Posts by s

Do they really not get it?

Portable and cheap. That's the selling point of these thigns.

Give me the 10' screen (as it seems to be the nicest comprise) with the better resolution and you have the screen I wish my Eee 1000H had.

And why no wireless N! They can't add that much to the price as plenty of other netbooks have it.

Another failure...

Total Failure

So low powered chips (CPU and GPU), poor res screen, chunky build and tacky plastic now equal premium price?

Nearly 1800 and no BluRay?

Wow... What a wasted opportunity for them.

@Codge

I smell the blood of a linux troll...

The onely people who say Vista is shot these days are those that have either never used it, or used it on old crappy machines...

Been using it since it was released and a) it was never as bad other made it out and b) has improved a lot with the service packs.

Prat.

Netbooks and Windows 7

So long as they don't tweak too much from the Beta version I have I don't see an issue with it running on NetBooks... My Eee 1000H (Admittedly with a couple of Gig of RAM) runs like a dream on 7. Boots fast, runs fast - no issues at all...

I can't wait to see what it does on a real computer...

@Phycho Flump & @Lennart Sorensen

I had to use Asus support for one of my machines and I have to say it was terrible. They Didn't listen to the problem and returned it to me in the same state it left (albiet with completely new (though not required) internals).

They picked the machine up, replaced the MoBo etc without questions and got it back to me in less than the time they originally stated - all good. The fact that the drivers were causing the problem is still annoying though.

On the other other hand I've owned 5 Asus laptops since 2002 (3 top laptops and a couple of eees) and I have not had a hardware problem with any of them yet. The one I purchased in 2002 is now enjoying retirement at my parents house where a P4 2GHz still has use :)

Spectacular Fail

Just like most of the electric cars this just does not seem a valid replacement for a real bike...

15000 = 3 or 4 of my current SV650's, whilst having less than a 1/4 of the range and a 0-40 of nearly double a real bikes 0-60...

Price of a Duke with looks and performance of a hair dryer, sorry moped...

Be prepared for the worlds most boring race...

@David

Odd... Your reason for loving it is my reason to loath it... I like to sit with a book and read. I like to search for a CD and put it in the player. It's part of the experience, and generally speaking the quality of the end product is higher.

I have a couple of hundred CD's, 100 or so DVD's + BluRays and somewhere around 400 books. I love going into the room and picking a book out - the intangible good feeling from the feel of the paper to the small you get in a room packed with books. Yes carrying them around is more difficult and moving house takes maybe one more van because of them, but seriously how often to you have to move before that is a problem?

I wouldn't mind a reader to go with my books (for on the train or on vacation) but not instead of. Plus there is no DRM in my book collection. I can read a book, like it, and pass it to my wife - we don't need a license for each book reader in the house...

@Rob

"Offer it free for a 30 day trial"

Err... Have you tried the Beta? Looking at the comments here I'm guessing not many people have otherwise they would roll out the same tired "Vista, but with more bugs".

I actually like Vista - but then I use it on a decent system and not a 10 year old box the cheapest system in the store. I have used it on a netbook for 2 hours dirng the upgrade form XP Pro to Windows 7 and it's a dog on the thing - slow doesn't come into it. Win 7 on the other hand is a joy to use - quicker than XP and brings the multi touch, that is to slow to use in XP, to life.

Can't wait for the real release - it's going to go straight on the machine.

Noice cancellation are not that expensive...

You can get a good pair of sony nc headphones for 50 quid from Amazon. I brought a pair a few weeks ago and can't fault them yet... The cancellation works great and even my other half (who hates me spending money on 'pointless' things like quality audio stuff) things they are great.

Why spend a ton on headphones that don't work as well...

Now this is more like it

I don't want to see an electric car with a drivetrain, simply chopping out the noisey, messy, dirty, wonderful internal combustion engine and replacing with an oversized starter motor.

I want to see companies doing what they can to really revolutionise the industry with inovative ideas to push forward design, comfort, practicality and easy of use.

Imagine a F430 with no Ferrari engine, but a ferrari electric motor where it should be... What do you gain from the car? Nothing... 1 large motor, same gearbox etc with the same loses and you have to find somewhere for the batteries - and cope with the extra weight.

Now think of the same car with these wheels... Suddenly you have this large engine bay that can be used for something more useful - and you lose all of the inefficiencies of the drive train. The power you have in your engines is the power you have full stop. With permanent 4WD (25% of the power at each corner if you have matching electric motors)

Can't wait to see where designers go with this... (But am so going to mourn the passing of the internal combustion engine when it goes :( )

Where's the news?

Cars have had software updates for years. Search any of the car forums and you'll find people complaining about poor running / stereo issues / electric window issues / electric seat issues etc etc etc etc being solved with a software update.

Have you tried it?

I wonder how many of the above commenters have actually tried Windows 7? I'm guessing not one apart from Mark H otherwise their comments would be different.

I like Vista. A lot. As long as it's on the right hardware (both my DTR laptops run it, and their quicker than they were under XP).

