Posts by RichyS

The Equalizer prowls Albert Square

I love it...

... when Sarah Bee gets stern.

Mine's the one with the cold shower attachment in the pocket.

Airline pilots told to switch off mobile phones

Nothing to do with planes dropping out of the sky

The reason for switching your phone off in a plane is that moving at the sort of speed planes do seriously foxes the network gear. Although the antenna are very directional on the horizontal plane (as in axis, not the one with wings), there's a fair amount of leakage on the vertical plane.

GSM is only rated up to a certain velocity (about 250km/h, I think). Go any faster, and the cells cannot hand off to one another fast enough. Result: confused network.

Paris, 'cos she's easily confused.

Blogger fights Psion's claim to 'netbook' name

What is a 'netbook'

I'm not sure that I've heard of these netbooks before. But they sound very similar to SCCs. Are you trying to suggest that 'Small, Cheap Computer' isn't the generic term?

Paris, 'cos she's cheap.

iPhone and iPod Touch dominate handheld web traffic race

WinMob

So, where are all the Win Mob devices? Or does Pocket IE crash before AdMob can serve up an ad?

Windows goes Mobile 6.5

Ballmer just doesn't get it...

Who the hell want's the 'full Windows experience' on a smartphone? Windows is miserable enough on a 9" netbook display.

I want a mobile UI/experience that is fast, simple, and consistent. That is why the iPhone is so popular (disclaimer: I don't own an iPhone). That is why the Sony Ericsson P900/P910 was so good. That is also why HTC and SE (and others) do their best to hide the WinMob experience behind various 'touch' UI skins.

Paris, 'cos her skin enjoys a good touch.

Apple iPhoto gets in your face

Directory Structure

Why on earth would anyone want to access the directory structure of iPhoto? This is 2009, it's all about meta-data baby.

Old skool directory based filing is sooo last Century. When (if) MS finally put out WinFS, and Apple replcaes HFS with ZFS (Snow Leopard, maybe), then we'll have proper query based filing systems.

Having to know where you've previously stored -- in a single place -- a file in order to find it, rather than being able to slice and dice it multiple ways (e.g. faces, events, place, date, etc.) is anachronystic. Plus, in the case of iPhoto, it means the app can store the original file, and subsequent changes to it; all the while hiding this from the user (so as not to alter the wrong file by accident).

As others have stated, if you really want to access the photo file in iPhoto, there are plenty of ways of accessing the actual file. And, if you tell iPhoto what your external editor is (Photoshop in my case), you can even right-click the photo and ask to edit it in the external editor. No need to do any copy to dekstop and re-import round trips. It all just works.

Now, if only iWork/Office/whatever could work in the same way, I'd be happy!

@Ascylto: Upgrade???

Ascylto, think a little bit about what you said. Thought about it? .... There you go.

So, if (as you say) every Mac comes with iLife, then people will only _ever_ be upgrading to a newer version of iLife. Therfore the £69 _is_ the upgrade price. There is no standalone price.

Obviously this does not include Hackintosh, or other dubious means of having OS X.

Paris, 'cos she speaks before thinking too.

'I HOPE YOUR HOUSE IS NEAR THE SEA HAHAHAHA!!!!'

Very Odd...

I don't understand it. An email in caps, and not a single mention of an uncle who's an oil minister, or FIFTEEN MILION DOLLARS ($15000000).

I don't even think that Ozgur is Nigerian...

25 years of Mac - the good, the bad, and the cheese grater

A Bit Harsh on the Mac Portable

Okay, so it was a bit of a beast. But then pretty much all laptops were at the time. If I remember correctly (and I may not, on account of being very young at the time); it was pretty revolutionary/innovative in its own way.

For example, I'm pretty sure it sported the first active matrix LCD -- required for the GUI, less of an issue for DOS based PCs. If you want a similarly speedy display, you'd have had to have bought a plasma equipped Tosh or Compaq -- and they were very pricey and (I think) ran only from the mains supply.

The trackball could be moved to either side of the keyboard, which was a nice touch for lefties (I don't suppose many other lappies came with trackballs though -- Windows not having hit 3.x by then).

I seem to recall the battery being lead acid as well. No idea why, but I presume someone thought it was a better bet than the prevailing NiCad batteries of the time. Old batteries really sucked.

