Posts by jason 7

Windows 8 hype has hurt PC makers and distributors - Gartner

Didnt we have pretty much this same article.....

...last week...and the week before that.....

Can we have some new stories please?

Not all data encryption is created equal

There are two needs for encryption.

1. To protect financial and state secrets etc. from espionage/criminal experts.

2. To stop the chap who nicked your laptop from looking at what's on it before he sells it in the pub carpark for £30.

I think most of us fall into the second category.

Adobe CEO admits need to 'tweak' Creative Suite's cloud-only policy

The next step?

Adobe launch the .psdx format for those using the subscription version.

"Oh you cant open the files....you are on CS5?!"

Microsoft caves on Xbox One DRM and used-game controls

Yep knew it would happen.

I said we'd see some major U-turns.

Though it might also have been the fact the new EULA for the Xbox One used up 800MB of ram to store.

All good news I guess.

Also Mattrick looked a major dick throughout this whole affair. I predict he'll be announcing his 'moving on' soon?

Julian Assange: I'm quite happy to sleep on Ecuador's sofa FOREVER

Re: This would be an Assange view of the law.....

Chances are if he did a brief spell in Swedish clink he may find his cell roomier and better than his room at the embassy.

Probably better internet access too.

PC makers REALLY need Windows 8.1 to walk on water - but guess what?

Re: It's not that hard to see the problem

I would agree with you if my customers who are largely domestic and small business were telling me they didn't want Windows 8. Customers really don't mind. That's my fact.

So far the only ones that have said they don't want 8 at this time are the ones running Sage. That's because Sage doesn't currently officially support it. That's fine because Sage can be a pig to get working on a supported platform at times.

So far my experience of real world customers are not anti 8. They really don't care. The big question is "will it be faster then my old machine?" Hmmm its a 1.7Ghz single core with a 40GB HDD. Yes I think so.

Downvotes because I dared cross the "You are not allowed to say you had a positive experience with Windows 8" picket line.

Re: since 2007

Well I struggle to agree at 2002. I see many single core laptops from around 2005 with 80GB 4200rpm HDDs and 512MB of ram in them and they are unusable compared to a simple C2D machine from just a few years later. Not worth upgrading either. Folks think those machines 'work just fine' but then sit them next to a modern dual core machine and you just see how much time is wasting.

I always mandate that a dual core machine should be given a second chance but a single core goes to the skip/recylce ASAP.

I agree to an extent of Office 2003 My copy of 2003? From my cold dead hands....

Re: It's not that hard to see the problem

Well there is always the one in a million that actually likes/bothers to edit his home movies or the odd gamer. :-)

But yes for 90%+ of the worlds population the need to up the CPU ended some time ago.

Now replacing that HDD with a SSD that's another matter...

Re: Win8 retail experience

Yep, it's not hard for folks to get to grips with.

I just feel MS has brought in a few high up execs that are making the most heinous and basic of tech crimes -

The crime of making big assumptions.

For a while MS was pretty good at delivering what folks wanted and adapting to their needs (say around 2007 to 2011) but recently it's switched round to "this is what we think you need, if you don't like it then f**k off!"

Just look at the dick in charge of the Xbox One for example. Talk about customer empathy failure.

Re: PC makers don't need a new OS

I can imagine that a lot of great stuff has been designed to prototype level but then stuffed in the archive due to potential pathetic/trivial patent/licensing conflicts.

Another 'Churnalism' article?

Thinking back how many of these exact same articles have we seen on the Reg over the past 6 months?

Seems like we get one every two weeks with us all posting the same stuff running to 2-3 pages of comments and flames.

I just hope we are all using AdBlock if that's the case.

Re: it took me 10 minutes to get to grips with win 8

Yeah that's the reality I've found with introducing my customer to their new Windows 8 machines. It's really not a problem moving folks from XP to it. A few minutes of hand-holding (I still did that with folks moving to 7, Libraries anyone?) and they are good to go.

No one has asked to go back.

Re: My solution

I think you got your thickness wrong too.

But your point is correct, the hardware for the lower end of the laptop market has to be kicked up the arse sooner rather than later.

If you look at the machines in the £350-£450 range from the usual suspects its no wonder no one is buying. I'm sure they can still make a compelling product in that price range especially if they expect to sell a shed load.

Re: It's not that hard to see the problem

Yea people have all the PCs and laptops they need generally. They also tend to buy them as and when they need them. Not just wait till Xmas. If you laptop packs up you need a new one pretty quick, not wait for 4 months.

At Christmas last year most folks I knew were looking to buy tablets and smartphones to supplement the laptops and PCs they already had.

Re: It's not that hard to see the problem

Yes the OS is irrelevant.

It's the fact that since 2007 or thereabouts folks just don't need to upgrade like they did.

