Posts by Eric Hood

Given the best Apple have done is to ship 52 million phones in a quarter it may very well be attempted stock manipulation.

Or he is a time traveller telling us to buy now whilst it is cheap.

So the same as last year then, as the iPhone 5s and 5c were introduced.

The earth did not shatter last year. I doubt it will do so this year.

Nokia 1020

I have a 1020 and it is an excellent phone. First and foremost it has excellent call quality and signal reception. The excellent camera is the icing on the cake.

I like the win phone OS, will I buy another? Hmmm, it will all depend on the quality of the MS Lumias after the takeover is complete. I have long been a Nokia fan and this is Microsofts' chance to make me a Microsoft fan.

Nokia still hold a lot of patents for the cameras so there will not be exact copying. Not that the Apple

design aesthetic would let them have a large lump on the back of a phone.

Telstra has around 17 different billing systems that cannot talk to each other. How about they fix that instead of putting lipstick on a pig.

Windows Phone 8 is not yet ready

I have a Nokia with Windows Phone 8 and it almost ready for business.

The biggest issue I have encountered so far is Exchange calendars. You cannot see shared calendars which you can see on IOS and Android.

Yay Microsoft.

That said I like the phone overall and prefer the way it handles contacts and incoming calls. If I select a contact I am asked if I want to ring them, email or SMS and even IM if set up, this is much nicer than IOS just trying to ring the contact.

The same applies in the dialler app. When I select a previous incoming call it asked me what I want to do not just auto dialling the number.

I like the lightning connector on the newer Apple products. It is reversible, so in the dark there can be no mistakes plugging it in.

The connector is small and there is excellent physical connection when inserted. A much better experience than mini or micro USB.

Apple do make a Lightning to micro USB adapter. At worst they could include one with the device.

I have a 14" HP Chromebook. It is very good. Not had it long and a little envious of the new models. I have gotten 6 hours on it twice now when not using the power adapter and rated time is 5 hours.

It is excellent as a secondary unit. The only thing I need a "real" computer for is iTunes and photoshop elements.

I am looking into music streaming services so that may not be a problem soon. The Chromebooks come with 100GB of cloud storage for 2 years. If you buy the Pixel Chromebook by Google it is 1TB for 3 years.

I am not unhappy with the prices, the previous generation was close to $1000 AU at launch with games and accessories. 18 months after the PS3 launch I spent over $900.

The current prices are better than the past. I traded in a bunch of games and received $400 so that covered most of the PS 4 asking price. Games prices are cheaper now than previously too, I remember paying $120.00 AU for a SNES game.

There may be some price discrimination but it is not as bad as in the past and we are getting the console at launch not 6-18 month later.

Self sustainability will be key. I would not like to be waiting for supply ships. There will be a need to import a whole ecology. Psychology experts could probably tell us the minimum amount of people needed to stop them going mad too.

Hmmm, just a thought, if no one had a cold or flu when they arrived would they be free of it forever more?

With power comes responsibility

There is nothing wrong with giving users more power though I would say that I was giving users more responsibility.

The more capable the person the more responsibility they can handle.

Responsibility and authority are two sides of the same coin.

Why would they stop the App being released? There are any number of paid mapping apps that are already there. I had one before the iOS 6 thing because I wanted turn by turn voice guided navigation and google maps on the iPhone does not do that.

If you want a first class map app use the one Nokia has on the N8, the iGo Primo app is the one I am using on an iPhone and it is good just not as polished as the Nokia app.

It's refreshing to see an Apple product with user replaceable/upgradeable RAM,"

What an absolute load of rubbish. Every iMac from the 15" CRT model to now has been able to have memory installed by the user and the Mac Pro too.

Granted the new 21" iMac does not but with the new memory spec requiring soldered memory soon enough everyone else will be similar.

I am an iPad fan but I hope the Surface does well, it looks different enough to carve out its own market space driving competition and innovation which will ultimately benefit us all.

The keyboard cover is very nice at 3mm thick. I would love one of these for my iPad. I hope they do well.

Schools tend to buy a power cart that can hold and charge 20 or so laptops at a time, I suspect the units were in one of these.

One of my favourite games too. A friend was overseas on holidays and picked it up 9 months before the Australian release we spent weeks hammering it.

Lots of beers, good times indeed. We also played an imported Clayfighter too. Perhaps that could be a review.

Would this not just enable the jumpers even further knowing other people will be told not to enter the intersection it will make it safer for them?

Much like airbags encouraged people to drive faster as they were better protected.

As they probably take a hit on profits when prices on inventory drops I am not too concerned. This is a short term thing and competition will kick in again when supply eases.

Try Payday the heist on PSN. A very good game.

eBooks

I buy a lot of ebooks. I have stopped buying paper books if possible. I am happy to buy the DRMd books as I know I can strip the drm if the company goes titsup. I make 3 backup copies of all my purchases.

The things I like about ebooks is they are generally cheaper than paper copies. I now spend more money on books than I did with hard copies and I get more for my money.

I would really like a service where I could send my paper copies to the publisher and receive an ebook instead. The publisher could then have a large secondhand sale for the luddites still reading by the light of oil lamps.

And now to be on topic, if Amazon has gone against the wishes of the publisher then too bad for them. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

There was a point to their existence. There may still be.

Yes Dick Smith are expensive, but before the general acceptance of extended trading hours they would be open for an hour or so longer than anyone else and if you needed an emergency part or bit they could be relied upon to have it at a hugely marked up price.

I remember watching a local store owner wanting a cable and going red in the face as he said he could sell the cable for a third of their asking price. The staff member said go right ahead then. The dude backed down as he needed it and had run out of stock.

Very bad.

I have just tested this and it is worse than just looking at the last used screen. The last screen on the iPad I just tested was the home screen. I tried to get into music but that did not work.

I then swiped back to access the search function. This allows you to search & reveal contact information and so on with any unsuspecting owner none the wiser.

Death to the future overlords.

Put a cortex bomb on that chip and if they start to rebel, pop the cortex bomb and render the rat immobile.

I think you will also find costs are court costs. Lawyer costs are separate.

Wife swap time.

Perhaps the noisy ASBO woman can swap with the french lady.