Good luck palm!

I used palm's pdas for many years, and in their prime they made superbly good devices.

When I came to replace my last one, a great little T3 that was on it's last legs after 4 years odd of loyal duty, it seemed like the devices hadn't moved forward much if at all, and the software hadn't been updated. It seems they really screwed up their software strategy, and lost the way a little on hardware over the years.

I picked up a first gen iphone instead, and it's given me the same warm glow of quality hardware + software that palm used to. It works the way a phone/pda should do, rather than like a desktop cramped into a case that's too small the way windows mobile does. Plus the updates seem to improve it regularly.

I'd love to see palm back on form, and I'll seriously consider a pre instead of an iphone next. It'll have to have a good sdk + supported app store though, as I'm doing iphone development lately. Either way, apple need some stiff competition.

Crop circles!

I knew it! The SAS have been taken over by alien mind control rays! There's clear proof right there in the new google images: a series of crop circles in that last image at the top right of the picture!

CALL THE NEWS OF THE WORLD!!

Maybe the phone was the target?

It's pretty vain of the guy to assume that he was the target, and not the phone. If the marksman was that accurate, they'd have gone for a headshot to be sure. They sure did a good job on that phone though.

Another obvious error...

Sure, you reduce the size of transistors, and you can make the same chip with less sand. But you don't keep selling it at the same price, or you go out of business fast. You either make it cheaper, and add less GDP for less sand, or you increase the number of transistors to add value and add the same GDP for the same amount of sand.

I didn't bother reading the rest after seeing such obvious mistakes in the first paragraph of an article supposedly explaining economics.

Seems stable now

I got a free trial a while back to see how it worked. At first, I wasn't too impressed.. the apps are good etc., but nothing I thought I really needed, and the push service didn't work with my iphone at all (I have it without contract, and without any data plan, but it's usually connected via wifi).

The push service was fixed a few days later though, and works very well. The idisk is immensely handy, and the other web apps are pretty useful if you want to look up a contact or check your diary while out somewhere. I'm pretty tempted to pay for it now, so I guess they got something right.

Visual voicemail with unlocked phones?

Sounds good to me. I'm already on orange, with an iphone (best of both worlds - phone cost only £170, and my 'value promise' plan with orange costs on average a quid a month. Somebody somewhere is losing money, and it's not me ;)

Anyway, does this mean that visual voicemail will work with unlocked iphones on other tariffs?

Rob Haswell: I doubt it'll end up on ebay. I moved from a palm (I've been a fan of them for years, especially after trying the horror that is windows mobile a few times) and the iphone is so far ahead it's untrue. I'd love to think palm will release a huge OS update that gets them back into the game, but I don't see it happening, which would be a real pity.

PAYG

This article might make more sense if the iphone wasn't available on pay-as-you-go, which it is, from O2. No mention of what it'll cost without a contract yet, but it'll be a ready supply of phones for the unlockers.

Confirmation of 3g

Consider that concrete evidence of 3g - I just got back from Japan, and a 2g iphone doesn't work there at all as the phone network is different.

I think iphone will do really well in japan - the japanese phones are really big and clunky, and look really crap to use. About the opposite of what you'd expect really!

Link needed

We need a link to a site where we can paste our emails in and find out what sex we are please.

The casio mp3 watch

I have an ancient casio mp3 watch at home (a present, not the kind of thing i'd buy!) Actually, it was pretty good for exercising with, and I could fit a good 20 or so tunes in the 32mb of memory with some careful tweaking of the mp3 encoder (goodbye stereo, hello 22khz :)

Unfortunately, it was yet another product that had potential but was let down by absolutely awful software. Praise be to itunes, you have your deficiencies, but at least you woke up the rest of the market and cleared all of that crap out.

42" LCD TV for £100?! Sign me up!

"The E-TV is a 42in LCD TV, but it will have computer technology on board running Linux to allow users to surf the internet and read email. Asus said it will retail for no more than $200."

If they can sell it for $200, I hope they're going to make a LOT of them, because they'll be selling faster than anything ever sold before.

"Evaluated"?

We fall into the "evaluated or adopted" category here - we evaluated it, and rejected it. We'll stick with XP for another year at least.

So, does this survey actually tell us that only half of businesses are even taking a look?!

An example of Microsoft listening to customers perhaps?

"Windows XP SP3 does not bring significant portions of Windows Vista functionality to Windows XP."

Thank god for that!

Sleep easier?!

"According to the Environment Agency, running the disposal programme in cooperation with the police and domestic spook service MI5, there were believed to be 11,000 surplus radioactive items at large initially. Since the initiative began in 2005, 9,000 sources have been processed.

"People in the UK should sleep easier, just that bit easier, knowing that there aren't these sources out there," the Agency's Chris Williams told the BBC."

