Posts by Mark W

Microsoft opens Xbox 360 Arcade

Economies of Scale

You all seem to forget we live on a little island here in the UK, and the USA is a rather large continent with just a few more people over there than here, and the box they ship in the UK is slightly different (PAL, Region 2 and 240V) and thus although comes off the same production line, has different costs associated with it, which they pass onto us, the punters.

I agree it sucks - but the cost of consoles is small fry. Don't get me started on the cost of Cars in the UK vs USA.... (Care to compare the cost of a Chrysler 300C in the UK vs the USA...)

New product code points to revamped Wii?

Or is it something simple?

Maybe it's as innocuous as it also includes Wiimote Covers?

Most of us Wii owners who have the Wifi Connectivity up and running, came home to a blue glowing DVD slot this week telling us we can get free Wiimote silicone cases, and that they would be bundled with the product from the end of October.

PC superstore refuses to take sack in hand

Macs? PC World? Contradiction in Terms :)

I once had the misfortune of going into PC World in York who are not much better than the Leeds branch.

Picked up a nice Bluetooth Mac Keyboard (yes, they had one gathering dust in a box behind the 700 Logitech and Microsoft ones) and wandered over to the checkout. Spotty oik sat behind checkout said 'What do you want a Mac keyboard for?' at which point I have him a slightly raised eyebrow 'Er, for a Mac?'.

'Oh, what would you want one of them for?' he asked.

I asked 'Have you ever used one?'

'No.' he replied.

'Well, don't knock it until you've tried it' I said.

The reason PC World are bitter is because they seem to have lost their preferred supplier status with Apple to a certain Toys R Us - mainly because of their consistent arrogance towards Apple products and customers. It's all PC World shops which seem to have this stance.

I now try to source everything online - saves me having to feel like a 3rd rate customer because they have an agenda.

Oh - and as someone who is currently working with an Ex manager of PC World, and have heard some of the stories, I wouldn't recommend anyone buys from there.

P.S. - The Tech Guys? I wouldn't let them touch your broadband router, let alone something as complex as a PC....

The Christmas Console Wars: round one to Xbox?

Two Consoles

I have two consoles.

I myself have an Xbox360 for the HD 'shiny/geeky' gaming experience, things like Forza Motorsport and PGR still make me go 'ooooh' with the just plain stunning graphics, and I love playing things like Plan9 and even Hexic2. It's also got a great HD-DVD drive (Season 1 of Heroes in HD, anyone?) which just so happens to work on my Mac too, along with a brilliant upscaling DVD drive when used with a VGA cable. It does make DVD's look very very nice.

Wifey has a Wii because she doesn't care about graphics, but enjoys the easy to use controls and the playability - she's one of those people who tilts the controller when playing the Xbox because she thinks it'll feed back to the console - but I don't think she's alone, and that is what the Wii has capitalised on. It's all about the games and how they play, vs just being eye candy, which is what the PS3/Xbox seem to think. Just sit and play WiiSports or Rayman for a bit and you'll see why it works so well.

I also like the web browser on the Wii because it just works (it's opera) and it's an easy way to surf the net without having to mess around with a PC.

However, neither of them are my music media centre - I have a Macbook which does that role. The Wii just doesn't bother because it knows it's a games console. The Xbox has the most irritating UI known to man for navigating music or video content, whereas Apple just have it sewn up with Front Row.

Next generation BBC iPlayer gets MS man on board

Joost

Why don't the BBC use a delivery platform such as Joost? For a fledgling platform, it's got loads of content and the video is actually not bad once it settles down. But the plus side is there's clients for MacOS, XP/Vista and Linux.

The other angle here is that it only costs circa £80 to get a DVB USB device for your laptop, with included PVR software. Why not use that, because it will also let you sync out to an iPod / iPhone (well, my Mac software does that automatically - records from DVB stream, compresses for iPod and plonks it in iTunes ready to sync the next morning). The video quality is 100% better and portable too.

The Kontiki / Windows Media product inside the iPlayer is exactly what they use for Sky Anytime, and the video quality is atrocious - much worse than Joost and nowhere near broadcast quality.

TV's iPod moment?

@wim

I think they're referring to the ubiquitous NTT B-FLETS 1Gb fibre broadband connections. I know when I bought one for a small office in Tokyo, we put in an NTT 100Mb fibre service for the sterling equivalent of £100 per month. Certainly beats the (up to)8mb 'ADSLMax' product most of us have to put up with in the UK!

Original iPod revived as iPod Classic

@Ross

Nah. Just like they always do with the iPods - they put new features in the new devices and stop updating the older generation iPods.

Apple slashes iPhone prices

This is Consumer Electronics

It's not just Apple who do this. It's called the entire consumer electronics and IT industry.

So - you bought an Xbox on the first day and it now costs you the same for the premium model as it did for the basic model back then.

You bought a PS3 on the first day and now you can get another controller and a pile of games for a little less money.

