Posts by Piro

Hands on with the Motorola Razr Maxx

Re: Battery Life

http://www.technipages.com/how-to-reset-droid-razr-if-frozen.html

Holding volume down and power for 10 seconds seems to do it.

Re: is there a hardware reset switch?

Hold volume down and power for 10 seconds for a hard power off.

Re: remember

Misplaced cynicism. Sorry, but this one actually does have a battery unlike all other smart phones.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5533/motorola-droid-razr-maxx-review-18x-the-battery/2

The one I'd have to recommend

It's all about that battery.

You haven't mentioned Webtop and the dock, though. Has all the same nifty stuff in that department as the Atrix.

The only downside to this device is that it makes you think everyone else's batteries are pathetic.

My Desire HD with 1230mAh looks like a watch battery in comparison.

Post-pub nosh deathmatch: Mealy pudding v migas

Re: Wot! No beanz?

I agree on the hash browns front, but more critically, that looks like toast. To make it right it would need to be fried bread!

Pints under attack as Lord Howe demands metric-only UK

Fine. Agreed.

Imperial is a mess, discard at will..

Other than our pints of beer. Remove the "pint" designation from the glass if you must, but serve us 568ml every time.

Apple drops '4G' label from new iPad

Sorry, one thing

They do differ, in that they provide lousy battery life

Ten... freeware gems for new PCs

Save time

www.ninite.com

Just use that when setting up a PC. Makes things so much nicer.

7.85in 'iPad Mini' said to sport retina screen

Re: Don't start...

Even in mainland European countries, screen sizes are often in inches. Who knows why.

Carmageddon coder seeks gamers' cash for revamp

If it's like the first two..

Bring it on.

Ten... alternatives to Samsung's Galaxy S III

Razr Maxx would be my choice

Seeing as a smartphone is no good if you spend your time micro-mananging power user. They've put a heroic battery in the damn thing, and for this, Motorola should be highly commended.

It also has that neat Webtop gimmick, like the Atrix.

CPU and RAM hogs overstaying their welcome? Here's a fix

Re: I have a better idea

Damn, you beat me: this all sounds a lot like Solaris zones.

Samsung unwraps 17in Ivy Bridge beast

Re: Resolution

What? I'd prefer 1920x1200, but 1920x1080 is absolutely fine.

Murdoch 'sorry' he didn't shut News of the World years ago

The guy above me..

Couldn't have put it better, or more simply. People who read The Sun don't actually care about current affairs, which is funny, because they're buying a paper.

Official: Britain staggers into double-dip recession doom

It was obvious

It was glaringly obvious we were never out of trouble since 2008, but the financial guys are all too ready to say we're technically not in recession when the figures show a vague trend.

Of course we're in trouble, and anyone can tell you things have been getting steadily worse, rising prices, no rise in salaries, cut backs in services and so on.

comp ended

Re: what bit of .co.uk don't you understand?

Hm, AC, plus, the guy you replied to had "nz" at the end of his username.

I wonder, if, possibly, he's from New Zealand.

Microsoft unveils Windows 8 'release preview' for June

No chance

.. You know it. It'll be exactly like the Consumer Preview, and be an absolutely unusable mess, with duplicate control panels, duplicate browsers, duplicate ways of managing tasks.

Microsoft, there are no family-friendly words I could use to describe Windows 8.

Ten... Satnavs to suit all budgets

Hm, odd

There was me, thinking that standalone units were obsolete now, seeing as everyone Android device includes turn by turn for free.

Nvidia: phone GPUs to outplay current consoles by 2014

Pointless

I actually think it's pointless.

We're already at the stage where we have hardware that's more than good enough to display small games on a phone as a distraction from your day.

I wouldn't even want extremely high powered hardware in a phone - I'd rather the phone was about the power of, say, dual core Krait, and no more, just getting process shrinks, therefore better battery life, and cheaper.

I never want to plug my phone in to use it as a games console. It's just too 'disposable' for that. You might be playing on your Xbox 360 still, when it came out years ago. You probably replaced your phone several times. It would be a huge faff.

