Posts by Dan Price

UK iPad 2 to cost under £400

Enough to sell?

Apple always have enough to sell, they just don't deliver enough to their stores. Increasing the perceived cachet of the latest iDevice by going "hey look, it's sold out!" is a damned shady marketing practice.

Interwebs stunned by musical atrocity

Ouch.

I managed to put up with it for 49 seconds before I suffered a spontaneous epistaxis. Delightful.

Ex-PM blocked Steve Jobs knighthood

Good.

BillG got his for being just about the largest charitable donor in history, and someone wanted to offer Jobs one for running a company that makes attractive laptops? Which idiot proposed him for that?

Fanbois howl as OS X update bricks PGPed Macs

Huh.

This would never have happened on a Mac.

Panasonic Pure Line TX-L37D28 37in LCD TV

What?

So let me get this straight, it's cheaply built, has an annoying UI (asking for conformation when you tell it to change channel? Sounds like a deal-breaker to me) and costs £900?! That sounds like a lot of wedge for a 37", and then when you've given them the best part of a grand for a TV they have the temerity to display adverts in the UI as well? What happened Panasonic, you used to be good.

Vulcan bomber lives to fly another day

@jake

...because there's no spare money floating around to do so? Frankly I'd rather see the money spent on giving serving soldiers the equipment they need, not on keeping some cold-war dinosaur flying over air shows.

HTC HD7

Maybe...

I've been looking forward to WinMo 7 for quite some time - I love the UI on my Zune HD and it'd be really interesting to see how they've integrated it into a phone, but it looks like I'll be jumping ship to Android from my old WM6-powered HTC Diamond. Why?

Apps.

Put simply, there's more software out there for Android (and loads more for iOS, natch). Expecting developers to start creating stuff for WP7 is a little optimistic if you ask me - the tools are there, and they're good, but I just get the feeling that there won't be that much coming out for it.

Dixons touts tablets

7 != 10

Isn't the Next tablet 10", not 7 as mentioned in this article?

Samsung E60 e-book reader

What?

50%, seriously? You spend the entire review trashing the damn thing then give it as much as that? I was expecting to see something about 20% less, especially when you have to hand over 200 notes to get one!

Even more so when I see Next are selling an Android-powered (Android Kindle app is free, remember) tablet for £20 less, with a proper touchscreen as well.

Cinema chain bans laptops, tablets

Why was he carrying it anyway?

I can't think of a single good reason why anybody would need to carry their laptop into a cinema anyway. Was he planning on annoying the other punters by catching up on his emails during the boring bits?

Lock it in the boot of your car and quit whining.

Dell blames staff for malware infection

The motherboard?

How can a virus infect a motherboard?

Microsoft Xbox 360 250GB

What, really?

You vigorously shake a device that's spinning a flimsy plastic disc at 500+ RPM and you expect it to magically *not* scratch the disc? Move along, nothing to see here.

Cowon iAudio J3 personal media player

ZHD, is that you?

This thing looks like my Zune HD, has the same screen and a similar-looking UI. These are all good things, 'cause the ZHD is an awesome player and very sadly under-appreciated.

BBC chief acknowledges DAB flop & internet radio

Not talking about it?

"The BBC is already a major player in internet radio - it just doesn't like to talk about it."

So why is it that whenever the news comes on during my drive to work, I hear "BBC Radio 2, **online**, on digital and on 88-91 FM"?

Toshiba intros dual-screen, keyboard-less netbook

Courier, is that you?

Reminds me of Microsoft's (sadly) stillborn Courier. If it comes off anything like that would've, it deserves to be a huge success. Sadly, with Win7 standard on it, it seems unlikely. A custom UI based on Windows Embedded CE like the Zune's or Courier's would be a better bet IMHO.

New Xbox 360 said to 'still scratch discs'

What, really?

News just in: Moving a vertically oriented disc drive while there's a disc spinning in it at 500rpm STILL scratches the disc.

In other news, pope still catholic.

T-Mobile Pulse Mini

Huawei? Who are we?

This may sound strange, but I'm sure I read once that HTC (that other big Chinese smartphone manufacturer with a penchant for Android) stood for Huawei Technology Company. This phone sure reminds me of the old HTC touch, too. Am I just imagining things or is this a cheaper sideline from HTC?

Mili HI-P60 Power Pico Projector

50%?!