If a customer comes to me with a old laptop that's got a dual core, 2GB of ram and a 160GB HDD and its in good condition I don't bother to tell them to buy a new one I just service it and tweak it and away they go. Probably good to go for another 2-3 years of Facebook use.

I wouldn't have said that to a customer in 2007 who came to me with a 2000 spec laptop.

I remember a time when I was upgrading my CPU every 4-6 months! Now its every 4-6 years. I can't be the only one doing this. This will have a knock on effect.

In fact a lot of the newer gear I'm buying these days is 'less powerful' than the stuff I bought a few years ago. Why? It uses less power but still get the job done.

It's the hardware that's the problem not the software. However, laptop manufacturers could pull their finger out to make the sub £500 laptop market a bit more interesting.

Google Chromebooks now in over 6,600 stores

Re: "Major, worldwide retail push begins this summer..."

Or is it the fact that if most people switch to such low to zero support required machines all pushing to the cloud you and many others will be out of a job?

Re: i've got one

Yeah I love mine too. I've ditched my tablet and now use the Samsung Chromebook. If you are a big forum user then its just so much faster.

Managed to convert quite a few people that were going to buy a £500 tablet to get the £229 Samsung and so far no complaints.

Seagate reveals a NASty side, tears wraps off WD Red copycat disk

Got a grand to spend then?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-030-CR&groupid=701&catid=2104&subcat=2394

At this stage I'd rather pay £60.

Confidence in US Congress sinks to lowest level ever recorded

So much needs changing but the ones that can change it...won't.

I feel that becoming a politician is too much a leg up to a further career, social/corporate climbing type scenario.

Certainly in the UK I think a lot of newer MPs are only doing it as they see it as a stepping stone to greater glories and wealth. The fact that they have to hear from old Mrs Tompkins and her cats for 5-10 years is a small price to pay, especially if they can wrangle a senior cabinet position.

I think this is basically encouraging sociopaths to power rather than those that actually want to serve their country and it's people.

It's time that the role of politician was totally revised and all the responsibilities and perks that go with it. Essentially cutting off any potential social climbing (not being able to take up any directorship/consultancy roles with any company you may have had dealings with as an MP for at least 5 years after leaving office. Not being able to write about your time in office, stricter salary and expenses limits etc. etc.) and betterment.

Basically you do the job for the love of your country and to make it better.

Not to land some fabulous consultancy role or Directorship at BAe the day after you quit/get voted out.

'Office Facebook' firm Tibbr wants you to PAY for mobe-meetings app

Re: Eh?

Ah still haven't managed to find the Desktop yet then? ;-)

Microsoft in sexism strife again over XBOX rape joke

Re: Colour me surprised

I thought that was the market group for 99% of games?? Always has been.

Sony sucker-punches Xbox on price, specs, DRM-free gaming

Re: Wait for proof

Indeed, apparently, Sony has let slip that all the DRM measures to enable the same or similar system as the Xbox One are there in the PS4.

It's just that they will let the developers choose to enable it or not. Hmmmmmm.

So we could well see it happen in the future.

I expect to see a few U-turns from both Sony and MS before Xmas.

Help! I’m trapped inside the Chamber of Hollers

Re: Your forgetting one thing in all of this ...

Marjorie may have won the war...but she hasn't wont the battle!

Apple at WWDC: Sleek new iOS, death of the big cats, pint-sized Mac Pro

What % of business is the Mac Pro for Apple?

Just wondering.

Maybe they feel it's time to let it go.

Microsoft announces $499 price tag, new games for Xbox One

Re: Personally

@goldcd

I'm kind of in the same boat. I don't swap games or buy second hand stuff much so the DRM doesn't affect me at all. In fact in reality it probably wont affect as many folks as everyone is saying. But I am amazed at how complicated a company can make stuff.

MS seems to want to Apply Adobe's old upgrade/licensing methodology to all its products in basically confusing the hell out of them all.

MS really needs to look at all this feedback and essentially dump anything that a consumer would have to read at least twice to understand.

Ex-CIA techie Edward Snowden: I am the NSA PRISM deepthroat

Re: Land of the Free?

Obama's guilt?

Why he's just the same as Bush before or Romney had he won. As I mentioned, Democrat or Republican, at their core they are the same corporate sponsored lapdogs.

Do you seriously think that if the Republicans get back into office next time they will be switching off all these systems? Like hell they will. I don't think you'll be seeing any great server bonfires around the country.

Plus I'm sure Obama inherited a lot of snooping systems from the previous administration.

Look at us here in the UK. Before the last election the Tories manifesto was very anti Labour's new IT snooping bill. But just a few weeks after they got into office it was all "Oh actually this looks a jolly useful idea!"