On the wrong hardware it's terrible - my netbook nearly fell over running it. But... Running Windows 7 (only reason I used Vista on it was to upgrade) it flies. Much better than XP, and battery life equalling or matching XP depending on what I am doing with it.

As the saying goes, try it, you may actually end up liking it...

Such a shame it's not on the BBC

Thery don't have Dave over here (NL) so I guess I'll have to miss it :(

Must admit though that with only one half of grant-naylor I don't expect it to be great - but I'm such a dwarfer that I don't care I'd still watch it given half a chance...

Boys from the dwarf!

Vista does this?

So why can I only recover a Vista system backing using my original Vista install disk and running the 'Restore' option? Surely if it was a second OS I wouldn't need to do this...

Why more legislation...

There is legislation for dangerous driving. Why not use that if someone is driving dangerously?

I have a phone built into my car (in the factory) I can make and answer calls from the steering wheel. If i need to make a call, or take a call I do (although not very often). If I need to concentrate I stop talking and stop listening - the same as if I have a passenger in the car with me. Those who don't are going to cause accidents whether on the phone or not as the don't appriciate the concentration needed to drive.

Making laws like this are a pointless waste of time, when we have other laws already in place to stop bad driving.

@Ted Treen Cheap OS

I have to dissagree here...

When XP Pro came out I htink I paid somewhere in the region of 160 euros (about 100 quid at the time IIRC). I then used this for 5 years or so without having to pay for an upgrade each and every year. When Vista came out I paid 200 euros (about 140 quid at the time) for Ultimate (Both OEM for new machines) which I will use for 5 or so years.

80 each year to keep up to date over that time comes to much more than Windows.

As to the cost of machines: I buy top end Asus notebooks. Noteworthy for their great screens, great processors and graphics cards and still 1000 euros less than an equivilent MacBook Pro. I wanted to try a Mac last time I replaced my machine but the pro with the same spec as the W2W (17" 1920*1200) was just too much. Though I agree it would have worked better out of the box - Asus drivers suck :)

But... Why the whole bash windows, bash mac discussion anyway... Considering other companies have struggled and made stupid decisions (how Sony lost the personal music market is beyond me) just admit they did well :) (And that from an .Net Developer who has always worked on MS OSes

I was going to ask about the price in the UK

Until I looked in the Dutch shops and saw that it's gone up by 50 euros since it was first released...

I got my 1000H for 399 euros (just over 300 quid). At that price point it was perfect - I checked in the shop against the 901 and the Acer One and it was the nicest to use.

I have to say I don't have the issue with the keyboard flex that others have pointed out - it fits the bill perfectly for what I need from a sub-notebook. Whilst the screen resolution isn't a gain over the 901, the keyboard is a *huge* gain, and I don't have stubby fat fingers (I can type just fine on the 701 that my wife has) it's just *nicer* :)

And the pointless award goes to

Cade Metz! For his pointless, bitter, rambling non article! Really what was the point here? Was it a bad article? A comment that got mis posted as an article instead? Or an attempt by an author to make a FoTW? (In which case I think the spelling should be turned down a notch, and you need swearing in it - the rest fits the bill though)

@Steve Foster and that 5th Gear Test

There are many things they never told you in that test...

The Volvo was 10+ years old and hence won't be as strong due to various wear and tear forces

The Volvo was designed in the 70's and still did pretty well considering

The "big heavy Volvo" is less than 200Kgs heavier than the Modus (all that steel for strength comes at a price with weight)

So please don't say big cars are inherently more danerous...

This thing would be great for a town run about (where my Volvo struggles for more than 20mpg - which is why I cycle when possible) but uselss for driving 1500KM from Amsterdam to Venice (where my Volvo averages nearly 40+ in with more saftey, comfort and luxury...)

Maybe in the UK you just need more cycle paths... (I wouldn't have cycled half as much when I lived in the UK as now).

Oh and yes it is Fugly!

How can that get 70%

The image quality sucks! My old Fuji had better pictures than and I still got rid of it in less than 12 months due to the fact that you can't actually print a picture taken with the camera if you want a print bigger than a minimal 10cm*13cm.

For the quality of image just stick with a cheapo point and click - the image quality is no worse (maybe even better?) you just don't have the zoom...

I worked out the crop factor on that sensor to more than 5x! I guess that explains the picture quality somewhat. Terrible!

I can't imagine any serious ameteur would even consider buying this - unless it was an expensive first step mistake as my Fuji was - save for a bit longer and get a second hand real camera with a decent lense.

I worked out the crop factor on that sensor to more than 5x! I guess that explains the picture quality somewhat. Terrible!

Nice work environments

I hope all those who complain about a company looking after them are simply jealous of not having the same benfits, and not simply stupid...

