Posts by Sartori

Psssst. Don't tell the Bride, but BBC Three is about to be jilted

Re: How much does..

They do get a lot from selling their TV abroad, The Voice however isn't a BBC original unlike the rest as they pay a stupid amount of money out each year to broadcast it -

"The BBC has splashed out an astonishing £22million on a reality entertainment show to take on The X Factor in the Saturday night ratings war.

BBC1 controller Danny Cohen signed a two-year deal to secure the UK rights for The Voice, which is already a success in the U.S. and Holland.

The cost to the Corporation is likely to be ramped up still further as it looks to sign up a big-name judging panel."

Booze and bacon sarnies: A recipe for immortality?

Nobel prize incoming

How can we nominate El Reg for a Nobel prize for coming up with this recipe for heightened awareness and glorious health?

Also, can we get bacon classed as a 'superfood' somehow please?

Happy Friday :)

HTC offers FREEBIE repair on new models with cracked screens

Same here, had it since release and it's still a brilliant phone. I'm actually due an upgrade next week but I don't really see anything dramatically better out there. I might just stick with it a while longer and reduce the monthly payments until I see something that catches my eye.

Whitehall and Microsoft negotiate NHS Windows XP hacker survival plan

Re: Shove your Win8 where the sun don't shine

Quote "if Microsoft tried to screw me like this" - I suppose the years of telling people they needed to upgrade from an ancient OS to get continued support and even extending the support cover so people had even more time than was originally published.......yep, must be MS fault

Re: What will they actually get for the $200m?

It tells you that in the article "Under extended support Microsoft will deploy dedicated engineers to paying customers, who keep releasing fresh security patches after the April cut off."

I've seen the future of car radio - and DAB isn't in it

Re: Streaming in the car?

I recently gave this a try too but using an Android app called Livio Radio (as it includes a station I enjoy from the US) which includes some limited caching ability but I haven't felt the need to enable it yet. I do around 35 miles each way to work and back along a mix of motorway and local roads. The most it has cut out was twice, each time it started streaming again in a few seconds. This was on the 3 network too.

Virgin Media only puts limited limits on its Unlimited service

Re: Little true choice

Exactly the same here, if I move to ADSL then the speed I can expect is somewhere between 1 and 3meg, woohoo!

Microsoft to fund Blake's 7 return as Xbox Live exclusive

Blakes 7 was without doubt my favourite SciFi as a kid, if it's a really good remake then I will be very happy. What are the chances of that though? I hope it's good but can't help getting that sinking feeling it will be really and truly shockingly awful.....

Samsung Mega 6.3: Enter the PHONDLESLAB

Looks pretty good to me, for my uses anyway.

I do use Twitter, browse websites like the register/various news sites, Instagram, some online video clips, listen to music, google maps, browse ebay.

I don't make lots of phone calls, do much gaming, or watch full movies, iplayer, or need the latest quad core mega HD battery devouring tech, I would rather have a good size easy to read screen with a decent battery life.

I don't want to carry a tablet with me and need a seperate phone, so this pretty much meets my needs without actually costing £500+ for the latest flagship that eats batteries and in the case of some of them, can't have the battery swapped when it does run low.

No question it won't suit everyone but it's definitely one I will be considering.

Master Beats: Why doesn't audio quality matter these days?

Audiophile....

It says a lot when you get people in mobile phone forums saying oh i'm an audiophile while listening to music on a phone consisting of audio processing to the sum total of a few $ at best while plugging in their in ear headphones. Or if they think they're really going overboard some cheap USB DAC.

Expectations seem to have dropped considerably, the only plus side seems to be that less people are now satisfied with truly awful bargain basement headphones.

Google suspends 16GB Nexus 7 orders

Re: Learning from Apple

Who the hell will want a tablet that only has 8GB storage?

Well me for starters, and plenty of other people I expect who want to browse the web on it, use email, listen to a bit of music, online radio, read ebooks etc etc. Not everyone needs to have a digital music/video jukebox constantly loaded to their kit. For those who do then yes, they need more storage but that's not everyone, very far from it.