Whoever you vote for.....

Re: Democracy and the US

Yes the US government system wasn't actually created to "get stuff done for the common man".

It was to keep power to the land owning/trading elite. Something it still does very well today. Basically Democrat or Republican, the corporate/1% agenda carries on regardless.

After all, what can the average American do? Come next election, vote Republican?

Yeah...okayyyyyyyy

However, it is much the same in most western 'democracies' now. All the parties have been bought and paid for.

I really don't know how we can change it. It's rigged very heavily against us.

Re: I grew up with the constant shadow of the IRA - but it never led to this, it was life as usual.

Yes always amazed at the change of policy from the IRA days to today.

Back then it was a day or two of outrage in the press then all back to normal. No one panicked, no one said we should live in fear, just carry on and ignore it as best you can.

I think that method was far more preferable. This is why I have always felt this change of policy has little to do with actually defending us from terrorists. It's more about legitimising snooping and restrictions on liberty for average citizens.

Odd that all during the Cold War we were kind of under the impression that our Governments felt the old Soviet way was the wrong way but probably in secret they were very envious of what the Soviet regime had created.

Re: War on Terror or war on us?

Malaria would decimate any on that list.

Re: Bin Laden Athletic 4, USA 1

I've always said terrorists have never taken away any of my freedoms, just my government.

To be honest I reckon most of it is a smokescreen for building a huge monitoring network so the ruling corporations/financial institutions can do full profiling of us all to weed out those it wants to live/work/consume and those that can wither and die in the cold.

Re: Land of the Free?

Oh indeed. Personally as a Brit that's had to sit and see folks from the US laugh at us for our UK Govt. announcing new monitoring initiatives I find this quite frankly hilarious.

Especially when the same folks covered their ears when I said they would be naive to think the same wasn't happening to them.

"They wouldn't dare cos we got ourselves a constitution, democracy and guns buddy!"

Yeah see how that worked out for you. Just as powerless as the rest of the world's citizens. At least mine had the decency and courage to let me know it was snooping.

Welcome to the real world!

Now we'll get loads of talk about "rising up and taking back our gubmint!" except nothing will happen as this is nowhere near as important an issue as the banning of 16oz sodas to the average American.

Seven all-in-ones that aren't the Apple iMac - and one that is

Re: Lot of money....

I had a Caterham delivered in boxes in 1997. Does that count?

Plus in my experience comparing a 45 minute PC build which only needs one screwdriver with building a car is a bit silly really.

Plus you can still buy an off the shelf tower unit that's far easier to fix.

If you buy a All-In-One just make sure you get that John Lewis 3 year warranty.

Re: Lot of money....

Yep that's the problem...people don't think about it. Like RoHs built kit is just so reliable these days, especially cheap laptop spec kit with the higher end Intel chips in cramped hot locations.

"Oh its stopped working!"

"Did we keep the box it came in?"

"How do we get the hard drive out?"

"Going to cost £500 to repair!"

I see these machines as a real liability. If you want a all in one then buy a mid-range laptop and take the hit. After all these machines are basically that laptop with a 27" screen thrown on it.

Lot of money....

......to pay for less reliable laptop parts.

I think I'd rather build my own. I don't care care for all in one machines. The reason being as you see in this round up they all have glaring omissions (SD tuners really?), cost more than they should and don't bode well for long term support.

I like being able to swap out the ram or a graphics card in less than 5 minutes without having to send my whole PC back (oh yes after I've backed all my data up off it). I'm old fashioned that way.

Style over substance I guess.

IT staff clamouring to pay for their own BYOD kit, says survey

Re: 70 % of Mobile workers

Good point.

Plus the term mobile worker has changed a great deal over the past 5 years.

I don't class those that work at home as mobile. Nor those that answer the odd call whilst out on a fag break.

I used to work for a large multi-national and our mobile workforce (account managers/inspectors/investigators/engineers etc.) was probably less than 1%.

Re: Actually

Wow 40% reduction in performance with encryption??!!

You might want to pay for someone to do that properly or change the encryption software.

I've fully encrypted quite a few laptops and the performance drop is negligible.

Certainly haven't seen a drop from 80MBps to 50MBps type thing. Maybe 80 to 78.

Re: Yeah, right

IIRC I wrote up that in a few years when you sit down at your 'hot desk' back in the office there will be a electric meter beside it wanting a 50p before you plug your laptop in.

MYSTERY Nokia image-mangling mobe spotted in public

Re: Always wondered about the lens size on Smartphones.

Ahhh so you cant have one without the other then.

So the restriction is due to the depth/thickness of the phone.

Thanks for that Richard.

Always wondered about the lens size on Smartphones.

Take the lens on my Nexus 4, it's maybe 1.5mm wide and takes 'okay' shots.