Fifty percent? Crikey, you must have hated it! That's got to be the lowest score I've ever seen in a Reg Hardware review.

Dell Studio 17 touchscreen notebook

£1000?!

Seriously, a thousand pounds for a laptop and they don't even give you a blu-ray drive or a decent screen? Come on, guys. Even my ancient 15" Acer Travelmate 8100 can get 1680x1050, on a considerably smaller screen - with that much processing and graphics grunt, you'd think Dell would have assumed we might like to view HD content on it, especially for the kind of money they're asking.

Google borgs 3D desktop

I downloaded the beta some time ago...

...and it was pants. All these desktop replacements seeking to "change the way we use computers" seem to do is slow down the experience with needless faffing. It's like all the early 90s sci-fi movies showing how we'd be using virtual reality to surf the web, flying from one place to another by going throug everything inbetween our curent location and that one - rather than the current, not confusing, method of typing an address and having it load near instantly.

Robot mini space shuttle is go for April, says US air force

7' x 4'?

So they were looking at using it as a lifeboat for a station with 6 people onboard, when it only has space for 2 people in its payload bay, and that's assuming they're rather comfortable around each other?

Light bulbs inspire boffins to find fast data transfer trick

Sounds familiar.

So by pulsing an LED at high speed, you could get 100Mbit+ data rates? Wow, that's great. Hey, how about taking advantage of a laser's ability to pulse really quickly to get it even faster?! Even better, if you could put it through an optical fibre you wouldn't even need line of sight!

Wait, isn't that Ethernet over fibre? Like we've had for years?

Sony ships Freeview HD Bravia TVs

Budget? Really?

"Buyers on a budget are being steered toward the 32in and 40in EX703 (£900-1100)"

Really? I'd say £900 is pretty significant as far as "budget" goes...

Medion E54009 touch monitor

Wait. what?

280 notes for a 21" monitor with a single VGA input and bugger-all else? Sorry, is this article a repeat from 2001?

US Air Force orders 2200 Sony PS3s

RJ45?

"Its medal-bedecked chest" - That one made me chortle.

RJ-45 isn't the Ethernet connector though. It might look like one, but if you tried using an RJ45 connector for networking computers you'd soon run into problems - mainly due the the fact it only has 2 wires in it...

Asus intros netbook with desktop CPU

Stretching the definition of "netbook" here.

A 12" screen and £399? I think we're stretching the definition of "netbook" here a little. 12 months ago this would have been called an ultra-portable laptop, especially since it's £50 more expensive than the basic Dell 15" laptop model. Netbook to me says cheap and tiny, not average-price and slightly smaller than normal.

3UK shapeshifts on traffic shaping

Wrong road round, surely?

I'd have thought they had that backwards - I can't think of any reason you'd need two or more videos streaming at once.

Orange issues Heroic update

Still waiting for mine

That's great! I just wish Orange would pull their finger out and release one for the Diamond.

How to run Mac OS X on a generic PC

The wrong way round though!

Can't say I see the point of OSX on a PC. AFAIC Apple make some of the nicest hardware out there laptop-wise, so I'd rather have a Macbook or MBP boot camped into Windows 7 than stick the backward, over-engineered mess that is OSX on a generic beige box.

Boffins in 'let's create black holes in the lab' jape

Squids? Seriously?

SQUIDs. A black hole made from calamari? It's not friday already is it?

So what we do when ID Cards 1.0 finally dies?

On my mobile? Really?

I never can quite understand why El Reg keeps going on about having one's "identity card" incorporated into one's phone - Most of us here are techies, we tend to change mobile a lot . Can you imagine the hassle in porting all of your personal data from one handset to the other? Hell, can you imagine SonyEricsson, LG, Samsung, HTC et al even sitting down to discuss a standard for interoperability, let alone with gov.uk and the people desigining the "other end" of the system?

And from another point of view, I'd rather not have it so that the local chav population doesn't get all my personal details, bank account, drivers licence and so on just because one of them chinned me and ran off with my mobile...

PETA pronounces on Obama fly-swat

@stef4

Why only a short spell?

Zac Efron to catch Saturday Night Fever?

A title is required.

Heads. Must. Roll.

Music industry sites DDoSed after Pirate Bay verdict

@Eejit - oh yes you are!

