Posts by John F

Why I just bought a MacBook Air instead of the new Pro

They lost me at "no touch screen"

They said they tested pros with touch screens. Did they try their five year olds in front of them? Apparently not.

Wake up, Apple. The future just passed you by.

Google robo-car in rear-end smash – but cack-handed human blamed

But did the google car take action to lessen the impact?

In my one rear-ended collision like this I was able to see it coming - and 17mph is obvious - and remove my foot from the brake to lessen the effect on me. The google car could also have hooted when it saw the too-fast approach or moved. Did it? Not specified. That could skew the statistics, surely.

Stob latest: It was a cunning trick, says Open University

Sadly, the OU has quality assurance issues...

I've had similar experiences with my partner's courses at the OU. Although there's huge amounts of good stuff and many well developed courses, others are badly run or badly marked, and there's no ability to challenge it, even when everyone on the course seems to agree. It seems to be accepted that every so often a course will just be rubbish, no refunds, no marking it better. They're basically a bit of a government monopoly for what they do, and I think it shows.

ASA slaps down Vodafone 'unlimited' data claims

Amazing

I'd side with Vodafone on that one, while the ASA does nothing about all the truly false "unlimited" claims...? Crazy.

Palm's new OS not dead, just going Nova

Hopeless.

Palm's story is just one long, tedious list of missed opportunities. I doubt they've held onto enough talented people to deliver anything good now.

I guess I'm just a bitter ex-fan...

Heaviest Virgin Media downloaders face new daytime go-slow

Started as a good idea, getting worse...

I can understand the evening cap as a sensible way to cope with peak demand, and I approve very much of it being neutral to the kind of traffic. Also, it's easy to just not download at that time.

But having three different caps? Not so reasonable.

I don't get good enough upstream service to hit that one, anyway.

Tories would have to compensate ID vendors

Commercial confidentiality?

What is that anyway? Why shouldn't any contract with the government be open to scrutiny?

The web rip-offs nobody cares about

eBay stuck in a rut?

It seems to me that eBay are in a simple near-monopoly situation where they don't innovate substantially any more and yet no competition can really take them on.

The problems I had just to set up a seller account recently were ridiculous, and they fixed my account's oddity rather than fixing the actual bug (I figured out the problem - slowly - thanks to google).

There are lots of little innovations, lots of odd notices popping up saying "you're insured now if..." etc., but rearranging the whole process to make it easier, safer and more friendly? Not happening.

Palm 'innovative Wi-FI device' invite points to Foleo revamp?

A little iffy, the reg said

I like the way "pundits" are quoted as being negative on the Foleo - the reg itself seems to have called it "a little iffy". And yet, it probably was ahead of its time and the price presumably would have come down, as it has with every other Palm device. But the real blame as usual lies with Palm - who have done OK, but with the iPhone and iPod Touch now seeming so incredibly similar to their phones and the Palms that they launched so long ago, have to go down as one of the worst serial missers of opportunities ever to grace the computer industry.

Akasa Integral P2 LAN

Basic questions...

I worry that this review seems like sales blurb rather than a consideration of the options available.

I've been looking for something like this to use at home and there are various similar options (Buffalo, WD) - although most offer USB hosting rather than the opportunity to connect to a PC via USB. But isn't that more useful and appropriate? And also as another commenter said, key questions are how loud it is and whether it turns off the HD after a period of non-use to save power. Just reading amazon I came across much discussion of that. As for standards, the WD use of CIFS (which is linux supported) and DHCP etc. seems a good option - obviously this device is very proprietary from a non-major-name manufacturer and that is a concern if I'm trusting my data with it. The support for mirroring is mentioned, but I'd like to hear the results of trying it; I'd like this technology to set up a super-safe (from burgulars too) data vault in the loft or something. The paragraph on RAID seemed just... confused.

For me, a disappointing review.