - including a Qashqai each, at one point.

I do wish they'd bring back the curry hook from the Almera though - that was a work of genius!

http://www.hadez.org/offsite/aoc/curry256.jpg

Any chance of an A3 review

Any chance of a review of the A3 too? 4.5" is as large as I'm prepared to go (and, frankly, I'd prefer a bit smaller but can't find anything with a half-way decent spec).

There's no mention of any form of wireless charging though, which is a real shame.

The slight letdown

Having owned a few Chinese phones there is a slight downside to ownership. Yes, you get a very high quality device for relatively little money - BUT, there is zero support. I've owned a ZTE and a Huawei and there were zero updates for them. Now, you could argue that this isn't all that important to the general public. If the phone works and does everything you want then who cares if you can't get the latest release of Android? Which is true, unless your device is released with a bug (and my Huawei was) or Google releases a Turkey (Android 5.0) in which case you are either stuffed (general public) or reliant on XDA Devs (those of us on here). That's why, after a few years of owning Chinese phones with some hits but a few significant misses, last year I went with the relatively safe Sony Z1 Compact.

Smaller screens

My wife has the Lumia 620, one of the very few remaining 3.5" screened phones. It is on the list of phones receiving the update but I'm going to look for a way to disable updates if possible. This just looks like bad news. The reason I recommended Windows Phone to her was the ease of use. This looks like a whole series of headaches (for me - of course) waiting to happen. If you take away Windows Phones ease of use and simple elegance then you might as well get an Android device and just install one of the stripped back launchers.

Nice website

I couldn't help but chuckle at the "FAQ". Surely that must be stretching the definition of "Frequently" to breaking point?