Posts by Simon Langley

Microsoft to wave goodbye to mobile 'experience' boss?

Windows Mobile is doooooomed

Windows Mobile and its predecessors easily beat off all comers as being the worst OSs I have ever used. Completely inconsistent UI, appalling lack of stability leading to hard resets numerous times per day, general flakiness, complete lack of visual appeal etc etc.

I am no fan of Microsoft's, but I have been favourably impressed with Windows 7 despite the atrocious dog's breakfast that was Vista and I have even considered buying a Windows 7 laptop. However, my experiences with Window Mobile have been so negative that there is no way I would ever touch it or its progeny with a barge pole. Never did an OS deserve to wither on the vine as much as Windows Mobile and I am fully confident that it will.

Bye bye.

New iPhone to land in US on 7 June

iPhone OS > Android

The world and his wife have been playing catch up with their phones ever since the iPhone was released. I am by no means uncritical of Apple (and indeed it is highly unlikely I shall be buying the next iPhone) but the fact is that no-one has come close so far and the idea that Android will even be close behind, let alone surpass the iPhone is frankly laughable.

Every time a new smartphone comes out, all the tech sites have headlines along the lines of "Is the X the iPhone killer?" and the answer, every time, has been no.

The iPhone is very far from being perfect, but so far it has no real competition. This may not be true forever, but I'll eat my hat if Google can come up with anything that has half the appeal or sells half as well as the iPhone in the next two years.

Canadian mobe firm sued over disappearing husband

Cry me a river

So she got found out because Rogers did something they shouldn't have (and they shouldn't) - tough.

This reminds me of Max Mosley complaining about the effect on his wife of the disclosure of his antics with a bunch of prostitutes. What both of them should consider is, regardless of the wrongs of others, if they had behaved themselves, there would have been nothing to disclose.

She has deprived her children of a father through her own behaviour. Suing Rogers won't lessen the guilt she rightly feels.

Hacker's record credit card theft fetches 20-year sentence

Asperger syndrome

Sorry to be pedantic (I can't help it) but Asperger syndrome is one of the Autistic Spectrum Disorders and isn't an illness.

An illness is something you catch or that develops that could potentially be cured like influenza or chickenpox. Unfortunately, with ASDs there is no cure and no real prospect of one any more than there is a cure for blue eyes.

'McDonalds' burger-lers making millions

AOL!?!

Anyone who sells even a newspaper to someone on credit using an AOL or Yahoo! address deserves to lose their money. This is nature's way of weeding out the stupid.

MPs, Lords ask if Mandybill is human rights friendly

This IS collective punishment

An IP address is not a person. Even if someone using an IP address can be proven to be guilty of an offence, that only narrows the suspects down to a group in most households.

If it is established that an unidentified member of a group has committed an offence, English Law does not normally permit the courts to punish all members of that group.

Also, the suggestion that it is up to parents to monitor the activities of their children is somewhat disingenuous. I would hazard a guess that most 16 year olds are much more tech savvy than their parents. We (ie Reg readers) may know how to monitor our children's internet usage, but most people do not and it is not reasonable to expect parents (or indeed ISPs) to do the rights holders' dirty work for them.

Simon says "Fuck 'em", they are wasting their time anyway. This will make no difference whatever apart from a tiny number of people having to change ISP.

Microsoft genuinely chuffed as judge drops WGA case

Something wrong at all

@Haydies

This is simply not true. I have had problems several times with piracy prevention software/features complaining about completely legal software and I am far from being alone as some of the previous posters have pointed out.

Any pirate worth his salt, laughs in the face of stupid ineffectual measures like this so all WGA does is irritate legitimate customers while having little or no impact on piracy.

I sometimes think that M$ goes through the charade of pretending to prevent piracy while actually not caring as long as their market share doesn't drop (paid or pirated) but perhaps I am just being cynical.