I haven't bought one yet because I'm waiting for any initial production issues to be ironed out, I was already caught out by getting the HTC One X on release date and took 4 phones to get one that was put together properly. Early adopter again? Sod that......

Google fattens up Android devs with Jelly Bean sauce

I'm sure if Samsung wanted to push out plain vanilla Android to their phones they could do so very quickly, Galaxy Nexus for example. Since they insist on having their own customised interface on their phones then it's going to take longer and that's their own choice.

Girl Geek Dinner lady: The IT Crowd is putting schoolgirls off tech

Completely agree, male or female, as a teenager there is so much pressure to try and blend in as those who stand out from the crowd can often end up isolated and/or bullied.

HTC handsets hit by grip of death

Re: HTC - Ridiculous suggestion

"Hands up anyone who has renewed their mobile phone contract, and the provider has sent out a new SIM card for exactly the same number ? It just doesn't happen."

Always happens for me, for example at work we use Orange as our provider and whenever a new phone / Blackberry / whatever is sent out to replace someones old one it comes with a new SIM and they always say to use the new one rather then the old one. The just deactivate the old SIM and activate the new one with the same number. If i get a handset upgrade on my personal mobile contract this has happened for at least the last two or three changes.

Interesting

I'm the first to criticize the One X when it comes to the horrendous build quality of early release stock. It took 4 swap outs from 3UK before I got one that was of a reasonable build. Issues included Gorilla Glass not fitted correctly, yellow spots visible on the screen where there was a glue issue, discoloured displays. Finally got a later revision and the only issue I noticed early on with all of them was that the signal strength did not seem as high as on my previous Desire. After a software update this problem went away.

So far though I have had no issues with 'grip of death', wifi or laggy games. Happily in the situation where I now have no issues after some initial pain, the joys of the early adopter I guess!

Space: 1999 returning to TV?

Yep, if they're going to remake something, Blakes 7 would be the one i'd like to see, great plots and with some decent current actors it has great potential for a remake! Even with the cheap sets etc the atmosphere was fantastic because of the storylines.

Blushing HTC too coy to admit sales figures

HTC

My experience with HTC varies massively to most of the posts here. Either only people who have problems with them can be bothered posting or I and several friends have been very very lucky.

My HTC Desire is coming up to 2 years old, still working great and never had a problem with it. The battery is just as good as new, wish I could say the same for Dell laptops for example. Great for changing ROM's on as well, running ICS very nicely at the moment. Friend of mine had the same as me, no problems and changed over to the Sensation which has been running well too. The only person I know who had an issue, their daughters Wildfire S went faulty, HTC had it fixed and returned in a few days - this was within the last few weeks, I know they had problems late last year reported on Watchdog, seems to be that it has improved or again, he was very lucky.

First phone I have ever owned by them, but I'd consider another one when my contract is up in a few months. As someone else has said though, there doesn't seem to have been a big leap forward with the current models. HTC Edge does look promising, but so does the Xperia S among others.

Tesla 300-mile e-car UK debut set for 2013

How safe are these huge batteries?

How many times have we seen truly scary video clips of laptop batteries turning into a fireball? Scale this up to the ones in these electric cars and I'm not sure I'd want to be paying a small fortune for what could be a WMD. I have no idea what safety is in place so it's a genuine question.

HTC Sensation XL

Strange, I have a HTC Desire, not a Sensation, but I know several friends who got one and they have had no issues whatsoever. I'd be happy to give you £50 for it and do what most sensible people do with a faulty phone and return it to HTC under warranty. I haven't noticed if their phones came preinstalled with any apps though if it's just stuff like Facebook and Twitter and I didn't want them I suspect I'd just not use them until such time as I wanted to change the ROM (usually about 24 hours after getting the phone in my case).

As much as the bigger screen of the XL is tempting the XE is far more likely to be the replacement for my Desire when my contract is up in May. Though that depends on what else comes out between now and then.

