Posts by Piro

Microsoft: No next-gen Xbox in 2012

Boring.

Come on, that thing is 7 years old. We still haven't achieved the promise of even 1080p 60 fps games - almost every title is 30 fps and 720p.

Apple iPad 3 data contracts compared

Re: ROFL

I assume they're just taking the piss out of the plan, which is almost certainly worded that way. I commend El Reg for at least getting the facts down there.

High Court confirms 'cheap DVD' tax loophole will close

Re: Meanwhile...

Couldn't have put it better:- even when we found out companies have been dodging billions in tax (vodafone) we sit on our hands.

Yet for the everyday punter trying to save a few quid on a film, you receive the cold unflinching shaft of the tax man.

New iPad: The only review roundup you'll ever need

Well...

I can almost understand you. I can see why you want one, but not the shiny toy from Cupertino.

Still, doesn't bother me. At least we can all have a drink.

Smartphone owners demand bigger screens

Re: Galaxy Note

I have a Desire HD too. Although there are downsides (basically the ridiculously small battery, and the slightly chintzy plastic parts, contrasted the with the aluminium) it is basically the perfect size.

Lawyers of Mordor menace Hobbit boozer

I've been drinking here before

Not as a student mind you, but with friends, several times.

When the students are there it is extremely busy and the bogs are always a mess, but it does sell great LotR themed cocktails, different characters for different coloured ones, in a pint glass.

A quick way to get plastered, I can tell you. Just have to be careful outside after consuming the aforementioned cocktails, or you'll fall two metres onto concrete and hit your head, like me - but what's exciting without a little danger?

Viewsonic Viewpad 10e tablet

Re: The saving

But then you're up into territory where you could have bought a laptop, instead of a toy for browsing the web, which the cheap-o Android one will do a serviceable job of.

Xbox Live glitch resets players' scores

I agree.

I know people who won't play a game on another platform just because of 360 achievements.

It's an odd and pointless system to be obsessed with.

Sony intros Xperia Sola with no-need-to-touch screen

Opera Mobile

Use Opera Mobile.

When you tap in an area of clustered links, it enlarges the area, highlights the links it thinks you meant to press. Now tap again on the link you meant to press, because it's now almost certainly filling half the screen.

Works well.

Peugeot 3008 HYbrid4

Re: Struggling to see the point?

Bad? *be had..

Silly me..

Re: Struggling to see the point?

There are gains to bad with regen braking - this is one definite and obvious place to gain back some fuel economy, instead of simply wasting it all to friction brakes. Although I admit just tossing out all that weight would save you money and probably help just as much too..

Metro breakdown! Windows 8 UI is little gain for lots of pain

Re: Paul Thurrott ... Windows Super Site

It's actually quite tragic to read.

Most of it simply telling you how to basic stuff you used to be able to easily, and workarounds for the awkwardness of Metro, all whilst praising it.

Re: Have a look at the server

Are you kidding me?

I was thinking, hey, at least the server version won't have Metro. Maybe I can just turn on a few of the desktop features, turn off some of the server features, and use the server version as a desktop without Metro.

Because not a second did I think they would put Metro on a server.

You've outdone yourself this time, Microsoft.

Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet

Battery.. what?

My dirt cheap £106 7" tablet has a 3600mAh battery. Not exactly a fantastic or high profile product, so why the hell does this thing have such a weedy set of cells?

Sony exec: quad-core CPUs bad for today's phones

Re: Quad core is more power efficient

Except that dual core Snapdragon Krait on a smaller process manages to do almost all tasks vastly faster, and I'd wager at far less power consumption (28nm vs 40nm, quad +1 vs dual).

Microsoft drops 'risky' Windows 8 preview on World

Re: Re: Re: Re: Not going to use this mess

No, this doesn't test well with ordinary users.

Try to put a normal user infront of it. Get them to figure out how to switch applications, get Metro up, shutdown the machine without using the power button on the machine itself.

It doesn't test well.

Re: Re: Re: Re: OK thats horrible

Also, no. The consumer preview crashed on shut down for me :(

Re: Re: OK thats horrible

Actually yes. What user would guess you click "Settings" to shut down..

In before someone says "Why would you click Start to shut down???"

