Posts by Andrew James 399 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jul 2008
You could argue the other way, and say that the low end of the market has no decent competition from a decent product. Just because £400 android tablets pitch in against the iPad price point and dont sell many doesnt make the competion commission step in ... so why should the £200 android tablet not selling as many as a similarly priced iPad make any difference at all?
It means that by 2014 by the time the court allows Samsung to put them into the US again, the technology will be worthless and will make the victory over Apple a complete waste of time. The Nexus by then woul dbe a bargain basement phone at best. Not the shining beacon of all things Android that its supposed to represent.
I personally have a huge amount of respect for RBS. They've sorted themselves out just in time for the completion of my house purchase today, so all the hassle that goes with delaying the removals firm, deliveries to the new address arranged tomorrow, wednesday and thursday etc is eliminated just by them sorting the problem over the weekend.
Hooray. Just need to call at the shop on the way home and get beers for the fridge.
A customer who sent us confirmation that BACS payments had been made on Tuesday has still not had those payments arrive in our account from their natwest account. Its ridiculous.
All the press is about people not receiving money into their accounts with natwest but there must be a huge amount of people affected by payments not going out from natwest accounts too.
Our finance department made payments to about 200 people, to hit their accounts on wednesday and thursday (today) this week. Of those 200 people more than 40 have phoned the office to say they've not received their pay, and when i mentioned i heard about this earlier today they've checked and all of them are with RBS or Natwest.
We've also had a significant problem with one of our customers at the end of last week, and they agreed they would settle the full amount outstanding this week, sending confirmation of payment on Tuesday. The payment hasnt arrived with us. They bank with Natwest. We dont. So obviously they have problems with payment being sent out, and not just with monies coming in.
For those who want ethernet there is an adapter available. At £30 its less than 2% of the cost of the device, so its not like its a disaster.
I can't understand why its such a deal-breaker for so many people not having a dvd drive either. I literally cant remember the last time i used one on my laptop, at work or at home.
Couldn't agree more. Phones for ultimate portability, tablets for computing on a bigger screen than a phone.
A couple of years ago carrying around a ten inch netbook was considered portable enough to take everywhere. Now all of a sudden when its less than 10mm thick and half the weight of a netbook thats no longer a portable size and people want something to fit in a pocket to be useful? Insanity.
At the end of the year i'll be ditching the smartphone in favour of a dumbphone and an iPad with a data contract. Not a best-fit for everyone, but for me this will work just fine. I'm not getting into the how and why of all that, but I've given it some thought and decided its an option that will work for me.
I will be tied to a 24 month data contract, just like with a smartphone. So every couple of years i will upgrade the tablet just like i would a phone. The only difference being the iPad will be more useful for the kids to play with than would be the case with an old phone.
It did, but that was pretty horrific. Essentially just a plastic screen over the touch panel, with a slight gap in between. You apply pressure to the plastic and it deforms allowing you to "click" onto the touch panel.
My sister had one for two years on a contract. I tried to warn her off it at the time of purchase. She absolutely hated the thing.
This is good news. I've been put off what would otherwise be very good deals from Vodafone for years because where i live is absolute zero in terms of signal strength. I have to go about 300 yards from my house before i even reach sufficient signal to send texts. O2 on the other hand is really strong - as are Orange and T-Mobile.
I'd actually quite like to see all the networks merge to use one huge backbone of masts and network, and differentiate themselves in terms of what they offer, at what price, and the customer service you receive.
I've only used skype twice. Once from a hotel room in Vienna to say goodnight to my kids while away with work. And once a few days later from Munich to explain why daddy wasnt going to be home like he said because there was a delay in Vienna that made me miss the connecting flight.
It has its uses. But it wouldnt be the killer app for me. I'd get a lot more use from netflix than i would from skype. And my use of that would be positively dwarfed by my use of "the internet" in general.