Channel 5 snubs Freeview HD again

Ah, I wouldn't know about Freeview picture quality, have a receiver in my TV set but no signal, Sky it is for me, not through choice.

Yep, if it ever goes back to reviewing just gadgets instead being an Apple advertisement show or reviewing bikes, toys and other crap that plainly aren't gadgets in the slightest I might watch it again. Stunned anyone watches it still.

Nokia's next Windows Phone leaked in dev ad

Just how is anyone supposed to know the answers to those questions from a leaked advert? But as someone else said, battery life, i remember those days.

Facebook vows 'consequences' for extreme porn scammers

That's a bit harsh!!!

Leaked Nokia WinMobes ready for midrange scrum

Yeah, I was wondering what the justification was for calling the Android marketplace a mess, I haven't found it to be so and I'd be more than happy to be critical of it if it were.Odd. It certainly used to be a lot worse than it is now.

Linehan turns IT Crowd off but NOT on again

It wasn't anything to do with Chris, Graham has already said on his Twitter that Chris and everyone were up for it, just he wasn't, but promised to make the one of special 'very special'.

Hands on with the Motorola Razr

I think you must have missed something

And i quote from the article "our in-depth review will follow closely behind. From a five-minute play-around, though, I have to agree with Motorola: this is one sexy smartphone"

No mention of a lot of things, as the article said, it was a report based on a brief play on the phone. If you're going to criticize the article, it's helpful if you have read it first. Wait for the full review if you want every detail.

NASA: 'Asteroid armageddon less likely than we feared'

Just so long as we keep sending Yogi Bear his picnic baskets, we should be fine.

BT Tower becomes giant lightsabre tonight

Would that be....

......the Complete Saga of 6 out of the originally planned 9 movies? Ah yes, that Complete Saga.

Ice Cream Sandwich Android out 'by November'

4.0?

I have been under the impression, and thought it had been established for some time that ICS was going to be 2.4? I could of course be completely wrong, I have thought this for so long that I can't remember the source(s) now.

HP TouchPad 32GB WebOS tablet

Gen2 could be a winner

Provided HP can sort out the hardware/CPU issues and the app development comes along I reckon I could go for the 2nd generation of WebOS tablet. A reasonable first gen to show some potential but i'll hang on a little while and see what happens when the next one comes along.

Apple iOS 5 and iCloud examined

@AnyJungleInGuy

Maybe you missed this part of the article -

"Like the iOS-only, Wi-Fi-only FaceTime, iMessage connects iOS 5 users - and no one else."

If almost everyone already has BB's then who wants BBM who are going to be the first few people to move over to Apple and lose almost all of their messaging buddies then?

Unless there's some kind of mass migration to Apple (could happen if I underestimate how much money there is for parents/students to spend on these things) then it seems unlikely, at least for quite some time anyway.

Mac OS X Lion debuts in July as $29.99 upgrade

@Girles Jones

Awesome, looks like the options are either go to an Apple Store (which may be extremely far away) or move house and if you aren't prepared to do either, you're a whiner. Brilliant, good to see people showing the Jobs reality distortion field to be a myth after all.

Sony Bravia KDL-40EX724 40in LED 3D TV

2D version it is then....

Actually sounds a great TV apart from 3D, which I don't need or want. Time to look up the equivalent 2D model I think. Sony have done a lot of stupid things but say what you like, they do make fantastic TV's usually. So long as it's not 3D that is!

4G interference will knock out Freeview

Something I won't be worrying about

Considering I can't get Freeview at all where I live anyway! Wrong side of a hill which nicely blocks out Winter Hill, which is a bit of a bugger

BOFH: Attack of the Global Corporate Overlords

Nice

Best in a very long time that! Brilliant :)

NASA scrubs final space shuttle Endeavour launch

Delayed again

Looks like it won't be Monday either "NASA managers determined it is not possible to launch Endeavour on Monday, which has been the earliest possible liftoff date. Details soon.." from the NASA Twitter stream

Iomega Home Media Network Cloud Edition 1TB drive

Apparently titles are important after all

Quote "I'm also not completely clear if the price quoted includes a drive or not."