Judge awards Dish Network $51m from satellite pirate

Ripping off

@Iggle Piggle

I hope you have permission from the BBC to use the name Iggle Piggle or are you ripping off their intellectual property?

Taser offers obsessive parents total mobe intrusion package

How to reduce your child's mobile usage and alienate them in one simple move

No self-respecting person of any age would submit to this sort of intrusion and nor should they.

Any child with more than two brain cells to rub together would just leave the phone at home and use a different one.

I have three children and I have an alternative solution to this. How about talking to them? Perhaps if your children trust you they will tell you what they are doing.

If I had found out my parents were spying on me like this, I doubt I ever would have spoken to them again. Technology is no substitute for parenting. How long before Taser et al offer an outsourced parenting solution, probably offshored to Mumbai.

iSlate? I spy more control from Cupertino

No thanks Apple

I am a big fan of Apple's products and own several including the MacBook Pro on which I am typing this and an iPhone. I love my MBP but I only like my iPhone and software fascism is the main reason.

I shan't buy another iPhone as I am fed up with the restrictions on what I can do with it even though what it does do, it does extremely well.

I was going to buy an iWhatever but if this story is true (and I have to accept that it seems entirely plausible) I shan't be after all. I'm not prepared to put up with Apple's sometimes bizarre restrictions any longer - what a shame.

Toshiba MK6465GSX 640GB laptop hard drive

Disappointed they aren't bigger

I have had a 500GB in my main laptop for more than a year now. When I bought it, it was twice the size of its predecessor and of course, I have had no trouble filling it up.

I had rather hoped that by now there would be 750GB or even 1TB 2.5" 9.5mm drives (stupid mixed units) but 640GB is such a small increase that it's just not worth spending £120 for another 140GB.

Perhaps I my expectations of progress are too high but I am distinctly underwhelmed.

iPhone upgrades - a one-way control-freak street

This is going too far

I am a big fan of Apple's products. In our house we have a MacBook Pro, a MacBook, a Mac Mini, an iPod Touch, two iPod Nanos and my iPhone.

In general we have been very (very) happy with all of these but I shall NOT be buying another iPhone. The extreme restrictions on what I can do with my phone are way over the top and I am sick of Apple's fascist approach to iPhone software.

My next phone will almost certainly be running Android and I doubt I shall ever buy another iPhone. What a shame Apple, you are squandering my goodwill.

PS This is the first time I have ever used the evil SJ icon.

Samsung N510 Nvidia Ion-based netbook

Glossy screens FTW

OK, under some circumstances, reflections on glossy screens can be annoying*. However the colour saturation on the glossy screens I have used tends to be much better and that matters to me, particularly for viewing photographs.

I opted for the glossy screen on my MacBook Pro and I'm glad I did. It's the best laptop screen I have ever used.

The ideal situation would be for manufacturers to offer a choice as Apple does. Neither is better, it just depends what you use them for.

* I live in Yorkshire and the sun only shines for a few days each year so it is rarely a problem up here.

Appeal Court: Mod chips infringe game copyright after all

Stuff the rights holders but...

...whatever the alternative uses for mod chips, it is unrealistic not to accept that their "primary purpose" is to allow the playing of pirated games and consequently the judge has reflected the will of Parliament in finding that the mod chip vendor had breached the CDPA.

Having said that, I couldn't care less if the rights holders are being screwed. For every prosecution there are 10000 pirates, none of whom would give a moment's consideration to stopping their piratical activities and I say good luck to them.

Remember folks, "Home taping is killing music".

Apple seeks OS-jacking advert patent

Do this and it's goodbye Mac OS X

I utterly detest advertisements.

I don't watch television ever (I don't even own one) in large part because of advertisements. I only ever use a web browser with adblock. I quickly skip over advertisements in newspapers.

If Apple started pushing out advertisements in the manner described ever under any circumstances I would kiss Apple goodbye forever. I love Mac OS X, but I hate advertisements more.

Hackers in keyless Windows 7 entry

They really aren't that bothered...