In all honesty, even my single core Snapdragon in my Desire HD with Adreno 205 is adequete for anything I actually want to do on my phone, which is to say barely anything graphically intensive. If I had better hardware, I'd still be doing the same.. that is to say, not playing anything graphically intensive, because the form factor is tiring, and touchscreen controls are utterly hopeless.

In summary, for tomorrow, I'd be more excited with longer battery life and less costly handsets with today's performance, than a pocket Xbox 360.

Killers laugh in face of death penalty threat, say US experts

Costly..

How exactly do you make an execution expensive?

How much is a piece of rope or a 9mm round? Christ...

Metallic Glass iPhone 5 to battle pottery Samsung Galaxy S3

Re: What does it matter what its made of

Hahaha, I know. They buy a slim phone and then clad it in gaudy plastic. Almost every iPhone I see is like this.

I've never used a case for my phones. Then again, I'm pretty sure if I used a case on my Sony Ericsson P990, it would have made a suspicious bulge in my pocket, more than it already did. Great phone at the time though.

Punters want BBC iPlayer in TVs, not 3D

People want.. new content, not '3D' content?

Colour me surprised, no really.

The 3D gimmick is simply a way to make you buy a new TV when you really, really, don't need one. It's painfully obvious this time. At least with HD you could really see the difference, although admittedly for a long time everyone was just watching SD broadcasts and pretending it looked better. There was also a tragic period where everyone had 16:9 TVs but were watching 4:3 content stretched. God, those were dark days.

3D is just a really costly version of that. Most content will be 2D.

HTC One S Android smartphone

Oh dear, HTC

This is the right phone, specs wise, size wise. Nobody wants a 4.7" beast, and Tegra 3 is a worse performer than Krait in this phone, so specs wise, this one has it on the money: 4.3", 1.5GHz Dual core Krait.

But then, what's this? Small battery? No microSD slot? Oh dear, that means this an entirely uninteresting handset.

More manufacturers need to look at the Motorola RAZR MAXX. Huge battery yet still incredibly thin, and oh look, it still manages to have a microSD slot.

Berners-Lee: Net snoop law tosses human rights into the shredder

Re: How can they do this when...

To be fair to some degree, I think the cookie tracking law is a piece of EU legislation

IT urine bandit fired and charged

Re: Double insult

Well, I'm certainly not stepping in to defend Fosters.

Re: Double insult

Ah yes, truly the worst of the cheap lagers.

Microsoft to bake Windows 8 in three flavours

Re: Ability to turn Start Screen OFF?

There are various addons to do this already, and a built in toggle is predictable:- Metro does not work below 1024x768. So yep, pull out a 1024x600 netbook, and on a machine with a tiny screen which would be ideal for Metro, you get no Metro, only the desktop.

I very, very much doubt it will be an exposed option, though.

Samsung S III to enter Galaxy next month

Tegra 3?

Oh dear. I thought with the new dual core Krait, Tegra 3 had been put to rest. Apparently not.

I don't want a Tegra 3 phone, thanks.

Most anticipated videogames of 2012 revealed

Re: "We'd have a PC games list for a start."

Odd then, that World of Warcraft continues (even though it is on the decline) to be the most subscribed to MMO of all time.

PC gaming is far from dead, and good old Valve with Steam has given it a shot in the arm over the last couple of years.

The upgrade cycles are very easy to keep up with these days, because the 360 and PS3 are the standard to which games are held, so there's no pressure to get the latest and greatest. PC gaming right now is not expensive - far from it, the games are far cheaper than their console counterparts.

Relatively generic lists

I'd say my most anticipated of the year involve things like GTA 5 and Guild Wars 2. I would definitely reserve a place for Assassin's Creed III, though, because I've been thoroughly enjoying the series so far. Max Payne 3 and Resident Evil 6 will also warrant a purchase in my books.

But yet another Halo game, not even made by Bungie? Generic faceshooters and football games? Nah.

Leisure Suit Larry set for second coming

Re: Monkey Island remakes

Monkey Island was a remake in the purest sense. The gameplay is exactly identical. At any time you can press a key to view the game as it originally was. I was completely happy with that.

Re: Remake

You say that, but the Monkey Island 1 & 2 remakes are absolutely glorious.

Why new iPad renders your pile of slab mags as garbage

Re: Stop grumbling about the iPad excess heat...