My example - I bought an LG plasma TV which was originally £2500 for £1800. 12 months later I can buy the same unit for £999 in Makro.

I've even been 'Appled' - I bought a £999 macbook for it only to go obsolete (and cheaper) within 3 months.

We all know if you're willing to be an early adopter to show of your 'shiny toy' then you'll pay more for it. Everything becomes cheaper in the long run (apart from houses, of course!)

Desktop Linux: That dog will mount

@ vincent himpe

Quote; "Final cut is 'mediocre' at best."

So that's why the BBC are migrating over to using it for most of their editing, and people like the Coen brothers use it to edit their movies?

@ vincent himpe

Intrigued by your two quotes;

"and what applications am i looking for you say ; well. lets start with some simple things. software that can compete with Adobe Photoshop perhaps ? Adobe Premiere perhaps ? Adobe After Effects perhaps ? how about some software to do schematic, mixed mode simulation, fpga coding, and pcb layout like what Altium Designer can do ? how about software comparable to Nero to make some home movies , slap some menus on it , print a nice cd jacket cover ...? how about a good Basic compiler/debugger ( comparable to visual basic 6.0 )"

and

"and dont get me wrong. i dont like microsoft either. but there is for now still no alternative. there is Macos .but there its the same story : you want applications ? then install windows on your overprices white box"

Not all Apples are white boxes any more. The new ones they announced last night are silver and black. :o)

However, apart from the niche software such as FPGA coding and electronics stuff (which I agree only works on Windows, but probably because 90% of the installed base of machines in the world work on it), every other software package you mention has a similar or even better Mac equivalent, sometimes without any extra cost than buying the machine.

Video Editing / DVD Mastering / Photo Management and Manipulation are all taken care of by iLife (which the register hasn't yet noticed has iterated to iLife08 last night), and if you outgrow the basic packages, you can upgrade to things like Final Cut Suite, Aperture, Logic and so-on. Plus you can buy most of the Adobe products for a Mac too (albeit not at PC World, but it is all available online).

And if you're so inclined, you can run Parallels and load XP and away you go. In fact, I have a Macbook which runs Mac OSx, XP, Debian and Ubuntu. And all at the same time if I wanted to (albeit very slowly!). I did that because it gave me greater choice over the apps I can run. On a normal PC I can run Linux and Windows. On a Mac I can run Linux, Windows and MacOS.

Linux works excellently as a backbone OS for the internet, and I for one would like more Webservers to be Linux/Apache instead of the hole-ridden IIS. It also is a great desktop, and I do like Gnome as I grew up on X-Windows on a Sun box. However, you are very limited at the moment as Vincent says in what you can actually do. Once more of the bigger software houses release Linux versions of their software, we'll definitely see an uptake. However, there are things like OpenOffice, Firefox and Thunderbird, so you can do the basic tasks we all use a machine for.

The Mac takes that building block (as MacOS is Linux / NeXTStep derived after all) and builds a more complex wrapper onto it, but it does most of what most people want day to day - just look at what the general populous wants to do and a Mac fits that glove quite neatly.

If it's a Windows specific business app then you're stuck with Windows. Doesn't make sense for them to develop for a niche OS.

Strong laptop demand drives Apple US retail share to 13%

Games?

The niche PC Games are just a way for the hardware manufacturers to make more money by the latest and greatest game needing X upgraded graphics card and Y upgraded RAM with Z upgraded CPU.

Let's face it, based on sales alone, PC games are a minority compared to games consoles. In the top 25 games on Amazon, you have 2 PC games (World of Warcraft and The Sims 2) neither of which need special graphics cards or amazing spec machines (and both of which are available for the Mac aswell). The rest being majority Wii, Xbox360, DS and a couple of PS3 games.

Agreed a PC can be the jack of all trades, but IMHO I prefer to play games on a console (which means the game designers have to work harder and be cleverer because it's a fixed specification for the life of the console, generally). Also, the cost of the games is the only cost, not a new video card every time a new game comes out ;o)

For home use for e-mail, web browsing, video editing, music I have 2 Macs - an older iMac and a Macbook. It allows me to do so much more out of the box than a PC without spending money on extra software to get things done. Plus it's easy for my kids to use, allows me to control what they can do on the web (again, integrated into Mac OSx without needing to have a degree in IT to configure, allowing my wife and I to administer what the kids can see), secure out of the box, and not overly complex like Windows. My macbook does have parallels on it and an XP licence, however, XP's very rarely used, if ever.

Oh, and it doesn't suffer from spyware, malware or viruses ;o)

(For the record I'm an SVR4 Unix SysAdmin, Did my MCSE with NT4 and now work in Networks, so I'm definitely not an Apple Fanboy.)

Fake flash player site used to spread malware

Content Filtering

Let's face it, the only way we're going to eradicate this kind of attack is for a sea change to happen with the ISP's who provide home broadband to enable content filtering the way that many corporates do now. Many of the upper tier ISP's are starting to bring this option in, but it's still optional (plusnet / bt / orange et. al).