Paris, 'cos she can really suck too.

Microsoft releases Vista virtualization

Should have done this from day 1

I think one of Vista's biggest problems in Microsoft's insistence on providing legacy support. This has pretty much locked in horrible Windows 'features' such as the Registry.

Vista should have been a ground up re-architecting of Windows -- hell, they had enough time to do it. Legacy support could have been provided from day 1 by virtualisation.

Instead, we end uo with a mess of an OS that attempts to be backwards compatible, yet still breaks most of your old apps. The legacy parts make it dog slow. And then MS decide to slow it down even more by putting a virtualisation layer on top of their hamstrung by legacy OS.

Genius.

Jacqui calls Vodafone man to run massive snoop database

@Unregistered PAYG

Obviously you'll need you ID card to buy a PAYG phone in Wacky Jacquie's utopian future-world.

Tesla takes Top Gear test to task

55 miles -- seems reasonable

Bearing in mind the abysmal MPG the Top Gear guys got from hooning a variety of supercars around the track (in a previous episode of TG -- check Dave on Sky at any point today to catch it), 55 miles for the Teslar seems pretty reasonable.

Paris, 'cos she's got a bit of mileage.

2TB Caviar drive too good to be true?

1000KB

Since when has any hard drive manufacturer measured space in anything other than multiples of 1000?

That's why my 1TB drives are 931GB (formatted).

Although don't get me started on what the correct terminology is (kibibytes vs. kilobytes, binary prefixes, etc. meaning my 1TB drive is a 0.93 teribyte drive!) .... Suffice to say that the drive makers are technically correct.

Paris, 'cos it confuses her too.

Junk science and booze tax - a study in spin

Stating the bleeding obvious

"There is low quality but demonstrable specific evidence to suggest that minimum pricing might be effective as a targeted public health policy in reducing consumption of cheap drinks."

Well, of course it fecking will. If you have minimum pricing so that there are no more cheap drinks, then of course the consumption of cheap drinks is going to go down. Pretty much to zero, I'd have thought.

Idiots.

Paris, 'cos she ain't cheap, either.

Netbook SSD usage to fall under 10% in 2009

Consumers are mostly idiots.

I agree with Mr Currys above. Consumers are mostly idiots, and don't get the difference between SSD and HDD.

I'm currently playing around with a couple of SCCs -- a Linux Acer Aspire One and an XP Eee PC 901, both with SSD. It's fair to say that the read and write speeds are nothing spectacular, though I'd wager they're better than the tiny 1.8" HDDs that I assume these things use. They key is that there are no moving parts, meaning the whole device is a lot more rugged.

The reason I have 2 SCCs is that my wife is the ICT coordinator at her primary school. The SCCs are ideal laptops to supplement their existing IT provision -- and small keyboards is a bonus for small children! All the data is stored on their file server (so no need for 160GB), and all CD-based software is stored as ISOs on a local NAS. So, none of the normal limitations of an SCC apply.

Sadly, most of the educational software is PC only -- hence the XP Eee PC. The Linux AAO is to investigate the possibility of moving to Linux (maybe using WINE, or sourcing equivalent OSS from elsewhere). With luck, it will be the thin end of the wedge for getting rid of MS from the School. Already the SCCs have OpenOffice on, and I'm hoping no-one will notice the difference (I've even changed the names of the shortcuts!). The school's MS license is up for renewal in a few months, and it would be great to bin it!

I must say, using both side by side, I much prefer the Linpus OS on the Acer. The Acer's bigger keyboard suits me better too. Windows is a bitch on a 8.9" screen, and scales badly. Maybe I'll try installing an ancient version of MacOS on there -- after all, the original Macs only had a 9" CRT!

Anyway, that was mostly off topic. I think my point was that people that know will generally still want an SSD, and an SSD is particularly useful in an environment where the netbook is likely to see some rough treatment (either in a class room, or the bottom of someone's bag).

Pairs, 'cos she likes some rough treatment too.

µTorrent for Mac is go

But Transmission is so good...

...this'll have to be bloody fantastic to make me switch.

I had µTorrent when I had a PC, and frankly it was a pain in the arse to set up (but still the best of the bunch on the PC). Once I got my Mac and found Transmission, I was a very happy bunny.

Paris, 'cos she clogs up the Torrents.

Google exempts self from Apple rules

Rules is rules. Only rules...