...nor have they ever been.

I hate Windows and I always have, but the people at MS are not stupid. If they were successful in reducing the level of piracy, they would have a negative impact on their market share and they really don't want that. Even the arch chair thrower himself has said that he would rather people pirated Windows than used Linux.

In this day and age it would not be politic for MS to permit unfettered piracy like Apple does with Mac OS X (for those of you who don't use it, there is no activation or key of any sort) so they make a token effort. I would be astonished if anyone in Redmond cares about this.

Apart from anything, the vast majority of copies of Windows are bought with a new PC and piracy will have only a limited effect on these sales.

El Reg launches 'Skinny Fit' fashion range

@Rex Alfie Lee

There seems to be a degree of confusion over who said what here.

I appear to have rubbed Craig 28 up the wrong way with my initial comment (see "Why oh why" above), but you should have directed your remarks to Craig 28 not me. Particularly the remark about football; Craig 28 may like football, but I'm with you, I prefer penguins.

Why oh why...

I am baffled as to why the fashion industry appears so fixated on anorexic women. I have discussed this subject with a lot of my male friends and of the two of them who say they like slim (not skinny) women, one is gay and the other bisexual (the gay one obviously didn't like women quite as much as some of my other friends). All of the rest of us (and that certainly includes me) like women to look like women not like little boys.

Until recently I had always thought this was just an odd curiousity but it never bothered me. However, I now have a 4 year old daughter, and the thought that she would ever feel under pressure to look like she hadn't eaten for three months and was days from death is genuinely disturbing.

Come on fashionistas - sort yourselves out and get some real women on the front covers of your vacuous magazines and catalogues.

No more premium rate numbers for docs

saynoto0870.com

I pay for 084 numbers as these are not bundled with my mobile price plan (unlike geographical number) so I try not to call them.

The excellent saynoto0870.com has been very helpful and has almost always found a geographical number for me to use instead. The secret to getting hold of them is to say you are on holiday and say the the 084 number won't work.

Oz gov suggests world's worst copyright protection scheme

Ozzie Knut

Why doesn't the Australian Govt try ordering back the waves at the same time?

I don't care how draconian the solution suggested by technical dullards, they are completely wasting their time. Whatever they try won't work.

The solution to piracy is to make the paid solutions more appealing to customers than the free alternative. Look at Apple and iTunes. They have made a fortune by providing a good service that is easy to use, well-integrated into widely used software and (fairly) reasonably priced.

There is no other solution idiots - get used to it.

Two convicted for refusal to decrypt data

Hidden partitions are proof against forensics

@AC

"And as for all those comments about double partitions in TrueCrypt. It might satisfy the curiosity of your wives when she sees that you have an encrypted file but if you think for one minute it will fool a trained forensics expert then at best you've wasted a minute of your life."

That shows all you know, ask a proper cryptographer.

The plausible deniability of Truecrypt's hidden partitions is exactly that. No matter how well trained the forensics expert is, it is not possible to prove that a Truecrypt volume contains a hidden partition unless you can decrypt the data. No-one, and I don't care who they are, how much they know or how well they are trained can prove this - it just isn't possible.

Most steganography techniques can be overcome, but the plausible deniability of Truecrypt (and RubberHose to give another example) is exactly that. Without an encryption key or a computer powerful enough to crack strong encryption algorithms (and I don't believe even the NSA is capable of this) encrypted data can be made indistinguishable from random bits.

Truecrypt FTW.

Rogue iPhone app stores raking mazuma

No excuse for tying down the iPhone

I am a big fan of Apple. As a family we own 3 Macs (which we love), an iPhone, an iPod Touch and two iPods, but...

I really don't like the restrictions on where I can install software from and Apple's apparently arbitrary approach to which applications it will allow on the App Store and which it won't.

The idea that Apple would extend this approach to their computers is clearly absurd, but since the freedom to install 3rd party software has not damaged the ability of my MacBook Pro to function well, why should it on the iPhone?