Having it turned on by default for all users will kill phishing and spyware attacks overnight.

Especially if they filter outbound known port activity from machines, won't that kill the botnets too?

I feel that the responsibility is now with the ISP's who have been transparent before. I know it's all not what we wanted as those of us who have used the internet since the year dot are still all for net neutrality (and I'm sure it can be set up so that those of us techies who want unfiltered connections can do so). However, the net isn't the same animal it was when we first used it. The world has changed and our attitude needs to change too.

The bottom line is that there is a huge raft of people out there who just want to rip us off and get the money our of our pockets and into theirs by any means.

Jobs: one more thing... a browser war

Safari? Hmm...

Ok. I use a Mac at home. In fact I have two. One 'anglepoise' G4 iMac and a nice Intel Macbook.

At work I use all PC's (I work in IT).

But the common software I use across both is Firefox.

Why?

Because Safari doesn't support the sites I want to use. My online banking doesn't work. Loads of forms don't work. Try booking a holiday with First Choice using Safari - it doesn't work. So I predominantly use Firefox on my Mac and also at work on my PC.

I downloaded Safari for the PC just to test, however, being in a corporate environment it sucks instantly because the proxy doesn't work, and you can't turn the proxy settings off as in Firefox or IE (it's greyed out for some reason).

I hate to say it, but Safari for Windows could end up being another Apple Newton....

(And people call me a mac fanboy...)

Vista upgrade revisited

Vista and SSID

Thank you!

I thought I was just going mad. Being an IT person, my brother-in-law asked me to set up a wireless network in his house and his spanky new Dell laptop with Vista on it. He has no idea about PC's, so I was drafted in to set it up.

Now here's the point where I confess I'm a Network Manager with 15 years of IT work behind me, first worked with CP/M and DOS, and I still got totally stuck with Vista's very random handling of wireless networks and the stupid way it handles static IP and DHCP. It just isn't that easy to troubleshoot because it's changed the baseline 'again'. So if I'm a self-confessed 'geek', how does a simple user have any chance? I'm half inclined to sell his laptop on Ebay and buy him a Mac which will do exactly what he wants it to do with much less hassle. (Partly the reason why I use macs at home now because I have enough trouble with Windows every day at work).

One half of me thinks I don't care if the SSID is broadcast if I'm using a WPA-PSK2 key, because by using a Wi-Fi sniffer tool, you can get the SSID and MAC Addresses in seconds anyway, but that's not the point.

Good article!

Screen stars: Ten HDTVs on test

Samsung vs Sony

Strange isn't it.

Having recently been through the "techno son handholding the parents through a brave new world of TV's cos their 15 year old Panasonic is broken" experience, I can pass on one nugget of information gleaned.

The Sony X Series TV's and the Samsung M87 series TV's are identical - not on external looks but in the electronics inside. The menu system may be slightly different, but the actual physical panel and hardware are built side by side on the same production line in the same factory. Essentially they are the same TV.

So how can Sony, in their infinite wisdom, justify the huge extra the equivalent Sony set costs vs the Samsung??

Paying for the name?

Suffice to say I recommended they bought the M87 (40") and they love it. And I have to say, it beats the pants off my LG 42" Plasma.

DRM pinches Motorola's stream

Apple TV

The problem with the Apple TV is that it's a great product with no content outside of the US.

If you could load a DVD into iTunes and it would rip it down as simply as a CD can be, to the hard disk and even with simple DRM if needs be by the movie studios, then it would be useful.

However, anywhere outside the US of A, there is no video content on the iTMS which makes the product pretty much a white elephant.

Greens demand boycott of Lockheed Martin census trial

USA Holding UK Data

In response to Ken Lord -

"If the UK census data is at anytime transferred to a server on USA soil for any kind of processing, the US government will no doubt take a copy of it."

So does that therefore mean they have a copy of all the DVLA records and other UK Government records that are seemingly stored offshore in the US of A already?

It doesn't take long to find out just how much of our data is really stored offshore (i.e. most of it) because the companies who provide the database storage are also based offshore. Why? Because they're the cheapest, and in uk.gov, money talks.

Sky customers spending more than £400 a year

Sky HD Rip Off

I was an early adopter of Sky Digital and Sky+, and I pre-ordered Sky HD, however, when the demo boxes were released I took one look at the line up and picture quality, cancelled my order and haven't looked back.

Why?

For £10 extra a month, there's no content, and the quality's poor. In fact, the only channel worth having HD for is free - BBC HD. All the other HD channels show the same stuff on repeat. And soon you'll be able to get BBC HD for free on the BBC's Freesat Service.

And for movies? Just buy a cheapy HD-DVD add-on for an XBox or buy a PS3 and use BluRay and watch the movies in better quality (1080p) than the Sky HD service (720p/1080i) which still suffers IMHO from awful artefacts and pixellation due to limited bandwidth. Agreed, it's better than it was, but it's still bad.