Firstly, these are only rules, not laws. Rules are essentially guidance. I suspect the major reason for Apple not being keen for all and sundry to start using any API they choose is simply down to trust. Google and Apple have developed a lot together for the iPhone, so there is plenty of trust involved. AN Other developer putting out yet another torch application or tip calculator on the App Store is just some random code monkey. They have no real relationship with Apple, hence no trust.

For this reason, some of the rules do not apply to Google.

Paris, 'cos you can trust her to bend the rules too.

US prosthetic todger pair plead guilty to conspiracy

Patent Infringement Suit

Surely 'Presuming Ed' has a case here...

Paris, 'cos -- well -- she's seen a few plastic todgers in her life...

Tories, retail ISVs decry Darling's VAT cut

Inflation

Well, if the Chancellor was worried about inflation falling too low next year, this VAT drop will certainly avoid it.

I suspect most retailers will see it as an opportunity to put prices up without people noticing.

How about dropping my income tax by 2.5% and give me the money directly, before anyone else can steal it (that is, before the Treasury does).

Paris, 'cos she's synonymous with 'inflationary pressures' too.

T-Mobile leaves 300,000 disconnected

It's the HLR

I happen to know that T-Mobile are upgrading their HLRs around about now, and it sounds like this is what caused the problem. Having a backup close to hand sounds a lot like -- we migrated, it was fecked, we rolled back.

There's not really much you can do in these instances. HLRs are a bit old skool (at least the ones T-Mobile were replacing) and are designed to be highly available, highly resilient in their own right. But, if you're swapping from one to another -- there's always a chance things can go wrong.

To be honest, it seems like they did a pretty good job of containing the issue.

@Danny: SQL Server? Are you having a laugh. That's _certainly_ not carrier grade. If the HLRs were SQL Server based, you'd never connect a call!

@Yorkshirepudding: that's really just physics, and not much T-Mobile can do about it ("ya cannae change tha laws of physics, cap'n, etc. etc.). T-Mobile runs at 1800MHz, while O2 (and Voda) are on 900Mhz. The low frequency has greater penetration. Hence O2 and Voda customers can use their phones where Orange and T-Mobile cutomers can't. As far as I'm aware, all networks are using 2100Hz 3G, so are all as fecked as one another in that area.

Paris, 'cos we all know when she goes down.

HTC Touch HD Windows Mobile smartphone

No good

You lost me at 'stylus'.

Paris, 'cos she only uses her fingers.

CRB database wrongly labels thousands as criminals

@Good Stuff AC Above

So, that's only 51 000 mistakes they'll make with the ID card database then. In other words, a medium sized town.

Not that great the really, is it?

Still, if a whole town has got nothing to hide...

Paris, 'cos she hides nothing. Nothing.

Quickoffice is iPhone bound

Why do you need a 'proper' file system?

The original Palm devices didn't have a proper file system -- just 'pointers' to where things were stored in RAM. And QuickOffice seemed to work just fine for that.

Now, I'm not saying this is going to be easy, just that a traditional file system is not really a hindrance.

Paris, 'cos she uses her Palm, too.

Microsoft: Windows 7 ready for Christmas 2009

I'll believe it when I see it

Having been so comprehensively lied to by MS over what Vista would include, and when it will be ready by; I'm not going to hold my breath of Win 7.

To be honest, it just looks like a re-skinned Vista. Are people going to have to pay for this 'service pack'?

Vista made me go Mac, and I couldn't be happier. Win 7 ain't looking like it'll get me back.

Webcast quango: One-third of UK teachers are creationists

@Creation or Evolution

"It is quite amazing that these people who are so positive that evolution is correct are frightened of creationists. All they seem to able to do is ridicule creationists."

We aren't frightened of you, and the only reason we ridicule you is that your idea is ridiculous.

Paris, 'cos she's not intelligent or designed.

Ballmer: 'Google not a major mobile competitor'

Deluded.

"Hey, we just launched a new product that has no revenue model — yeah, cheer for me,' I'm not sure my investors would take that very well"

You know what your investors won't take very well Steve? You being so bloody delusional.

Surely he can't believe half of what he says. But by saying it, he's making himself look stupid. If I was an investor, I'd be really worried if MS actually didn't view Google as a competitor in mobile. So why say it?