Clue is in the title -

Iomega Home Media Network Cloud Edition 1TB drive

You see where it says 1TB drive? That's where the clue is.

So, what's the best sci-fi film never made?

Letters and digits and all that

Well, seeing as Muppets From Space has already been made I guess it'll have to be Rama! :)

Microsoft wraps Windows 8 in Ribbon UI?

Bit early to condemn it don't you think?

Stunned at how quick people are to leap in and shout about how crap it looks and that's it I'm never buying another windows!!!

Consider just how early the UI development stage is at, and how this is likely to go through radical changes before release anyway. If you think about it, it's easy to see what they have done, making everything bigger which had to be done for touchscreens and then some rough ideas based on what they already know how to do (ribbon interface) and sent it off to selected partners like HP etc to get feedback before developing further. Based on the responses from the big partners this will no doubt change a lot over time. What they have done so far makes perfect sense, it's an easy and obvious starting point but that doesn't mean it will look anything like that upon release.

Dixons Advent Vega

Sounds good to me

Actually sounds like a great device for the money, especially since installing a custom ROM is easy now I have done it a couple of times. For the money and a little time spent reading how to root it it seems like a bit of a rare bargain!

Fanboi rumor mill dances for iPad 2 iPad 3

Still waiting....

As much as I can't stand Apple, they have a great UI for the tablet format, I'm just waiting for something to come along which has a slick UI experience without all the Apple lock in.

Not sure where that is going to come from though. I love my Android 2.3 phone but is Honeycomb good enough for a rival tablet experience? Not so much from what I have seen so far. WebOS or RIM's Playbook perhaps? Hmm, guess I'll have to wait and see.

Acer shows laptop lid look tablet

Very nice but.....

Looks a really nice tablet and I would be very keen to get one but it depends entirely on battery life. Hopefully some figures will come out soon on that or else it might have to end up being the Samsung, though i'd rather buy an Acer.

One third of Russians say Sun revolves round Earth

Deluded

"Was everything made by a big invisible bloke, and nothing exists unless he made it?"

Are you on drugs, what kind of moron would believe THAT?!?!!

Oh, wait.......seems lots of people do, damn, and I thought there was supposed to be intelligent life on Earth, silly me.

HTC 7 Trophy smartphone

Bit like an iPhone then, but cheaper?

Those things will never take off without a card slot you know!! :)

Vulture falls asleep in front of Christmas TV

Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas to all at The Register, thanks for keeping us all up to date and for the many laughs through the year, enjoy a well deserved break :)

Rethinking the iPhone

On the other hand...

Another way of looking at what you just said is that if all you have is the iPhone he started out with then if it dies you lose the ability to do anything. The way he has it now, if one device fails he can still use the others and not lose most of the functionality. As much as it's nice to have one device that does everything for convenience, the downside is having all your eggs in one basket.

LG tablet to be flavoured with 'Honeycomb' Android

Android versions...

Has it been confirmed that Gingerbread is definitely Android 3.0? Just wondering as maybe it could turn out to be 2.3 and Honeycomb is v3.0 instead?

Motorola Backflip Android smartphone

Oh dear...

I was thinking this could be an interesting handset to get until I saw Android 1.5 and no upgrade plans then I thought no chance! What is it with handset manufacturers releasing such outdated software on phones, it's like Dell releasing a machine today with Windows 95 on it.

HD Webcams

Top Stuff

Nice one, it's refreshing to see a reviewer consider linux in a hardware test. As i run both Win7 and Ubuntu it's very relevant, top marks for that and please encourage it to the other folks at RegHardware :)

Logitech unveils first Google TV box

Latest Version of the OS?

Quoted from article -

"Google TV is based on Android 2.1 — the latest version of the OS"

2.2 is the latest version of the OS not 2.1, so does it have the latest Android or is it the slightly older 2.1?