Posts by Hugh 5

Completed Netflix? Indulge your inner nerd with a virtual talk from a computer museum

Brilliant shout out re appeal. Donated and lo they now have reached their target. Thanks @Elreg!

Tony Benn, daddy of Brit IT biz ICL and pro-tech politician, dies at 88

Re: Must be a techie...

He was a BIG Psion fan and early adopter. A friend of mine visited his home to offer training on the apps and development capabilities of the Psion 3a organiser. He was fascinated by technology (and gadgets) from basic dictatphone to solid state electronics. A good bloke. A justifiable national treasure - he's the only politician I have ever bought a ticket to go hear speak (on his hugely enjoyable and engaging tour that took in Wimbledon Theatre in 2008). RIP.

When Symantec's away... 28-year-old Asigra becomes 'overnight' cloud backup success

We have over 1000 people in 350 businesses (FCA regulated and HM Government included) across four continents using our Cloud based Accounting and Business solution. Most definitely serious businesses!

SaaS superstars' cynical sales schemes make them dinosaurs-in-waiting

Gartner lol

Like who cares? So out of touch. Plenty of elasticity out there in the real world. The only people who care about Gartner are self justifying CIO type folk who can't do the research for themselves 'cos they don't understand the technology.

And why on earth would you value the opinion of anyone lacks true independence and instead is paid (contracted) to conduct research? Stick to The Register (...and the other one that sounds a bit like 'urge').

I want to play with VMs

Get a bog standard PC and start using Oracle's FREE VirtualBox

Simple. Straightforward and brilliant.

I run a Windows VM on my Mac (to run PC specific software at work) and Ubuntu and Jolicloud VMs on a PC (which I connect via Microsoft Remote Desktop from my desktop Mac) as a hobby-platform.

Loads of fun. Loads of opportunity to experiment without building a system from scratch. Great for just "trying" things out. Good luck.

Fanbois taught to use Apple's new killer app: Microsoft Windows

Use Oracle's VirtualBox for free.

As an alternative I use Oracle's VirtualBox to run Windows 8 on a Mac so I can use some of the more advanced functionality of Microsoft Excel available on a PC.

For accounting no one really needs Windows (or Sage) if you using a modern Cloud based, mid range accounting system such as Aqilla. All you need is a browser....

Google goes dark for 2 minutes, kills 40% of world's net traffic

Should the cord be stretched across the room like that?

http://xkcd.com/908/

Build a BONKERS gaming PC

My "ultimate" PC cost £2,075.70 and here's the spec

Intel 75mhz Pentium, 8 Mbyte RAM, 256k cache, 730 Mbyte hard disk

64 bit graphics card, 2 Mbyte video RAM, 15inch colour SVGA monitor

3 PCI and 4 ISA slots (1 shared), Quad speed CD-ROM, Ensoniq sound card

MS Office pro, MS Encarta

...mind you it was delivered to me by Gateway in March 1995.

The good news is that I still use the Altec Leasing speakersand sub woofer every day attached to my iMac (leave it!) some 18 years hence.

Lotus 1-2-3 rebooted: My trip back to the old (named) range

Copy protection

The other and quite major reason why Excel won was the fact that early versions of Word and Excel were NOT copy protected. You installed them on as many machines as you liked. Yes later upgrades meant paying out but getting into the organisation and displacing Supercalc, Quattro Pro and Lotus 123 became an inevitable reality.

Does anyone remember the grief of the "license disk"? What a bad idea that was. It was almost like they didn't want you to use it, putting obstacles in the way for new users to even just try it out. Same effect with Word over and above WordPerfect or Windows et al (and Harvard Graphics for Windows and PowerPoint). Easy to install, easy to use initially (in any event) at nominal cost.

Which qualifications are worthwhile?

Experience. Build (or better still write / code) something

Virtually any academic qualification is out of date as soon as you get to the field. Being able to demonstrate logical, analytical reasoning to solve a problem backed by some experience in a particular tool will put you in much better stead.

Better to be able to create something (code) or have an intimate knowledge of the market sector you will be servicing and great communication skills would be good.

To get on the ladder, network (sic) like mad.

Ubuntu Wayland: Shuttleworth's post-Mac makeover

Yes BUT....

Ubtuntu is good. In fact Ubuntu is very good BUT it is still not right.

I spent the best part of a week recently looking to deploy a Linux server with RAID. After SME-Server failed to get even get past the install and ClearOS not offering the right features I turned to Ubuntu Server....

What a HUGE disappointment! I know what I am doing but it turned out to be a CLI mess.

So next I went back to Ubuntu desktop, with which I am very familiar. However because I wanted RAID I was taken into the world of the "Alternate" install. As far as I could tell this just meant me going down a route where lots of things didn't work (and I found myself swatting up on chmod and chown commands in order to tidy things up which is never a good sign lets be honest).

After a week I had had enough and installed Windows 7 Professional. Everything worked. Mirroring (RAID1) works. Shares work. Remote desktop works. Network configuration works...

Frankly this is embarrassing. I am a BIG fan of Ubuntu but until desktop and server match the elegance of Windows (let's cut them them some space on the Mac front for now) not enough folk are going to take the time and effort to stick with it, however noble the intentions of Mr Shuttleworth.

Reg Hardware Reader Awards 2010

Reg Hardware Reader Award Suggestions

Home Product of the Year - BBC iPlayer

Work Product of the Year - Mac Book Air

Commuter Product of the Year - iPad

App of the Year - Spotify (again)

Best Tech Retailer - Unbelievable I know but I would like to propose the new Currys / PC World megastore(s). Lots of choice, reasonably pricing and staff who are a) specialists b) trained and c) appear motivated to help service the customer.

Best Service Provider - Virgin Media

Rusty Dodo Duff Product of the Year - All Nokia products released in last 3 years

Apple unloads 47 fixes for iPhones, Macs and QuickTime

MobileMe sync broken?

There appear to be all sorts of issues with MobileMe since the updates. Even access to the Apple Store on line seems to fail.