I changed jobs a coule of years ago as my previous employer, though well paying, treated everyone like crap. I took a hit in salary to move to a much nicer company where people are treated with respect we get all sorts of pleasent perks like those mentioned in the article (although not nearly as far reaching :) - parties through the year, fruit daily, Senseo coffee machines, weekends away beer + wine for after work and in nice summers a beach vollyball court built in the car park)

The result is a company with high moral, and a dedicated workforce who want the company to do well and actively participate in this, rather than 9 to 5'ers who couldn't give a crap as long as they get paid.

As others have said the cost per head is not that high and the benefits of moral, productivity and reduced staff turnover are huge.

@Geoff Mackenzie

So a cassette is crap? Or a crap cassette on a crap player is crap? Important difference. I used to record from Vinyl to metal tape on a high end system. Then played this in my car using a high end Alpine (talking mid 90's here). Lots of people asked me if I had a CD player in the car. Cassettes were as good as you made them - a bit like digital music today.

As for the iPod DAC it's utterly useless. I use good Sony ear buds and can hear the artifacts on my MP3's ripped @ 320. If I plug it into the home system you can hear the artifacts even clearer. If I plug my wifes 1gb Sony stick in the difference in quality is huge. If I put a MiniDisc in it's better still and if I put a CD on (the only thing I use when I want to listen to something, rather than have background music) you can hear the difference yet again. I just wish I had an phono input so I get another turn table...

I can't beleive that so many people are prepared to have crap anything these days for the sake of convinience - it's like technical evolution going backwards :(

And another happy Vista user

Kevin Crisp: Why upgrade to Vista? Well I depend on what hardware you are using. Assuming you have a machine with some power Vista will get that bit extra out of it (used XP on a desktop replacement laptop and got a nice performance boost), better stability and no driver issues (even though Asus didn't officially support that machine at the time I went to Vista).

Sanford Olson: So you compare the retail Vista to the OEM XP Pro and complain abou the price dif? I paid less than EUR200 for my fully legit (and activated) Vista Ultimate. I paid more than EUR250 for the Win2000 OEM disk I brought previously. Id say it's getting cheaper, not the other way around (kind of like Office (Office 4.0 was that expensive in the mid nineties that you got a free quad speed CD Rom with it from most vendors - somewhere in the region of 450 GBP at the time IIRC). Office 2007 Pro = EUR 550. Again cheaper. And that's before you factorin 12 years of inflation.

As to the MS fine by the stupid Dutch woman (and I like the Dutch - even married to one) for being too closed. Does this mean that Apple is about to be crippled with a fine (iPhone totally closed, Mac hardware that you can't install what you want, unless you install OSX first, OSX that will only run on Apple branded hardware etc etc) for being even more closed? No forgot, people like apple because it's 'kewl'. Sure.

@Lecture Hall Look

Actually some of the newer projectors are tiny and near silent... I just need to convince the other half that it's a better idea than a TV when ours breaks...

The cables are always (until wide band wireless takes off at any rate) going to be a pain. The only way you can get around it is to do what my brother in law did: when he extended his house he build all wiring into the wall. TV, Speakers etc have no visible wries, looks great. Of course you can no longer re-arrange the living room as electronics have to remain in the same place :)

My Vista Upgrade

Ok not a run of the mill machine (I buy top laptops and use them for many years, rather than crap machines and replace ona yearly basis) but...

Running Vista on a 1 1/2 yr old machine (2ghz Centrino Duo, 2GB ram, 256MB X1600) and so far nothing but praise for the system. Boots faster, shuts down faster, no crashes yet, and VS 2005 Professional loads in about (not scientifically tested) 25% faster than the same machine using XP.

The only issue I had was network copying - the the point where I used xcopy for everything as that wasn't slow. But a couple of months a go after an update even that was solved.

Sure if you use it on an old, crappy spec machine it's going to be slower than XP (but then that's going to be slower than 2K, which will be slower than 98 etc etc etc etc....)

Wonder if these people complaining have updated their system (or even have a system up to date enough to run the software?)

650 for an unlocked phone + 100 to unlock it within 6 months

Sounds like it's very locked to me... Why do I have to contact Orange service dept to unlock a phone sold as unlocked.

Err Labour lead goverment?

Sorry, have to correct you here. It's a right-wing christian (CDA) lead goverment, in which 'Labour' (PvDA) participates. (I've forgotten who the third party involved is...).

As for the choice, it's insane. As someone pointed out why pick an application based on whether it's open source or not? Pick it for it's merits. I guess my tax is going to go up with all the beurocrats (and they have more here than in the UK, or at least it seems like it) struggling twice as much with Linux desktops (even more than they do with Windows), and contractors getting even more work setting up complex open source apps and redeveloping software designed to work with Windows...

Steve - you are wrong

It only took one post to get into the slanging match... Is that a record?

@Absolutely ridiculous

Re-reading the story I'm not sure. It says they dismissed her for being too young, not refused to employ her for lack of experience. I think the article is very misleading... Hiring then firing is bad - if she is too young now, why was she too young when they first took her on?

If this was about not hiring someone for a job based on experience then I'd agree wholehartedly (sp?)