I like my iPhone (although I love my Mac) but unless they change this approach, I am unlikely to replace my iPhone with another.

Tokyo battles monstrous murder of crows

All Hail the Crows

...and I, for one, welcome our new crow overlords.

Windows 7, Bing and security: Mr Ballmer regrets

Vista file copying - unbelievable uselessness

@AC I completely agree with your assessment of Vista. How crap is it that a simple operation like copying files should work so badly that it can be quicker to turn the machine off and back on again and give it another go instead of waiting to see if it ever works out how long it will take to delete one file? Last year I spent £700 on a new Apple laptop for my wife so I would not be bombarded with her problems getting Vista to do even simple things properly (such as stay connected to a wireless network for more than an hour at a time). Two days later, she stopped asking questions and now her MacBook just does its stuff and she loves it.

Vista wasn't even beta quality. To be fair to Windows 7, it is the OS that Vista should have been but of course it's still Microsoft and all that entails.

@Microsoft

You have screwed us over for too long. I have completely lost patience and I really don't care how good or bad Windows 7 is, I shall never voluntarily touch another Microsoft product as long as I live.

Apple won't let Commodore onto its baby

I like most Apple products but...

I have a MacBook Pro and it is easily the best computer I have ever had. I also have an iPhone but I haven't even considered upgrading to the 3GS. Apple does control this excellent device far too much and this is the main reason why I probably won't buy another Apple phone.

I can install anything I like on my Apple laptop. Why cannot I do the same on my Apple phone?

The best netbook-friendly Linux distros

AAO - great value hardware, sucky Linux support

I bought an Acer Aspire One as soon as they were available in the UK for £200. In general I am very pleased with it. It looks cool, has the hardware I want and is small and apparently fairly robust.

Unfortunately, the software support is not good. Linpus supports all the hardware but it sucks. No Linux distro of which I am aware currently supports the SD card readers properly which is getting frustrating after 11 months.

I envy the Dell Mini 9 users who have a fully functional Ubuntu for their machine.

Toshiba first with half-a-terabyte SSD laptop

£3k!

Good grief - three thousand pounds! That's 15 Acer Aspire Ones. It's even more than twice what I paid for my MacBook Pro - that's absolutely ridiculous.

It had better be very very good.

LG Arena touchphone

LG=Mac fanboi

What a blatant iPhone rip-off. Why would anyone buy a phone from a company that can only copy other companies' products?

Windows 7 — It’s like Vista, only less annoying

Good but just not good enough

OK everyone but the most looney M$ fan hated Vista but my experience of Windows 7 is that it is a huge improvement over Vista and still quite a bit better than XP so congratulations for that.

However, it still doesn't compare to Mac OS X.

My wife used to run Vista on a decent spec laptop but it drove both of us crazy. She had used various flavours of Windows for years but I still must have spent at least two hours a week fixing things and helping her just to get her work done. Wireless networks were particularly problematical but the whole thing ran like an absolute dog. I bought her a MacBook and about three days after she switched, she just stopped asking for help and I probably haven't spent two hours helping since then (last July).

Five of my friends have made the same switch and all are delighted by Mac OS X. I have never met anyone who switched the other way. Perhaps they exist, but their rarity is telling.

Adblock developer offers 'please unblock me' tag to sites

Advertisers killing the goose that laid the golden egg

I have no fundamental problem with the idea of advertising on web sites but I got so sick of the bandwidth hungry bilge with which I was being bombarded that I now block all advertisements and my browsing experience is incomporably better as a result.

When the adverts on a web page started to take 5 times as long to load as the content and resulted in popups, popunders and all the rest of it, I lost patience and so now I block everything.

Perhaps the developer could bring in some functionality that loads adverts in the background and doesn't display them so the web site still gets its money and I don't have to see them. I don't suppose the advertisers would like that much, but I cannot say that I really care.