Music artists typically get 1% of record sales.

So who is the thief then?

The guy who downloads their music without paying for it. I'm sick and tired of idiots going on about how the record industry rips off artists so therefore they can pirate all the music they want.

So yes, the amount they make per album sale is pretty terrible. Hey, guess what? You download it illegally, they get nothing. It's no excuse.

US judge bars teen 'sexting' charges

Re: Magilla

"If the towel extended TO "just below her breasts", does this not mean that (1) she was using a very small towel and (2) her breasts were the only things that WEREN'T bared?"

I think it's safe to assume that the towel was around her waist, under her breasts."

Fraunhofer boffins: Laser printers safe after all

Baccophile?

Did anyone else mis-read baccophile as Bacofoil?

'Jasper' Xbox 360 hardware rejig spied online

Larger onboard flash

@AC - onboard flash isn't used for savegames, they're kept on the hard disk or memory card. My guess is that it's there because the new NXE Dashboard (the GUI, to you and me) is a lot larger than the old one, meaning that older boxes that have been updated to use it it's stored on the HDD rather than in flash - which slightly increases boot-up time.

Lori Drew guilty in MySpace bully trial

@Martin

>Careful, if the editor of The Sun reads that and kills himself - you could go to prison!

Yes, but the world would be a better place.

Michael Dell sells you some s**t you don't need

@Tris Orendorff

Yeah, but knowing Dell it's probably only bundled as a 30-day trial...

RM relaunches Eee PC 900 as miniBook

Matches the spec?

"the RM machine matches the spec of the Asus-sold model exactly" - That's probably because it's the same machine. We bought some of the first RM miniBooks (Asus Eee PC 4G) and they're exactly the same as the Asus. RM seem to have abandoned their normal re-branding policy for laptops with these, as my miniBook has an Asus logo on the lid and came in an Asus box. The only RM branding anywhere was on the RM site and the receipt.

God makes you stupid, researchers claim

Go figure.

What, having a higher IQ makes you more likely to question what you're taught? I'd never have guessed. In other news, Dog bites cat, toast lands buttered side down.

Paris, because... well, yeah.

Shuttle astronauts: Aliens are definitely out there

Not to worry

Alien invasion? Not to worry, don't panic - we have Chuck Norris.

Apple updates laptop lines

And STILL the combo drive?

I am simply amazed that Apple can profess to be using the most up-to-the-minute technology and yet still be pushing a product that uses a CD-RW drive. Come on Apple, it's not 1999 anymore...

P2P uploader hoaxes leading BitTorrent blog

That's a shame

Normally in stuff like this i tend to end up on the anti-copyright side when it comes to piracy - the big record labels treat the bands like sh*t, the fans like sh*t and are only interested in money, but when it hits a small outfit like Dependent I have to say the pirates are dead wrong. This indie from Germany bought us the likes of Rotersand, Suicide Commando and Dismantled, who are all "niche" artists in a very small field, and it'll be a shame if they can't get a deal with another label, 'cause the majors sure as hell won't touch 'em.

Firewire to gain 3.2Gb/s bandwidth boost

They're both here to stay...

...because they both have their uses. The majority of mice, keyboards, pen drives and so on are USB, whereas video and high-end sound devices are Firewire. Since as Steve says, most modern machines support both we have little to worry about.

World's Dumbest File-sharer megafine gets DoJ thumbs-up

Couldn't agree more

@ Will Leamon - I really couldn't agree with you more. Even though I believe $220000 is absurdly excessive, the whole point of prosecution is to ake an example to deter others. Having her just hand over the cost of those 24 tracks would be stupid.

Even though I can't stand the RIAA's policies most of the time, I still come down on the side of the copyright holders over the woman trying to get something for nothing.

Slave kids working UK cannabis farms

He's right.

Drugscope's Martin Barnes is correct - they shouldn't be sent to jail. They should be deported. There's no room in our jails anyway.

Samsung says Yepp to all-girl rollerskating troupe

Well...

Hey, I'd buy one. And the MP3 player..

American sent to the slammer for faking Windows certificates

He's an IP?

Ethan Horwitz is an intellectual property?

Dublin college introduces video game degree

Great, but...

Great, but it's nothing new. I graduated Staffordshire University last year with a BSc in Interactive Entertainment Technology, and they'd been running the course for at least 2 years before I started.