" ... designed for those who could easily use public transport for their daily commute but won't because it's got the public on or is always late ... "
My commute is about 19 miles each way. From the wrong side of one town, the to the far side of the next. Getting to work in the car takes 40 minutes. Costs about £5 a day. Public transport would be a similar cost - I've priced it up - but would require 1x Bus from home to town. Then 1xBus to the next town. Then 1xBus to work. With waiting times etc and additional traffic of having to enter and leave two town centres, the time taken is more like 100 minutes.
Of course, i could use the train instead. Which would still require a bus from home to town. Followed by a 10 minute walk to the train station. And then another 10 minute walk from the train station to the bus at at the other end. Unless i used a train for the last stage of the journey... which would require a 30 minute wait, followed by a train journey that took me to within 2 miles of work, leaving me either a bus ride, or a 30 minute walk.
Unless you're lucky enough to live and work somewhere with a logical public transport link inbetween, public transport is an absolute joke.
I'm with Jack on this.
My daily commute is 17 miles each way. So the battery is just about the right size to get me to work and back without burning more than a few drops of petrol.
If it costs even £1 a day to fill up the battery overnight, thats still only £5 a week, and i currently pay five times that to get to work and back in a pokey little renault clio diesel.
Depends what your work actually is.
Ploughing through spreadsheets with 20+ columns is easier if you've got a wider screen, you can gain a column or two without having to make the whole thing smaller when zooming out.
As someone else already said too, music sampling also benefits from a bigger horizontal space.
Have an annual pass at Chester Zoo.
1. They have your photo on the pass, which is compared to your face, and an on screen picture when they scan it at the gate.
2. I look nothing much like my wife or my 4 year old daughter.
3. They recently redesigned the entrance so you show your pass at a turnstile within the park, tehre is no way to hand the pass back through again - unless you vault over into the elephant enclosure and throw it over the wall ... and then get an elephant to lift you back out again.
Seems a lot of effort. Might be easier to keep an eye on the weekly email for promotional codes.
He's already said he has never covered anything much to do with investments etc beyond the obvious "dont keep all your cash with one banking institution as its not all insured" type advice. Now he will have to learn more about investments himself, so will pass on what he learns for those who are interested in savings, rather than just saving a few quid on a day at the zoo, etc.
According to reports at the time, from Martin Lewis himself, the contract stipulates that moneysupermarket arent allowed to get involved in the editorial process. So should be fine. And for the first 3.5 years Martin Lewis is contracted to be affiliated with the site, but a clause in his own contract states that if editorial is messed with he can walk away - they wont want him not involved in the site as if he goes and sets up another site, the entire user base would go with him.
Staggered though that this has taken the best part of a week to become newsworthy. At the time the news breaks, its either news the readership is interested in, or it isnt. Dont throw us week old leftovers in the hope we wont have read it elsewhere already.
I have some "friends" who are decent people, family even, and I'm interested in what they are up to etc, but often the pump out so much rubbish that i block them, and just check out their profile when I can be bothered. The hassle that goes along with un-Friending a close personal friend or family member just isnt worth it.
The £500 Ultrabook will be a long way off if Intel keeps moving the goalpost on what the minimum spec should be.
The £500 Superbook with a dumbed down specsheet and a slightly chunkier profile might not be that far away though. As soon as manufacturers realise they dont need to jump on board the Ultrabook brand, because its not worth anything, low price slimline reasonable spec laptops will start popping up all over the place, and the Ultrabook branding will die off becuase why pay an extra £300 for something to do the same job - if it doesnt have an Apple logo on the lid.
Slight differences are bound to occur between what the website calculates and what your employers payroll software calculates. I've used listentotaxman for years and as a guide, which is all its intended to be, its brilliant.
Eg. I know i am getting a £1,500 pay rise next month, and another £1,500 at the end of the year, so taking into account tax, national insurance and pension contributions, i can figure out with a good degree of accuracy what my new net pay will be, so can see that yes, i will still be quite skint.
Would the record labels prefer we buy a cd, and rip it to digital for use on our various devices, or just download it for free, bypassing them entirely?
16 or 17 years ago I had a Sony Discman, i carried around a couple of cd's in my pocket and listened to a few hours of music between charges. Now i can carry several days worth of music and have the battery to last at least a day of playback - I already own all the music on cd, but I'm not allowed to convert that music i bought the rights to play into a format that lets me play it when I want to listen?