So why not install a 3mm wide lens?

The lens on even my cheapest compact is about 12mm. So I guess I'm saying is how does lens width/size correlate to the quality of images taken?

Would a 3mm wide lens be too big?

Interview: Steve Jackson, role-playing game titan

I remember reading the first few of these.

I used to run out of fingers holding all the options open so I could go back if I got killed.

A fun way to pass a couple of hours.

I had the Warlock of Firetop Mountain game for the Spectrum. It came with the book in a set.

I have to say not a great game.

Apple declares WAR on Spotify: iRadio bags streaming rights

Re: Am I the only one?

Dunno about you but I currently have Spotify playing the Rolling Stone's Gimme Shelter through my Meridian/Monitor Audio Hi-Fi and it sounds great to me.

Re: Please make it cheaper than Spotify

Oh no that's like two coffees and two sandwiches!

All that music for less than the cost of one CD a month.

Yeah..I'm still not really seeing the pain here.

You want it for free I guess?

Re: Please make it cheaper than Spotify

£4.95 a month too much for you then?

How much do you pay a month for your Phone?

How much was that Pret sandwich and coffee you had for lunch?

Just saying.

Mars Express' 10th birthday celebrated with Martian atlas

These projects are truly scary.

In the amount of time they take from a person's life and then if it fails....

Did anyone else see that documentary on the Titan probe? What was it about 20 years in the making, the guy leading the project ended up getting a divorce etc. due to this devotion to the project, you saw him get older and older.

Then the day of arrival happened and watching them waiting for the data to come in and it didn't....at first.

Those were a few very tense minutes to watch. Imagine the despair you must feel after 20 years of your life just went out with nothing more to show than a blank monitor screen.

I don't think I could do it. I doff my cap to you all!

62,000 fewer shops: Welcome to the High Street of 2018

Re: Classic government

If I walk around the centre of Norwich we have masses of large empty purpose built office blocks. All of them within 500 yds of the train station. It's terrible but the rates they want for these offices haven't changed at all.

The other issue is that the council decided to install all the pubs and strip joints around them and that was a major reason for many of the companies moving out. They just got fed up washing vomit and suchlike off their doorsteps every week.

Think you're ready to make a big career bet? Read this first...

Re: Being an IT guy but not talking like one... &... The art of bluffing...

Yeah being honest and open with the customer is something they really appreciate (amazing eh!). Plus being able to explain things in concepts they understand is vitally important. Most customers go into a IT meeting expecting to be totally mind-blown so will either go "Shields up!" or just "Eyes closed!"

In my role of IT Relationship manager I've had to subtly take over many a presentation that is just going over the horizon. "Okay I think what Gary is trying to say here is..."

If you make them realise you are not giving them the BS they trust you and you become the trusted partner. When you get to this level of relationship the customer doesn't mind so much any negatives or issues that crop up as they feel there is still a level of control and they are still getting the best advice and decisions made. They don't have that feeling in their gut that "something just doesn't seem right somehow!"

Plus on launch day there are no surprises.... Customers hate those kind of surprises.

"What do you mean it doesn't work with our E-commerce platform?"

If you are having to lie to a customer then you really aren't doing your job properly.

As one of my customers said when I left my last relationship role -

"Oh Christ what do we do now? You were the only one of them that spoke any sense that we could understand!"

I kept the email as a reference.

Re: As always, enjoyable

I myself will look forward to the reality of how BYOD will be adopted (read totally bodged and point missed) so that in fact a lot of companies will need a full time IT support person on each floor or dept to make it all work...kinda.

Looking forward to reaping that big time till sanity comes back and its all back to the standard approved kit support model.

This sort of stuff always goes in cycles.

Firefox OS: Go away fanbois, fandroids - you wouldn't understand

Re: Its an interesting strategy

I have to say looking at that pic and the spec list it looks like they 'borrowed' an awful lot from WebOS.

EVE Online OFFLINE: Wannabe Capt Kirks clobbered in cluster-ruck

Oh boy.

When I think back to my time playing Eve (2006 - 2010) it makes my head spin.

I just dare not go back. Will be like someone from the 19th century trying to get up to speed with today.

I still think of all my ships gathering dust in the station.........

Windows 8.1 Start button SPOTTED in the wild

Re: @ MattEvanC3 Bunch of nancies

And there I was pointing out that folks cant quickly sort out what are mostly cosmetic UI changes.

Yes sure there are some changes deeper under the hood that might cause some folks issues, that's happened many times over the many versions. That's a pain sure but it happens.

Yet most of the stuff moaned about over and over on these topics is pretty simple cosmetics.

Essentially 80% of what folks are complaining about in Windows 8 is largely trivial and easily changed.