Idiot.

Paris, 'cos she's an interesting (revenue) model.

The DNA database and you

Hay

Adding more hay to the haystack does not make the needle easier to find.

Windows 7: One compatibility label, no confusion

Here's a novel idea...

How about no fecking stickers?

It took me ages to peel off the stupid (badly aligned) Vista sticker from my (upgraded to XP) work Thinkpad.

Still, at least I _could_ remove it. The sodding Centrino sticker seems to utilise the kind of glue they use to stick Airbus A380s together.

If I buy a PC, I know it's got Vista. I know that because once it's eventually booted up, It says 'Vista' on the screen. Why the hell do I need a sticker to remind me?

Paris, 'cos she's covered in sticky stuff. Sorry.

Jezza Clarkson cops flak for 'truckers murder strumpets' gag

@AC Above

That's not two words, it's one.

I'm deeply offended, and demand an apology.

Do the proper maths

On the basis that of the 27,000 complaints the Beeb received about the Ross/Brand Daily Mail inspired outrage, only 2 were made from people who actually listened to the show; Top Gear can expect a further 2.5 million or so whingers. Or about 1 in 10 license fee^H^H^H tax payers. Even with some ludicrous assumptions, that not very much, is it?

Personally, I found it quite amusing. But then I've not been a prostitute. Or murdered yet.

Paris, 'cos she's managed to avoid being murdered by a lorry driver. For now.

Rackable does cookie sheet servers

@A J Stile

Go back to school.

I suppose you think it's 'a hotel' too...

Paris, 'cos she's named after an hotel.

Publishing Prices

I don't think anyone nips down to PC World to buy a 22U server and rack. It's not really surprising that they don't publish prices. Who on earth would look at thh HP or IBM website to price up their 22 servers, racking, etc.?

And let's face it, if you're setting up a 'cloud' server farm, you're probably going to be buying several racks.

At these levels, pricing is completely bespoke, even if the racks themselves aren't.

Remember, eveything is negoitiable...

Paris, 'cos she's open to negotiations...

Bono bikini babe party pictures loose on Facebook

@Carl

But then you'd need a Facebook. And I'm not twelve.

Paris, 'cos she's not so hot on security either.

Mandelson's dept mulls UK internet power grab

This is a bad idea

Regardless of whether you think Nominet are currently doing a good job or not; what the feck does this have to do with the Government?

The Internet does not belong to them, so they should leave well alone.

Paris, 'cos she's a money grabbing huxter, just like Mandy.

Sanyo intros 'iPhone-on-a-stick' home internet terminal

How much?

Wouldn't it be cheaper to put a JesusPhone on a stick (well, an iPod Touch at least -- but I'm not sure what biblical term for the latter piece of kit is).

Paris, 'cos I've seen her in the biblical sense...

Apple MacBook Pro 15in

MBP Pricing

Couldn't agree more on the pricing.

When I needed to replace my old Sony Vaio Z1 last year (cost me over £1700 when I bought it. Lordy), I needed a laptop with similar screen res (the Vaio was 1400 x 1050). For some reason, Sony only seemed to do low res glossy screens unless you went for a 17" -- I needed my laptop to be vaguely portable.

Looking around, the only company that had laptops of similar spec and general quality charged the same or more. This was without factoring in all the actually useful free software you get with OS X (with Windows it's a huge amount of difficult to remove 'trial' software, and 60 days free of useless anti-virus). And this is before we get onto the fact that you'll need to spend even more money to get the same performance due to Vista being a resource hog (or go through the hassle of an XP upgrade, trying to find those esoteric drivers!).

I was pretty surprised, assuming like everyone else that Apple laptops were more expensive. So, I bought an MBP thinking that if I didn't like OS X, I could always install XP. I even bought a copy of Parallels to virtualise Windows so that I could run all those useful Windows apps. Thing is, a year on, I still haven't installed Parallels, or Windows.

I'd love to get one of these new MBPs, but I'm ont going to. My MBP is only a year old. But, if anyone else out there is considering one, but feels they're too pricey, or they'll lose their favourite Windows apps, I urge you to consider the Macbook Pro. I certainly didn't regret 'switching', and I hope you don't either.

Paris, 'cos she's cheaper than she looks too.