If the record labels wake up they might actually make more money than ever before now we can buy music on a whim while standing at a bus stop, etc rather than going about it the old fashioned way and going out specifically to buy an album or two on a saturday morning, and only being able to listen to it at home.
Of the handful of people i know who have tried giffgaff for data or sim-only phone deal, they have all reported massive problems with the network - and all bailed out and went elsewhere within a few weeks of signing up. Problems with signal, problems with speed, problems with porting numbers, the list goes on and on.
It might be worth noting that you get what you pay for really. There is a reason why they are half the price of O2 and running on the same network. And its not just because they are supported only by a forum run by helpful giffgaff users, who will not allow a bad word to be said and tend to shoot down complaints, or ignore you entirely.
I'm using a Desire S myself. And had a Desire before it. I do like the screen size, but sometimes want something a bit bigger.
The One X though - i loved the idea of it at first but then i checked one out in a shop and its just too big and cumbersome... and i'm fairly tall and well proportioned so havent got the smallest of hands. That said, i could get used to it and then probably wouldnt be able to consider anything much smaller.
Still... I'm having whatever the next iPhone is. I've not had one myself yet and i figure i should at least try one for a year and see how i cope. They hold their value well so can always trade it in if i miss the options you get in Android too much... or if Siri gets on my nerves.
Rather than assume I'm probably a narrow minded biggot you should just look beyond the literal words used and at the meaning of what I'm saying. The point is, boys and girls of all orientations want to be popular and want to fit in, and want to impress. If they can do that while spending £50 less, even better.
They are. They are indeed.
And you know what else girls like? Boys. And what do boys like? Girls. So the boys will buy iPads for girls. And girls will buy iPads for girls. And then boys will buy iPads for themselves to look cool to the girls - and to try and get the girls topless on facetime.
And since the topless girls really arent doing anything with an android tablet, least of all video chat with boys ... a £50 off iPad2 with loads of storage for screenshots of topless girls on facetime is obviously going to fly of the proverbial shovel like the proverbial fecal mound.
Get over yourself, and try opening your mind a little bit.
Surely they could refresh their lineup every year and not expect everyone to upgrade what they bought last year. Not all Macbook owners upgrade annually, and despite Samsung releasing a new tv range at least once a year, not everyone with a samsung tv upgrades to the latest and greatest, and they get along just fine with the old one.
I mean, you can still buy an iPhone 3GS brand new. Whats that now, 4 years old nearly? And thats in the fast moving world of mobile phones. Its crap, and outdated, but they still sell it and support it to a great extent.
Actually as an example of this;
A colleague here knows nothing about cars. Her husband is mechanically minded and buys her a new car every couple of years at auction for no more than £500. He gets it mechanically sound and road legal and she uses it until she, or it, has had enough. The cycle is then repeated. During my two years working here she's on her second car and has been for some time and is talking of a replacement. Its probably cost in the region of £2000 for the cars and parts required - brakes, suspension, body panels etc - to get them roadworthy from purchase. So roughly £80 per month, say, plus the cost of tyres and everything that all road users incur.
In that same time frame i've been driving a car bought new in 2004. Its worth about £10k less than I paid for it, its cost about £2000 in servicing and repairs. So in 8 years (almost to the day) its cost about £12,000 in repairs and depreciation. Only £1,500 per year. So not much more expensive than the "cheap option" taken by my colleague.
Most of the expense incurred has been due to always taking the car to the main dealer and not using smaller private garages for repairs when required - through personal preference and convenience of location.
Also. Shiney new car is more shiney and more new. Etc.
Its the fear of the unknown. You buy new, and you pay for servicing and a warranty and the "joy" of being the only person to have driven that car in any meaningful way.
Buy used, and if you dont know what you're doing you could buy an absolute stinker, or you might get lucky and buy something decent. But its more of a gamble without a warranty to fall back on etc.
I've had cheap used cars, and I've had new cars... and overall i think the happy zone falls somewhere in the middle with nearly new.
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