Posts by Chris 171 247 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jun 2009
Looks kinda nice, size & shape wise. Little lumps here & there morph into grabs when you've had a device for a while. Nothing but pain with Moto tho Still not keen on Android either. Im following the evolution of S^3 for the foreseeable I think.
Still not the first flagship Nokia WP7 device either, thats what we really need to see.
Kinda hope its not just a ported N9.
Not that you need Peppa Pig on BD, hence why I have a vanilla DVD version from Sony but sure does give you that 15/20 mins of concentration time when doing something urgently with the child in tow.
Pimp my pushchair I've dubbed it, fits in the car too & worked a treat on a recent flight in all.
There is a market for these things, despite being able to replicate its functionality on a laptop / pokeslab.
/converted
Yup, nailed this one.
Amazon has a good chance here to really do well here against apple if they continue making shiny things that people want. OEM's are probably a bit pissed mind.
I see a very well specified tablet on the horizon, price dependent on your annual spend. Amazon also have the advantage of letting their kit be user definable & provided they can avoid the desire to play god in the future, there are very few hurdles in their way.
Thinking back, how many people trusted their first web purchase to Amazon? sticks in the mind that.
As a Sony fanboy (now on the wane) I tried a Vaio out at the £700 pricepoint & was massively dissaponted - back it went (the thing rattled ffs).
Got a 5750 i3 & 6gig of RAM for £450 - its a truly great machine built better than the Vaio for a start & chunters through anything I ask of it PDQ (mainly photos / timelapse stuff). Batterylife isnt amazing (3hrs med use) but at least its easily replaceable in this model, although by the time its kaput Ill be buying a new machine anyway.
With regard to the resolution, 768 is right for this size machine I think, text just gets too small otherwise & maybe BD would be nice for future proofing but its certainly not an essential.
As for graphics oomph, when hooked up to the TV via HDMI its perfect - there are some very good NASCAR streams on JTV that look great - PS3 is for games in my house.
All in all Acer make good kit & my experience with this machine may even convince my to buy one of their stabslabs when the mood takes me.
To the home down your existing conduits, Ill have it as Im getting irked with the reliability of the coax coming into my house curently. Its usually bulletproof to be fair but does blip occasionally dropping packets like a bad postie.
Not withstanding the fact that I also had to fix a shockingly installed junction box myself to ensure my landline worked when it was raining (they just cut the redundant extensions outside the box rather than removing them entirely)
Still wouldnt touch BT if only for that fact that VM with their separate lines have a far more resilient system when it goes fubar with usually with one or the other lines working at least a third (in fibre) would / should give almost 100% uptime <we can but hope ;)
Especially for charging, much better juice hit from the mains.
Can only see wireless charging taking off when the induction coils are actually built in to the device/battery. Also echo the points about efficiency above but investments with a long tail are no bad thing.
I have no doubt this will be the future way of doing things but there is a whole heap of disparate tech mfrs to get onside first. And of course the liquid powered stuff that is floating around could also disrupt things too.
I appreciate Pie as much as the next man for his bredth of knowledge & comedic skill but ffs this is just sycophantic bum licky drivel.
I dont 'do' apple and thank the deity of choice, if ony to prevent me from spouting shozbot like this once indoctrinated in to the cult.
Mac users in years to come will start to grow back webbed fingers to help with the vagaries of mega multitouch, also willing to bet a few quid apple will be the first company to (rfid) chip their customers, you mark my words its coming and will be lapped up by the followers.
Yes its Friday & Ive been to the pub, sorry you weren't there.
And my 10mp Sony compact is now gathering dust.
True, it wont ever replace my SLR/DSLR cameras, or my much loved medium format Rolleicord but with the Camera Pro app & a little practice in finding its foiballs the N8 does everything I need it too. Fits in my pocket better than any compact too, haz memory card, does HD (720p 30fps) video with better sound than my older dedicated video cameras & kicks out very nicely detailed 4000x3000 image files that are prefect for the social aspect of my photography.
The important thing to remember with any camera is the glass in front of the film/sensor, thats your differentiator right there. No amount of pixels will do you any good if their looking through the bottom of a bottle.
The tripod mount is the only thing I miss for my long exposures & timelapse stuff, will probably get one of those Gorrilapod sucker things at some point, still surprised no 3rd party plastic mfr has made one yet but Im sure they will eventually.
Lame jokes aside, Opera really is a quality product & deserves way more market share than it has currently in my opinion.
It certainly pays to buy in to the Nordic mindset & run it on all your web devices to get the maximum advantage from its services but having a fully synced web experience across Desktop, Laptop, Smartphone & Dumbphone works a treat for me.
Loaded with features that are genuinely useful & fast fast fast!
A happy user for a long time (since 4.x) & I dont see that changing.
Try it, you might like it.
Works fine on my N8, coupled with the driver tracker from the BBC (tho for how much longer remains to be seen) on the Laptop & Im fully geared up to watch the race.
For a true departure in new media, F1 should hook up properly with Kangaroo/FanVision to offer their output for home use not just at the track. I'd buy that for a £.
Pure logic mon capitan, if only for the reason that Microsoft have always been lame in the mobile device sector and need a massive leg up. If putting Elop in the top spot wasnt a big enough clue in the first place that this would happen eventually. Recession is a consolidator no?
