Posts by Dave Skinner

Windows XP customers positive but split on Windows 7

It's quite simple

I have XP machines which are pretty stable, have the apps that I need, and have all of the drivers for their hardware. I have absolutely no compelling reason to mess with any of them.

If a machine messes-up hard enough that a full reinstall is less troublesome than a fix, I'll put Windows 7 on.

The only exception is my HTC Shift, running Vista. As soon as I encounter a howto that manages to get /all/ of its hardware working reliably under Win7, that machine's getting an upgrade.

Homework late? Blame Russian hackers

Nothing new!

We used to get a couple around final-assignment-handing-in-time. Kid tells their teacher that the college network is useless, always losing files, always getting hacked, etc. And that's why his assignment isn't ready - it was there this morning and now all his files have disappeared.

You'd think an IT student would know better, and might have heard of things like system logs, undelete functions, and backups.

Kid comes, with teacher in tow, to us in IT.

"Okay, all your files were deleted <clickety click> within a couple of seconds of each other, this morning. By <clickety> somebody logged-in as you. Hang-on... from <clickety> the machine that you've been sitting at all morning.

"But not to worry. Just a quick <clickety-click> and, presto, they're back again. Quite a few pictures and MP3s, and not too many Word documents by the looks of it.,

"So, which one is your final assignment? I can print it off in here to save you the trouble...".

Took 'em a couple of years to learn, but learn they did.

Acorn alumni to toast tech pioneer's 30th anniversary

Still got mine

Well, I've still got my BBC B and my Electron anyway. I swapped the Atom for a mate's TI99/4A, which I regretted as soon as I realised that TI's 3 channel sound, floating point arithmetic and colour graphics were no substitute for a BASIC that ran at a tolerable speed and an easily accessible assembly language.

Toshiba remains upbeat about HD DVD

Nothing to do with Warner...

... it's entirely down to the fact that I bought my HD DVD player the day before this was announced.

With the best will in the world, I have to say that Blu Ray has probably won the format battle now.

USB 'compact cassette' promises 1980s nostalgia, home taping

So it's just an inert case then?

It'd be better if it could play MP3s off the USB stick on a cassette player, using the same sort of magnetic transducer as those thingies you used to be able to get to use your personal CD player on the car cassette deck.

Taking the concept further, it could respond to Rew and FF to skip to the previous/next track.

I might pay £20 for that, given that my car still has a cassette player in it.

Darling plays wait and see on HMRC disc loss

@Simon Connolly

Actually, if I heard the news right last night, the records lost pertain to 2004-2007, so you're probably one of 'em after all.

Griffin Elevator laptop lift

The logitech Alto is cooler

The Logitech Alto elevates the laptop but also provides a full-size keyboard (which can fold out of the way) and a USB hub so you can have a mouse permanently plugged-in too. Sort of like a docking station with a convenient screen height.

We bought one to evaluate a few weeks back. Now we've got a dozen of them.