Posts by Neill Mitchell 482 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Mar 2007
After spending hours mucking about trying to get Win98SE working with VMWare, VitrualBox and DOSBox, I then heard about PCem. It fully emulates a large number of old CPUs, motherboards, disk interfaces and video cards. It's also cross platform. I've got it running Win98SE emulating a Pentium MMX 233, Soundblaster 16 and Voodoo2 with full acceleration. Works perfectly.
You can also choose specific models of PC like the IBM XT, AT, Amstrad 1640 etc. A serious nostalgia trip!
Battery life is appalling. The cover display burns as much power as the main board. Seeing as the cover display is supposed to be the killer feature of the device, then switching it off turns it into a slightly improved Gemini.
Even with the cover display off, you can watch the battery level drop when using it. They seriously messed up a promised update that was supposed to improve battery life and we're still waiting for Planet to release a fixed version.
Now they have launched another Kickstarter campaign for a new device before fixing the current device issues (the new device is notably dropping the cover display idea. So they have obviously realised it's a bad idea).
Same old story as the Gemini.
Pity they don't invest the effort in finishing off the Cosmo. It's so buggy it's barely usable.
Keeps randomly locking when typing, Dud keys (you would have thought they've sorted this after the Gemini). Keystrokes missed or duplicated and worst of all - appalling battery life, Mainly due to the cover display (the USP of the device) drawing as much power as the main board and wakelocks keeping the CPU alive. Obviously even PC have realised the cover display idea is a dead end.
I should have learned from my Gemini experience. I'd never buy another Planet device.
Is it me, or do all smartphone keyboards totally suck? I've yet to find one that does not provide the most grammatically ridiculous suggestions imaginable. The predictive tech doesn't seem to have moved on at all in 5 years. I still spend more time swearing and correcting than actually typing useful sentences on my phone.
Can't wait for my Gemini to arrive.
"The best phone will probably be the next Google Pixel announced in the beginning of October, but it will probably cost around £1000."
This is the problem. Now the £1K barrier is effectively broken, everyone will start taking the piss and selling £1K devices because Apple and Samsung are getting away with it. Pure profit and greed.
What tangible real world improvements does the Note 8 really give over the Note 4? I'm all for new products, but this strikes me as a small incremental technology refresh for a serious hike in price.
Priced for the current market rather than actual technology value.
It's £369! I can live without an unlocked bootloader for that. Where are they "claiming" an unlocked bootloader out of the box? (What major manufacturer even does that?). Where are they claiming Wifi calling? Even Google are saying it's Daydream ready and if I get that it will be a minor bonus.
For £369 you get a 1440 x 2560 Samsung AMOLED panel, 64GB storage with SD slot (or dual SIM if you prefer), Snapdragon 820, Adreno 530, fingerprint reader, Quick charge 3, 3250mAh battery, dual AMK DACs with the best speakers currently out there. Android 7 in public beta free of major bloatware (I'm looking at you Samsung!) Glowing reviews everywhere.
Only thing that lets it down a little is low light camera performance, which I understand has already been improved somewhat - low light performance is all software algorithms these days. Seems okay to my admittedly undemanding needs.
I'm not a sales rep for these things, I'm just amazed how much the other manufacturers are clearly taking the piss on their margins. Let's face it, they are all manufactured within miles of each other!
Isn't the 15" model $400 extra to get the touch panel? That's why I said it. I didn't consciously lie.
Granted, the internal spec of the touch bar machines is higher, but the point is if you want the touch bar you have to pay the extra. You have no choice. You can't pick and choose components at purchase time like, say, Dell.
This is the problem with Apple kit. If you want the 2TB SSD or example, you have to pay a huge amount more because that model has all manner of other higher spec components as well, which you might not even need. You can't just add the bigger SSD by itself.
Say this was Dell, you might be able to add just the Touch Panel as a $100 extra. You just can't do that with Apple's pricing scheme. It starts getting very expensive very quickly with you paying for bits you don't want to get the ones you do.
Is the touch bar that much of an advantage over physical function keys considering it how much it adds onto the cost of the device? That's one expensive touch screen!
I like the tactile feedback of a physical switch when doing things like muting sound, changing screen brightness etc. No way would I get used to a touch ESC key.
Seems a bit of an expensive solution looking for a problem to an old luddite like me.
"Even better launch a game - take a picture of a car registration with your phone, check against DVLA database and if it comes back "no tax" or wrong model/colour etc"
Even better - make it a requirement to have a little round piece of paper located in the windscreen for all to see, that shows if the vehicle is taxed. You could even buy it online.
Problem is with the "Car located" step. Serious dodgers have ways of getting hold of cars that have an incorrect keepers address or have been declared scrapped.
So unless they are stopped by the Police with the power to impound the car, then driving past a noddy DVLA ANPR vehicle is of little consequence to them.
Especially as the ones I see round my way with surprising (and I would imagine expensive) regularity all sit there with very visible flashing orange lights that can be seen way before a handy turn off.
With a paper disc, anyone walking past the car could see it was untaxed. That in itself had a deterrent effect.
Well, we have suffered an outage with the full Airwatch MDM today. Their UK data centre has a major problem. Still ongoing after 4 hours with no hint yet of when it is going to be back online. Another example of the wonders of cloud based services.
No doubt the usual statement will be made at some point containing the "small number of users" phrase.
" I can't remember how I fixed it last time". Use you System Center & SQL stuff knowledge to provision a wiki ;)
I run a Mediawiki instance for just that purpose and share it as a resource for my co-workers (assuming the information is suitable for publishing, if not I keep locked to just my account!)
Pick up a 2nd hand Lenovo for a fraction of the new cost. I got an i5 T420 with a 128GB SSD, 8GB of RAM and a 1600x900 panel for £299. An absolute steal. Build quality is great. I splashed out £30 for a new 65W battery plus £19 for a USB 3 ExpressCard and it runs Win10 and Ubuntu for over 6 hours like a champ.
You can pick up a newer i7 T440s with 12GB RAM, 240GB SSD for £500 that will run for a whole day.
I'll never buy new again!
But what happens to the drone subject to the jamming? Loss of control resulting in it crashing into some poor random person in the area?
A 5 year old lost an eye to an out of control drone recently in the UK.
Bring down drones by whatever means could easily have regretable consequences.
I don't know where you are in the South West, but just to warn you, EE coverage in Dorset is poor to non-existent. When they merged with T-Mobile they shut down a lot of masts. I went from an already poor 2 bar 2G signal to absolutely nothing (and I leave near a big town, not right out in the sticks). Their network coverage map is completely inaccurate.
I switched from EE to Vodafone and generally it's much better. EE didn't give a toss when I left after 9 years citing poor coverage. They refused to even offer a femto cell. My work phone is EE and it still gets nothing at home 2 years on.
These companies only care about cost saving and whilst that continues I can't see the rural situation improving much.
It's mindboggling why they haven't done this already. The BBC's back catalog alone would make much more compelling viewing than 99% of the shite on NOW TV, Netflix etc. It's the only service I'd even consider paying a monthly fee for.
The "Digital DVD" bit worries me. This doesn't strike me as silly old Auntie Beeb employing an anachronistic term. I think they may simply try exactly that - charging DVD prices for individual items rather than a Netflix type library subscription. In which case it will die on its arse.
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