I can only see this working out for the best in the end. The majority of folk like a cohesive computational experience that just works, see apple for the proof concept, for the rich at least. Now roll that out the the Windows userbase with hot coffee hardware from the Nokia people, add a dash of cloud based media storage and we have a winner, for the bean counters at least....
Sent from my Nokia phone
That's the only time I would contemplate moving from my 10meg line that has been pretty solid over the years, (yeah its borked once or twice but thats gonna happen on any network). Why pay for more then get pissed when you dont get it? I Buy 10 and get 10.
Only connectivity issue I get is with a POS Belkin router I have wingeing about for years but never seem to get round to replacing.
Phone me when we have full coloUr, high resolution, roll up, flexible displays in our portable 'smart' devices. None of this from any manufacturer is game changing.
Guess we're gonna have to wait until this 'market reset' is on its way out...
You only have to look at apples previous product releases to see whats happening next, so thats not really news. Although the recent schedule extensions they have put on their previous clockwork timed product announcements does seem to me that apple are pulling back slightly, for what purpose? I dont know, logic would conclude a period of outer lull belies a skunk project in the making, if you ask me. But then I am having a beer or free..
Kinda obvious really, how else are you going to monetiSe a free music stream? Kinda nice to be told though, granted.
apples version may not collect so much user data (they know it already) but I'd hazard an additional guess that with itunes & a loaded credit card only a click away, there are far higher sales of music via Pandora for iphone.
If I was apple I would request the app didnt play any song/album that wasnt available via itunes too.
Android users aren't so locked in to a purchasing system so maybe its needed needed to keep the servers pumping & people getting paid on the Android side of the office?
The magnet case is a genius way to top up the profit margin at point of sale. Kudos for that one, the price point is a killer too, as with the HDMI cable, mopping up as much associated revenue as possible. Got to maximise your profits in these austere times no?
Or well, maybe just announce the next iteration of 'i' once sales start slowing of the previous most amazing poke at product, to start the whole exact process again. This close update also nails the 'Im not gonna get the 'first version' of this new form factor buyer beautifully square in the nuts. Every one is welcome to The iParty!
Slabs are content consumption devices & should not be confused with something you can do actual work on in my view. Tech specs are therefore irrelevant (provided you control the ecosystem) as you _can_ just make it work with what you allow people to have on it, its nothing magical. Clever yes, visionary? we'll see, when they ever start paying dividends probably...
I could have saved a lot of typing and just written a +1 for the Meh, but hey its Friday* & the F1 is back on later.
May have rambled a bit there, see * for details :)
Love the way Opera flips apples obtuse decision making processes back on themselves.
All the while generating more publicity for the product off the back of it. (remember the countdown to when Opera Mini was 'allowed' onto the iphone)
Good work.
You know, if apple weren't so creepily odd, more people might like them.
/Operafanboi
Looks like more is coming with this latest news.
Use it pretty much exclusively on all my web connected devices, I like fast.
Really dont get why it doesnt have as high penetration on the desktop (as it does with its mobile products) but I guess the other IE alts spend a lot more on advertising.
I dont like Apple....
Because it is all about how much money you are willing to spunk on the latest over hyped, slave built hobbled device that is tied to a single locked down programme.
Then pay again for apps, pay again for music at inflated rates, pay again when they make your year old product obsolete & the whole circus ride starts again.
Money pit disposable computing is not my idea of fun. The marketing just makes me barf too, magical my arse.
So thats why Mr AC.
Chris
Didnt want a droid or a money pit phone so went for an N8 fully aware of whats been written about the OS. Knowing the hardware itself is top drawer is not a bad place to start when looking for a reliable phone.
Re the connectivity pop ups, personally, I quite like knowing what my phone is doing data wise, and dont feel it encroaches on the experience at all.
My conclusion so far is that if you like playing with settings, S^3 is all good. Im looking forward to the Q1 update to see what that brings, but its not half as terrible as many reviews seem to make out. (already had a minor update a few days ago that makes the whole phone feel snappier).
Same as anything new to you SW wise, within a few days of using it, things become much easier / understandable once you know where to look.
Why no mention of the built in FM Transmitter? thats a very useful feature if your in the car a lot & no accessory required.
Opera Mobile / Mini for web browsing obviously, although the symbian version is flash enabled for the youtubes iplayer requirements.
Nokia are getting there again, their internal failings and odd management structure are well documented but once that starts getting fixed & its looking like it, I dont think I'll be going back to SE any time soon.
An easy way too hook up to my LAN to a capacious external drive that I use for streaming music/flicks/films to my PS3 & laptops at a non laggy speed, without having my desktop PC running?
Not in the slightest bit interested in remote printing.
Any chance of buyers guide on all the available adaptor options like this? leaving aside the fact that a big a55 NAS box can always do more?
The Pogoplug seems to fit my bill right now (despite the pink) and the USBS2 looks OK too but why is it not much easier already? Many other semi tech savvy people must be in a similar position to me?
#justmakeitwork!
I have the 10Mb service and invariably thats what I get.
The main advantage of a cabled network I'd suggest, the folks on VM ADSL wont be so lucky.
What gets me more in the dodgy advertising stakes is the 'Fibre Optic Broadband' sales line, when in reality fibre is still quite a way from my doorstep.
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