Re: @Fishman

That's actually nonsense. I'd hope on a reputable meeting place such as El Reg, that those commenting have tried the Dev Preview and Consumer Preview. I certainly have. It's not good, it is a complete mess, by any standard.

The reason why people said XP looked stupid is because they had a bright blue theme with a green start button. If you were sensible, you chose the silver theme and had a decent enough looking desktop.

If you loved the old stuff, you chose classic, job done, couple of clicks. Nothing was radically different to 2000 to the point of being unusable, by any means.

The dubious changes in Windows 8 are far more than "click here to change classic theme if you hate new themes, job done".

Re: Metro - no thanks.

The thing is, the whole experience is ANYTHING BUT simplistic.

Two internet explorers, two control panels, two ways of doing a handful of things.

The whole thing is a complete abomination, designed simply to try to sell you crap through the Microsoft Store so they can grab a cut.

A real shame, since there are a handful of technical advances buried under there somewhere. Buried under a mountain of baby-poop green and colourful squares.

Re: Re: No Iberian languages?

Ah, I see, you've managed to confuse "education" with "all-consuming smugness".

Easy mistake to make.

Ancient Iceman murder victim was lactose-intolerant, sickly

Re: Re: Now look

Regardless of what I personally agree with..

"Maybe you should consider drinking raw unpasteurised milk."

Is either trolling or total nonsense. There's a reason why Louis Pasteur was trying to help people. I wish people would stop treating it as a modern thing that removes all the goodness.

Helps remove the nasty crap that will do you in, too. Then again, go ahead, enjoy your salmonella.

US gov IT services vendor swallows HBGary

I'd just like to say..

... Fine work on the headline and sub-heading.

Also, always good to remember how badly HBGary, a security services firm, made an embarrassment of themselves.

HP, Dell warn of price hikes after Foxconn wage rise

Re: Re: Re: Easy fix

KYE makes a bunch of this stuff for Microsoft, mice and controllers, I believe. They also make their own "Genius" branded products.

I saw a piece about how miserable their lives were a while back.

Samsung admits Android tablet cash haul is disappointing

Ah yes, they've discovered that you can't compete with Apple

... By being similar to Apple.

You need to push for a much lower price point, I would wager, to make any dent. Even then, I think this whole thing is a bit of a fad to some extent..

Samsung punts smartphone with built-in projector

So.. battery?

The Droid RAZR MAXX still has a much bigger battery than this, and that doesn't have a projector, and is thinner.

What is everyone else playing at?

Male dinosaurs failing on social privacy

Maybe..

That's because Facebook has given women an outlet to gossip without consequence, and men are more likely to actually socialise by going down the pub.

Who knows..

Court rejects Tesla’s latest libel spat with Top Gear

Re: Re: can you say class action ?

Woah, woah, OK, yes, the batteries degrade, but comparing it to an ICE car because the fuel goes bad is crazy.

If you knew a car was sat for ages, you could flush it through and pour some new petrol in.

Total cost on ICE: next to nothing

Total cost for a battery replacement: better remortgage your house

Toshiba Portégé Z830-10N 13.3in Ultrabook

Re: Wow..

First comment, and before I even read the review, I could see it was 16:9, you can always tell because they put horribly thick bezels top and bottom instead of buying a 1440x900 panel like they should for this form factor.

PlayStation Vita price dips below £200

Re: £200 is a lot of money

£200 would be reasonable as you say, if it bundled a decent sized memory card with that, and maybe a game.

Sony Xperia U slips out ahead of launch

New branding

Really, I think they should use Sony in the old Sony Ericsson font.

The SONY logo looks extremely garish and cheap on a smartphone.

Motorola Motoluxe Android smartphone

Re: Re: Re: I'm confused, maybe you can help me out..

It'd be nice if I could edit my post - I'll clarify some more - there are some Android devices that are borderline usable because of terrible specs, this one isn't exactly awful, but there are some - with 600MHz CPUs and 256MB RAM, still being pushed out, when that experience is going to be worse than a standard dumb/feature phone running Symbian.

Apple seem to be doing very well by having a single phone. I think people get confused in this sea of devices, and when they see an "android" phone from a well known manufacturer, they assume they're all as good as each other, when it turns out to be sub-par, they think their friend's iPhone is the business, despite it obviously costing more (people hide the cost of these things in their contracts).

