Posts by Paul Chapman

iPad mini to outsell iPad, get Retina Display? iPad to slenderize?

Re: 1894

I always thought it was particularly cruel that "dyslexia" is such a complex word. It should have been called something simple like "jim" for the sake of sufferers...

Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection

Excellent

Now we just need an HD remake of Okami.

Lite-on ETDU108 slim DVD drive

I agree with Richard

Richard is right - whilst I do move data off my netbook, I use a USB key for this. In the 6 months since I've had one, I have not felt the urge to burn a DVD from my netbook once, but an upgrade to allow me to take films for the kids without having to transcode them sounds good.

Would I pay £30 for this? I very possibly will.

Would I pay £50 for this? No.

Good review otherwise, as usual.

Tories oppose charges and speed cameras

dunncha...

I'm over the 50k in total and I'm OK with losing the (very minor) benefits we still get partly because a) it's not going to break the bank for me, just be another half-notch tightening on my belt and b) I am expecting everyone to lose out in some way - that being the nature of trying to recover from a big recession and c) I expect them to be dealing as much as possible with the issues of those who abuse the benefits system.

I would rather vote for the party that genuinely appears to be trying to sort this mess out as fairly as possible and is at least borderline honest as opposed to those who pretend there aren't going to be cuts, then admit there are going to be but spend their conference talking about some new ways to spend money.

Don't throw your vote away!

"Me I'm Voting Lib Dem. Time for a change"

No offense intended but that's stupid. The recent conference has shown that the Lib Dems are just desperate to get into 2nd place.

The Tories need a huge upswing to cleanly take it. If you take your prejudices because of their name and history away, what is there to not like about their policies, and their fairly brutal honesty?

Or you could vote Lib Dem and make it more likely that Labour retain some influence. Our electoral system is deeply flawed, but as it stands, Conservative is the only sane vote if you don't want another 5 years of Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman thinking that they have the mandate to do whatever they like.

Admitting that stuff isn't working is a good thing

"Don't forget it was the Tories who introduced the scameras in the first place!"

I'll vote for the people who try something and admit it's not working and try something else over the people who try something then blame others and fake statistics when it doesn't work.

Also, was it the current Tory leadership who introduced them? Or are they damned by being in the same party some years later? That would be a logically bizarre way to judge the current party leadership.

Tories would take an axe to Labour IT policy

dunncha...

"I'm Voting for the Lib Dems. Their biggest expense was a packet of Chocolate Hobnobs"

Perhaps they were just more disciplined in exploiting them?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/6235338/Lib-Dems-tutored-MPs-on-how-to-exploit-their-expenses.html

Acer sued for shipping Vista-book with GB of memory

In defense of $150 for 1GB

...as anyone will tell you who has actually cracked open an Acer Aspire One, it is not a straightforward process to upgrade the RAM. The spare RAM slot is on the underside of the motherboard... but there's no access port. So the installation process - and it's not hard to find this on the web with video - involves disassembling the entire netbook, disconnecting everything from the motherboard,

Anyone selling a professional service to upgrade RAM for an AAO is guaranteeing the purchaser of the service against damage to their RAM *and* their Netbook - i.e. over $400 of kit. The RAM may only cost $50 but the extra $100+ is well-earned danger money.

LG Super Multi Blue BE06-LU10

Weak review

Definitely not up to your usual good standard here. I can't see how the final score should include "Reviewer's bias because it's a good device but he has no use for it". Solid state storage is better for shuttling files around (regardless of content) but not for archiving, or god forbid using in a blu-ray player.

That's not just a ridiculous degree of bias, it's a ridiculous type of bias to creep into a final rating anyway.

Blockbuster: DVD to Blu-ray shift slower than VHS to DVD

A counterpoint

One thing to remember is that DVD came out over 20 years after VHS; Blu-Ray emerged as a consumer format only 8 years after DVD. By the time DVD was released to consumers, consumer demands and the quality of their TV sets was markedly above what was supported by VHS, which was and felt like a very tired old format long overdue for a replacement (similary cassettes and CD, where both the convenience of random access being a no-brainer and the improvement in fidelity of home sound systems making the lower fidelity of tape increasingly obvious, amongst other factors).

By contrast, HD-TVs are not yet widespread and the production costs of Blu-Ray have not hit the low level of DVDs. Give it another 5 years (or even potentially as soon as 3) and "everyone" will have an HDTV set, and Blu-Ray players will be the same price as DVD players (and many will have them in their $99 PS3s), and Blu-Rays will be the same price as DVDs. At this point, Blu-Ray will be an absolute no-brainer and the mainstream format.

DVD was a revolutionary format, Blu-Ray is evolutionary. We should not expect evolutionary formats to be as quickly taken up as revolutionary ones; this does not stop them having the same overall long-term financial and cultural impact.