Civil servants' pro-Labour memo reignites child data controversy

@Martin Gregorie

It's bloody lucky then, that Mandelson is never likely to have children. Ever.

Paris, 'cos I forgot to add her icon to my last comment...

How will this solve anything?

As I always say when someone thinks a wacking big database will solve their problems: adding more hay to the haystack does not make the needle easier to find.

Paris, 'cos you won't find her in a haystack either.

iPhone 3G isn't necessarily

@Tim Spence

Tim, the reason you probably see you phone signal bars move up and down -- even when sat on your desk -- is because 3G cell sites can 'breathe'.

This is one of those 'good idea in principle, bad idea in practise' sort of things. When several people are trying to connect to a 3G site, the cell will 'breathe in' in order to give those people closest to the site a consistent quality of service. This tends to bugger people at the edge of the cell's range however. This single feature makes cell site planning an absolute nightmare.

Anyway, the breathing in and out tends to mean that those sitting at the extremities of cell sites have a fluctuating signal level.

Paris, 'cos she can breathe in and out, when she remembers.

iPhone apps selling like hot cakes

@Dan White (and others)

My god, what's happened to people that makes them so angry about other people's phone choices. It's pathetic.

Anyway, to Dan White flaming Ben Jamieson: at least Mr Jamieson can read two different parts of an article, and string the logic together to see that they're not related. Pulling apps from the App Store is not the same as the so called 'kill switch'. If Apple pull the app, it stays on your phone. If (and I suspect it's a big if) Apple discover a malicious app (sending your address book to spammer, for example), they can remotely kill it.

Someone else asks: 'What if this was Microsoft?'. Well, you can remotely kill/wipe on WinMo phones too. And Blackberries. In fact, this is one of the features that make them appealing to Enterprise. Can Microsoft (or RIM) do this themselves too? Probably.

So, maybe the kill switch isn't ideal, but it's the lesser of two evils. If anyone can come up with a better approach to dealing with malware on a connected device, I'd be happy to hear it (and no, that doesn't include installing anti-virus on a phone, as some bloke above suggests). Nothing can be made perfectly secure -- especially not if it's a connected device. All we can do when designing software is build in mitigations and controls. This one seems fairly reasonable, and I'd trust Apple more than most technology organisations to not shaft me...

Paris, 'cos she's what's wrong with society too.

Mac users urged to ditch Safari

@AC

Speccy or C64? Are you insane? It's the Beeb Model B...

Asus blames lack of Linux Eee PCs on Atom hold-ups

Equal Quantities

I'm no marketing genius, but if the Linux Eees were selling better than the XP Eees, wouldn't it be better business to manufacture more of the former?

Paris, 'cos she's no genius either.

Europe loves HD TVs - but not HD broadcasts

It's all about bitrate

I'm with JonB on this. Most broadcast HD is pretty hopeless (I'm looking at you Sky).

The bitrate is pretty low, so you just end up with a terrible picture with more pixels (alright, it's not terrible, but it's not great -- certainly not a tenner a month great).

I'll stick with downloading a few HD movies on my Apple TV. Not too many artefacts there.

Paris, 'cos she's lo def too.

Hawkeye technology turns tennis into a cartoon

Seems to be contradictory

This seems a very contradictory article to me. Vance complains about the slight inaccuracy of Hawkeye. Yet anything in life is going to have a measure of inaccuracy -- I bet the human eye (even with the benefit of slow motion replays) is way more inaccurate than +/- 5mm. And the key thing about Hawkeye is that it is a consistent inaccuracy -- no room for human emotion (e.g. 'that was such a good shot, it would be a shame to call it out'). With Hawkeye, as many will be called out as in -- over the course of a match, the debatable calls (and how many are decided by 5mm anyway) will even out.

Having decided that a pure statistical variance of error is not okay, Vance goes on to decide that a pure statistical method of deciding tennis greats is. As Jack Prichard points out, greatness is not measured by how many you beat, but who you beat. That is way many people (myself included) consider Sir Stirling Moss to be a greater racing driver (no F1 world championships) than Michael Schumacher (7 times F1 World Champion).

Paris, 'cos the surface is an anomaly there too. New balls please...

PC World pips Asus to UK Atom sub-laptop premier

Ceci n'est pas une title

Pah! It's all about the Acer Aspire One for me. And under two hundred notes if Gordo will let you have your VAT back.