Sometimes I yearn for the days when you had to be clever just to be able to connect to the internet at all and there were no adverts. I suppose I must be getting old.

ModBook Mac tablet turns up in Blighty

Apple cannot do anything about it

I agree that they haven't integrated the digitiser very stylishly and also that it seems grossly overpriced, but Apple cannot do anything about it. There is nothing to stop anyone doing anything they like to an Apple machine once they have bought it as long as they don't claim that it's an Apple mod.

Apple brands UK tabloid 'obscene'

Page 3 is porn

Like most other Reg readers I feel utter contempt for the Sun and its readers. I also feel utter contempt for the fact that breasts are more shocking to Americans than graphic violence - look at the Janet Jackson incident for example.

However, the bare breasts on page 3 are not natural nudity. They are there solely for the sexual titillation of the male readers. I have absolutely no problem with pictures of breasts in some circumstances, so I was right behind the breastfeeding women on Facebook, but page 3, while rather mild and relatively harmless, is nevertheless pornographic. I fully agree with Apple on this.

To use the example one of the earlier posters gave, would I object to my daughter appearing on page 3 (she is only three so it is somewhat unlikely at the moment)? Damn right I would. If she were an adult and there were a photograph of her breastfeeding her baby published would I mind that? Certainly not. There is a very clear difference between the two.

Kebabs pose 'no danger whatsoever', Russians claim

Mark will die satisfyingly fat and spotty

@Mark

Can you add in all the animals I won't eat too? The only problem from your perspective is you will be so fat, spotty and unfit that you will die too young to make up the difference.

Nevertheless, why not die trying?

Whatever one feels about the morality of meat eating, there is ample evidence that vegetarians live longer than meat eaters. Don't think we won't dance a little jig while we read your obituary Mark.

Acer nails Windows 7 for October release

Not bad

I hate Windows and Microsoft and I especially hated Vista. My experience with Vista was probably about as bad an experience as I have ever had with any operating system (judging each by the standards of the time). It was so buggy and resource hungry that it was literally unusable.

I have tried Windows 7 in a virtual machine and it was very pleasantly surprised. It runs pretty well and didn't do anything annoying at all. All it really appears to be is Vista as it ought to have been but to be fair to MS, they appear to have done their job this time.

If I can work out how to install Windows 7 to a USB drive (possible with XP but absurdly painful compared to Ubuntu or Mac OS X) I might even run it on a long term basis.

Canonical punts Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope

Good but still some way to go with hardware support

Much as I love Ubuntu, Jaunty does not fully support the hardware on my Acer Aspire One, which is disappointing.

It works on everything else I use (and have ever used) though.

Unlike Microsoft, Canonical has not pissed off almost all of the users of their previous OS. Vista was the worst OS I have used since Windows 95 (which at least had the benefit of being reasonably quick, if hideously unreliable). "Business capable" - pah! I am an IT Consultant working mostly with big corporates and not a single one has "upgraded" to Vista and almost none of them is seriously considering Windows 7 after the dog's breakfast that was Vista. Better luck next time Microsoft.

Pirate Bay loses trial: defendants face prison time, hefty fines

Ordering back the waves

I am disappointed but this decision will make absolutely no difference to anyone expect perhaps the four unfortunate defendants.

TPB will probably continue the same as ever, just from a different location. Even if it didn't there are a million and one torrent sites, not to mention Usenet, Rapidshare, IRC, public ftp servers...

The toothpaste cannot be squeezed back into the tube - it is too late to stop file sharing. Aggressive legal action by rights holders will achieve nothing except further antagonising their own customers. This has already been admitted implicitly by most of them by halting legal action against individuals who download material illegally.

Keep litigating dinosaurs and let's see who is the long term winner - Pirates FTW.

Virgin Media switches to Gmail

I meant NTL not Telewest - VM still suck though

@dreadful scathe

You are quite right it wasn't Telewest is was NTL.