That's not a bad idea actually, get it to run a very CPU and GPU intensive routine rendered off screen, with a comforting full screen image of a water bottle.

Re: Lazy publishers, Silly subscribers

I wouldn't say PNG was a crap format, by any means. Just be thankful it wasn't handed out in JPEG.

Capita job cuts, offshoring 'driven by expectations', says MD

Oh Crapita

What a pathetic company...

Toshiba AT200 Excite

Spec is fine

We don't need crazy quad cores just to browse the web.

That said, the cost is too high.. and Honeycomb? Oh dear.

Slash £150 off and toss ICS on it and you have a nice piece of kit.

Griffin Reserve Battery Case

Re: WTF?

Yup. It's pathetic, really. Seems only Motorola have it right with the Droid RAZR Maxx.. stick in a gigantic battery from the factory so the thing is still incredibly slim..

Sugar content now to be measured in Cadbury Creme Eggs

Re: Being pedantic....

Actually, yes, pretty much.

I always remember a pint as being 568ml off the top of my head.

PlayStation 4 'Orbis' pegged for 2013 release

You mean.. 1080p at last

Because current consoles almost always draw at 720p or sub-720p resolutions to keep the frame rates reasonable.

4K x 2K? Haha, god no. Maybe for a menu, but no chance for a game.

Acer set to unleash 15in fibreglass MONSTER

Re: Reliable?

That's because they're cheap junk.

You're always better off trawling ebay for cheap old Dell Latitudes..

Wii U graphics said to be no better than current consoles

Re: Innovation

I don't know about that, the N64 could be considered an over the top piece of hardware at the time, and the GameCube was no slouch given its competition.

Well, the rumour is..

That it has a 3GHz PowerPC quad-core, an ATI graphics chip and either 768MB or 1GB RAM in a shared configuration.

So essentially, it's an Xbox 360 with a bit of extra RAM, specs wise. The graphics chip could be a bit of a boot up the arse, specs wise, but I don't know of any other details.

CD: The indestructible music format that REFUSES TO DIE

Re: CDs not compressed?

I think this is a bit of nonsense. CDs have a huge dynamic range, it's just that nobody makes use of it, mastering their CDs right up to the point of clipping, these days. Then they claim you need better quality media! Then, they'll just compress everything to the point of clipping on that, too.

CDs are fine. The people who master audio are not.

Size DOES matter: Nokia snubs Apple's royalty-free nano-SIM

Re: Thoughts

SIM cards tend to still be packaged in the exact same way - they come on a credit card sized piece of plastic that you then break away the normal SIM card from.

It's still backwards compatible with the full-size credit card style (unless there are networks that don't do that now).

Normal SIM cards are small enough. Stop arsing about with shit nobody wants, phone companies. Thanks.

BMW recalls 1.3m motors over fire risk

Re: Could someone explain to me...

Perfect weight distribution! Probably.

Actually, the guy talking about the plastic covers was likely closer to the real answer. Just make the thing obtuse and awkward, and you'll end up taking it to the deal every time.

Sitting down all day is killing you

Re: Does going to the pub for a quick pint count?

Ah, I like where you're going with this one.

If we then claim that having a pint or two may counter the effects of sitting down, we come to the startling conclusion that we should be drinking at work.

iPhone 5 gets a 5in screen

A little bigger is bettter

But I'd say around 4" is the right size. Even 4.3" (which I have) starts to get a little unwieldy.

Testicle-boiling new iPad ignites fanboi fury

Re: ouch @ Chet Mannly

Hold on a minute, Jaguar vs Gameboy? That doesn't .. oh, you mean the Atari Lynx.

Windows 8 tablet freezes in Microsoft keynote demo

No, there's no slack to be cut

It's built in the same old Windows we've known for some time.

The fact they threw together a shoddy new front-end with a new API is no excuse at all for it being a pile of crap.

If it was Microsoft's first ever product, you could say.. CUT THEM SOME SLACK..

But it's not. They're a huge company with a ton of employees and money, they've been making operating systems for a while.. To be fair, it could be a hardware issue, maybe we'll never know.

But you would hope that a demo is rehearsed to make sure the machine is stable.

Hardware hacker rigs up VR for Skyrim

Might help fatties

Sounds good..