... so, I didn't know that all these sources were out there, and was sleeping just fine. Now, I know that there's 2,000 radioactive sources suitable for making a dirty bomb, and they're out there. Just how am I expected to sleep easier again?

The real question is...

Could it decapitate a cow?

Nice idea, but...

I've been reading ebooks for a few years now, on PDAs. Ideal for when you have a few moments of boredom (which is often in IT, "slave to the blue bar" and all that), and the best device I've used was an old palm V. Black+white screen, battery life of a month or so - perfect. I reckon amazon are on the right track there.

The catch though, is that I wouldn't even consider a dedicated reader. I wouldn't carry it with me, and I wouldn't value it at anything more than £20 (which is around 10% of the value of the amazon kit!) Most of the time, a real book is cheap, convenient, easy to keep around, and most of all more enjoyable to read. For the rest of the time, if it's not available on something you already have with you (which would be a phone or pda), forget it.

Are any bookies taking bets on this thing? Put me down for £20 on it flopping within a year.

Good article

It's rare that I see a balanced article on apple from the reg, so big thumb up for this one! I'd add a thumb up graphic, but I've adblocked all the little pictures so I don't have to endure the Face of Horror (yes, Paris Hilton).

You're all missing the point!

Americans don't file these law suits because they actually have a serious problem! They do it to amuse us Europeans!

"delayed applications"

I "delayed" my passport application - by applying 5 years early for a new one. That way, I'm off the ID card database for the next 10 years, by which time perhaps they'll have scrapped the whole thing (or at least made it secure). I guess enough people did that for it to affect the budget! Shame they didn't get the hint.

Disgusted with HP

I'd never, ever buy a camera (or anything else) from HP. Not since they moved their sauce production to Holland.

Units of measurement

Since computers are so fast now that the measurements we use tend to be so long that they're just a meaninglessly long row of zeros, I reckon all computers should be measured in terms of mouse brains.

That would have an additional benefit - it'll be a few years before the humble mousebrain gets outgrown, so the boffins have plenty of time to figure out how many mouse brains make a rabbit brain, how many rabbit brains make a dog brain and so on. With a bit of luck, they'll get the paris hilton brain in there too, although obviously they'd have to be very quick.

Re: Interesting calculations, Chris

Rate of growth, not size. So it should be 0.159/0.052 = a bit over 3.

Last time BT did this...

Well maybe not last time, as it was 7 years ago and I'm sure it has happened to them since. But back then they left a database of customer details on an open server assuming that nobody would notice it, and therefore it was safe. I know because my details were stolen from the server.

Less than a week after that, I had a call from BT trying to sell me online security services!

Going for the budget crowd?

Looks like they're going for the budget crowd who's like an imac but can't afford it, and would like a machine with a lower spec and a poorer design for less money.

Hold on.. it's more expensive!

So... they're going for the crowd that want a lower spec, lower class imac, and are happy to pay more for the privilege. Good luck finding them.

Old news, and worse - wrong!

Anyone following apple's shares at all would have seen that apple sold 275,000 iphones in the first two days. AT+T's figure is for activations - and we know that a lot of people couldn't activate because AT+T's network couldn't cope.

All of this happened last week, it's hardly a secret, so why publish an article like this now when it's widely known to be out of date and factually wrong? And besides that, 275,000 phones in two days is a pretty remarkable number, should we blame apple for not selling millions or the analysts for expecting them to?

The real point...

I think the real point here isn't the ipod angle - it's clearly the choice of music. The religious bloke listening to religious music was clearly struck down by god himself and deafened to stop him doing it again, while the metallica fan was actually saved.

Is this really 'green'?

Sure, it'll save a bit of energy if you charge your phone with it. But I bet it takes a lot more energy to build one of these than you'd save during its lifetime.

Seal sticks?

"Assistant US Attorney Andrea Steward explained that "seal penis bones, also known as seal sticks, are believed to have properties similar to erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra"."

I reckon he mis-heard that. I can imagine the scene in the office...

"Hey guys, I need to brief the media on this, what the hell are 'seal penis bones'?"

"Seals' dicks."

"Great, let me write that down... seal sticks. Let's roll!"

Sore arses?

Is it just me, or do half the people on that 'Home' screenshot stand or walk like they've got sore arses?

Life-sized people?!

The museum promises 'life-sized people' - are museums in this part of the world normally run by midgets or something? Or is this seen as proof that the curators did not involve from monkeys like the rest of us?

Correction...

...Now, the same search will also return amateur porn video clips, porn pictures, and even excerpts from erotic books.

Bollocks

The 'sale of pipex' hasn't 'failed' - that was press speculation. They are conducting a 'strategic review' which could include a sale of all or part of the business, which is ongoing, 'going well' according to the company, and due to conclude in the early summer. And as far as I'm aware they do this kind of review once a year.