Is SproutCore worth the Flash and Java iPhone snub?

IE

<quote>Internet Explorer is not properly supported</quote>

You mean, IE does not properly support SproutCore or the Javascript standard correctly.

Gordo's DNA database claims branded 'ridiculous'

@Dan

I believe that if you are arrested (rather than simply being questioned) then your DNA and fingerprints will be (forcibly, if necessary) taken. This is even if you are subsequently released without charge.

@Tom

Nope, they don't even have to charge you.

HD TV in the UK

What about the bandwidth?

It's all very well pumping out large numbers of pixels, but if the images are compressed to hell, then simply having more pixels is no help.

I have Sky+ and an Apple TV (160GB, bought for about 180 quid in the Apple Store NY. Thanks exchange rate!). I've resisted moving to Sky HD for a couple of reasons: firstly it is just too expensive. Aside from the one-off costs, a tenner a month is just too much. In the same way that Sky+ is 'free' if you have it in conjunction with movies and/or sport (at least, when I first subscribed, this was the deal -- may be 'free' across the board now); HD should be 'free' with a top-end package too. Secondly (and most importantly), the leap in quality from SD to HD is just not there. The bandwidth is too restricted to show off the benefits of HD. Just those MPEG artifacts in all their high def glory!

I don't watch many films, but those I do I rent from iTunes (the US store -- waaay more choice, thanks to the ludicrous restrictions the rights holders insist on. When will the studios 'get' modern digital distribution?) for a few dollars. Apple's HD is actually pretty good (720p rather than the 1080i of Sky -- but 1080i is a bit of a con anyway -- I'd much rather a progressive picture than an interlaced picture with notionally more pixels) and well worth the money, in my view. No Country for Old Men looked fantastic. The choice is a little odd -- lots of new releases, and a random selection of old films. The other great feature of the Apple TV is the ability to sync rented films to your iPod. I quite often don't finish a film in the evening, but can watch the last 20 mins on the Tube into work. Can't do that with Sky or Freesat!

So, my adivce is, ignore the broadcast HD -- the bandwidth is too low -- and get an Apple TV for watching decent quality HD movies.

Paris, 'cos she's into low bandwidth, low quality films...

Trojan heralds OS X's 'new phase of exposure to malware'

Inferiority Complex?

I find the bile and vitriole from the Windows camp slightly odd. Maybe this (slightly iffy) article has acted as an opportunity for Windows fanboys to vent 20 years of built up spleen.

To me, a computer is a tool to do a job. For some people (e.g gamers), that tool may be a PC; to others, it may be a Linux or OS X. No system is inherently right, but one system is right for /you/.

Me? I bought a 15.4" MacBook Pro last year. The reason I did so was that it was the best replacement for my Vaio Z1. No other lappy (!) within my price range had a sufficient screen resolution (against the portability of the device -- no 17" 1 grand behemoths for me!). At the time I thought I'd give OS X a whirl; and, if I didn't like it, install XP instead. But, with OS X I was pleasantly surprised. For the bile spitting Windows users amongst you, I suggest you try it before hating it.

I got my first PC in 1995 (on 3.11 -- this was the beginning of 95!) because I needed AutoCAD. Before that, I was using an Acorn Archimedes because it suited my purposes well (Impression was, and still is, one of the best document processing tools I've ever used). The fact that RISC OS was leagues ahead of 3.11 helped too. In fact, one of the things I've discovered about OS X is how similar it is in many ways to RISC OS. It just works more logically and consistently -- as any good UI should. On a side note, this email from Bill G shows that we're not the only ones who despair at the way Windows and MS work sometimes (http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/141821.asp).

And the idea that Macs are significantly more expensive than PCs (for laptops anyway) is wrong. Granted, you can get some very cheap Windows laptops, but if you actually compare like-for-like, Macs are not really any more pricey.

And to whomever stated that no OS is inherently more secure than any other OS clearly has no idea what they're talking about. The fundemental architecture and coding practices used to develop an OS has a huge impact upon the security (relating to potential exploits). In this respect *NIX based OSes are much more secure than Windows. The default configuration of the OS also has a big impact -- and here Windows does badly too (with users being Root by default). There are a whole load of other things that affect security too but these two are probably the most important.

Paris, 'cos she doesn't care if you prefer a Mac or a PC either...