Blueyonder/Telewest->NTL->Virgin was how I recall it went.

Virgin had to do this - they suck too much to do it themselves

I was a satisfied Blueyonder customer and then they were taken over by Telewest. I was a satisfied Telewest customer then they were taken over by Virgin. I am a totally dissatisified Virgin customer.

I have already stopped using Virgin's email systems because they are so unreliable and moved over to Google. I had an email outage lasting three days a few months ago. BTW to the poster who complained about adverts on Google, use a google address with IMAP or POP and you'll never see any adverts.

The main problem with Virgin though is that they lie about speeds, penalise users (by throttling) who use even half of the advertised speed and then frequently just lose cable signal. I have had to complain three times in the last three weeks because my Virgin Broadband connection has died. Each time it was clear that the problem was on their side but each time I had to go through the charade of checking my cable modem settings, rebooting firewalls, turning off, back on, blah blah blah. Each time they finally admitted that the problem was on their side and eventually fixed it without having to visit my house.

They have even had the temerity to invite me to spend even more money upgrading to 50mb. Give me the service I'm already paying for you scumbags and then perhaps I'll think about spending more with you, but I hate them so much that I am actually thinking of downgrading instead.

Which desktop Linux distribution?

Users are the problem not the OS

At home I use Debian on my servers and Ubuntu/Leopard on my clients. At work I have two machines, one runs our corporate XP build the other runs Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is great and it does do almost all of what almost everyone needs but, the problem is the users. Users vary from annoyingly knowledgeable to annoyingly stupid but most of them would need a fair bit of training to cope adequately with Ubuntu.

I am sorry to say that the enormous installed base of idiots means we shall be stuck sullying ourselves with Windows for the foreseeable future. The only likely alternative to Windows is Mac OS X, which I have seen more and more among senior staff at my clients. Ubuntu (and indeed all the many - too many - versions of Linux) are not on the cards for a loooooooong time.

eBay put Skype on iPhone 'to boost price of NSA backdoor'

Are there any real stories today?

All the stories today seem to be April Fools. I have just read 4 straight stories all of which seemed wholly implausible.

Moderatrix quits El Reg: Latest

Don't go Sarah

The original story was quite clearly a joke and those of you who didn't immediately notice that

a) it was very silly, and

b) the only classic reg element it missed out was the Bulgarian airbag angle,

are rather dim.

Sarah's rant OTOH looked genuine I'm sorry to say. Please don't over-react Sarah. Yes, the PMS "jokes" are pretty pathetic. The "mines the..." jokes are frequently lame, but the contributors to this site are pointy heads not comedians so what do you expect. Lastly, try reading some of the comments on YouTube and then come back here. You'll see it really isn't as bad as all that.

Acer K10 DLP pico projector

Pretty nifty but...

...since Samsung (I think) look like they are going to be building projectors into mobile phones, I'm a lot less impressed by the smallness of this projector.

As one of the posters above points out, old fashioned bulbs get very hot and until they replace that with something that generates a lot less heat, these things are always going to be too big, which is a shame because it would be nice to have one small enough to be able to carry around.

Apple 17in MacBook Pro

Glossy screens FTW

It's interesting that they have stopped offering the anti-glare display as an option. In the last 18m I have bought a MacBook and a MacBook Pro and I chose the glossy screen both times and I'm glad I did.

The colours on my photographs in Aperture look great, far better than anything I have ever seen with an anti-glare screen. Perhaps having the sun reflecting off the screen is a problem in California, but I can tell you, it doesn't bother me too much here in Yorkshire.

This is a very nice machine, and for the specs, fairly priced. However, it is very expensive and I shall be hanging onto my current MBP for a while yet I think.

Cold-water treatment for Ballmer on Windows Mobile

WM makes Win95 look solid and stylish

I have used mobile phones and PDAs with just about every OS going and WM is the most unstable and ugly POS I have ever used.