Re: Re: I'm confused, maybe you can help me out..

But £260 isn't exactly that cheap either, and what you get is relatively mediocre.

I didn't spend much on my phone either, it's a battered Desire HD I bought off ebay, second hand, so I'm not being elitist.

But surely they could push the prices of their top devices down through economies of scale and simplifying tooling and parts, by concentrating on fewer models.

I'm confused, maybe you can help me out..

Why are Motorola making anything apart from the RAZR MAXX, and the Droid 4?

Seems like literally everything else is a waste of time.

Panasonic outs dual-core Euro-centric Android phone

Re: IP57 is not really a waterpoof rating, IP68 would be

Still, now you've explained it, that sounds more than good enough for a phone.

But I do agree, that would need to be clarified in the documents. You can't just take it for a dive, but a drop in the bog or the bath would be fine.

UK mobile networks start to phase out Sony Ericsson handsets

Shame, really

I think the latest SE offerings are pretty great.

The Sony Xperia Pro is just about the only recent Android handset with a keyboard that you can easily recommend.

Intel shows off near threshold voltage chip wizardry

Hm, this isn't completely related

But it gave me an idea.

Since Windows 8 has an ARM build, maybe they could add parts of the ARM build into the AMD64 mainline build - and allow the AMD64 CPU go into complete shutdown in idle periods. Obviously a machine is never entirely idle, and that's when you use the WOA code running on an ARM chip to keep the GUI updated, and so on, until x86 code was required, or anything heavy computationally.

I'm sure somebody at Microsoft is thinking about this.

Ten... digital adult toys

Re: And what is it makes most of these Digital?

You could side with a worse site than Lovehoney.

Microsoft explains bland new Windows logo

Re: Err...

Bad example. The original Ka is still a mess. They took an a previous generation Fiesta platform, then stuck plastic to it in all areas.

Another example: The Olympics 2012 logo. Still looks like Lisa Simpson performing a sexual act. Still looks awful. I can't believe they stuck with it.

It's shite..

Really, not worth a penny..

Re: Compression

I absolutely agree. The official one on the 'Building Windows 8 "blog"' is also in JPG. What a horrible sight.

Modern Warfare 3 shoots onto Steam for free

Hm, generic shooting game

I'll pass. By the time it downloads anyway, the offer will be over.

Apple lands slide-to-unlock patent blow on Motorola

Re: Re: Jeez

Yeah, this is no big deal. My sense device has a ring you drag up to unlock, and my touchpad has a similar thing, you drag a lock out of a circle.

Not as iconic as swipe to unlock, but easy to do once you know it.

Boy burned in Nintendo sensor substitution

Re: What? I mean... what?

I'm assuming they knackered the sensor by dropping it, or the weak cable got broken somehow, maybe a family pet being too enthusiastic.

Life at Googleplex REVEALED in hot pics

Re: To hell with the office.

How about this one? A LAN-party optimised house: http://kentonsprojects.blogspot.com/2011/12/lan-party-optimized-house.html

Teen hacker claims smut site hack

Re: Wait, what?

Just be glad they do, so the companies can be funded, so you can get the highest class whores for free down the line on your dodgy torrents or dodgy streaming site.

We all have to be thankful to those who dish out in the name of smut.

HP previews ProLiant Gen8 servers

I agree in a way

In that it doesn't look handsome.

Then I realised it'll be sat in datacentre, and you won't be staring at it, so it doesn't matter.

Tesla X e-SUV to sport monster touchscreen on the dash

Huh, I guess the RAV4 EV never existed then

RAV4 EV can do more than 100 miles highway, and their NiMH batteries are long lasting. Many anecdotes around the web on them.

Hold on a minute

Teslas so far have looked gorgeous, and I think this looks pretty good too, although I think the crossover element is pointless, just give me a Model S.

But seriously.. ugly? Have you looked at the competition for this? Look at a BMW X5 and tell me that looks better, seriously.

Surprise: Neil Young still hates digital music

That's all to do with shitty mastering

Well, of course. Shitty, louder and louder mastering, is what has ruined a lot of digitally stored music.

Adding more dynamic range only gives mastering studios a higher target to aim for and compress against.