I used to use an Ipaq which I had to hard reboot every day. Even Win95 was never that bad. Symbian isn't pretty but it was fairly stable. Android, hmm. The OS is showing promise but the hardware is less than impressive.

All in all, my favourite it, you guessed it, my iPhone. I am a recent convert to the Church of Apple but it is a lot more than a pretty face. Unlike Mac OS X, there are some very annoying bugs, but it has not crashed once in a year of daily use and it is pretty fully featured. Now if only Apple would open up a bit it would be great. Unfortunately that is not Apple's style and that is a major shortcoming.

So far there are no genuinely attractive alternatives but I still have 6 months of my contract to run so the point is moot.

Polish Spitfire shoots down BNP

Another BNP classic

This is typical of the lack of thought that goes into everything the BNP does.

Perhaps it was supposed to illustrate how the Poles were enemies of the fascists and therefore likely to be enemies of the BNP as well. Oh no, how terrible.

However this is still topped by my favourite fascist shoots self in foot moment which was when David Irving, famous holocaust denier, inadvertantly addressed the judge in his libel trial (he was the plaintiff) as "Mein führer".

Teen accused of 'sinister' Facebook sex extortion plot

300 years harsh?

Based on the fact that this guy has effectively raped several minors and threatened witnesses for telling the truth, I have no sympathy. If he spends the rest of his life in prison it will serve him right.

He is clearly exactly the sort of person that society could well do without and protecting everyone from revolting vermin like him (assuming of course that all this is true) seems to me to be entirely laudable.

I have never been a supporter of the death penalty but some people's behaviour puts them beyond the pale and society needs to be protected from them. I would say that long-term incarceration is appropriate in the case of clearly dangerous individuals and on the face of it, this guy falls firmly into that category.

Asus unwraps 10in Eee with 9.5-hour battery life

I'm with Jerome

I paid £200 for my Aspire One. None of the laptots produced recently offers any real benefit over the machine I already have other than improved battery life but most cost considerably more than £200.

The only improvement I would really like to see (in addition to better battery life) is higher screen resolution and none of them offers that. The laptot sector has really taken off, but almost all the machine are pretty much identical with very little to differentiate them from each other.

Come on laptot manufacturers, show a bit of imagination.

Acer intros 10in Aspire One netbook

More drawbacks than advantages

Like many of the previous posters, this just mystifies me. It's bigger and presumably heavier. The screen is larger but likely to be the same resolution so what's the point of that? The battery life is better but then it comes with a HDD rather than SSD, only one card reader and it's physically larger.

The same processor and similar memory in the existing One mean this has more drawbacks than advantages.

I must admit though, while my One is a very nice little machine and only cost £200, the battery life is too short so a 6 cell battery is a major improvement. Nevertheless, this is not going to tempt me to sidegrade (sorry).

LG X110 netbook

apt-get

@Jase

Yes, apt-get is a command line utility, but it is streets ahead of anything that M$ has or probably ever will have. Recently I had the misfortune to install XP onto my son's netbook and I had to reboot and run Windows update 8 (yes eight - count them) times before it was fully up-to-date. Updating was time-consuming, boring and required me to be there on and off for several hours.

I also recently upgraded an Ubuntu machine from 8.04 to fully updated 8.10 with one simple command and one reboot. You may think that apt-get dates back to 1983 but in saying so, you merely betray your ignorance of what a proper ackage manager (like apt) is capable of.

UK.gov 'to create anti-net piracy agency'

Like trying to order back the waves

Whatever anyone thinks about the rights or wrongs of copyright infringement, the war on piracy is like the war on drugs. It is doomed to be never-ending and hopelessly futile. The simple fact is that the pirates always have been, and always will be, cleverer and more resourceful than the rights holders.

The rights holders need to start being clever (at last) and offer something that people are willing to pay for. To a lot of people they do not do that. If the rights holders want an example of what happens to a company which relies on legal action instead of innovation, look at SCO.