* Posts by Andy E

236 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Jul 2010

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Microsoft COO: Our greatest enemy is old Windows

Andy E
Go

No XP here. Move along please...

I have upgraded all the PC's here to Windows 7 and my parents two PC's too. Initially Windows 7 was needed to run a new application and to provide support for new hardware on one PC. Having become familiar with it I upgraded all the PC's as it is far more stable and easier to use than any previous version of Windows. It's not perfect by any means but it is a big improvement on what has gone before.

Anyone had experience of networked printers always going into the 'Use Printer offline" mode and refusing to print? Happens all the time here with Windows 7. Keeps me busy....

Connectivity: the weakest link in cloud computing?

Andy E
Stop

It's the network Captain!

I have worked with a lot of small to medium sized businesses who to varying levels have come to see their internet connection as somewhere between important to vital. As more and more services move to the cloud the network connectivity and availability becomes ever more vital. When things have gone wrong with the network - and they will - small companies have exactly zero leverage with the ISP.

It is not too bad when there is a clearly identifiable fault where for example there is a complete loss in connectivity. The ISP recognises there is a fault and gets around to fixing it. Where it gets very, very difficult is where there is an intermittent fault or a fault not easily identifiable as being with the ISP. In these cases I have seen ISP's disown the fault completely or provide the bare minimum effort to try and identify the problem.

For domestic users moving to the cloud is even more of a gamble. There's an intermittent fault with Virgin Media broadband connectivity at the moment where it looses connectivity for a few moments. It's a bit of a pain when your browsing the web but a page refresh is acceptable. However, even this occasional intermittent fault is completely unacceptable to my two teenage kids who loose connectivity to whatever on-line mayhem and violence they happen to be involved with at the time. As a customer I can report the fault but I certainly can't expect a quick remedy (but I can expect to be told to reboot the router every time I call).

All I'm saying is that as you move more services/data to the cloud the network connectivity is more and more vital. As a consumer or small business you have very little influence on the levels of service from your ISP. I might use the cloud but I will have a disaster recovery plan in place so that if I loose connectivity, I don't loose everything.

Apple's next iPhone planned for September, says report

Andy E
Happy

I have a 3GS on a 24 month contract...

My contract expires in March next year. When the time comes I will look at the various phones on offer and probably go with an iPhone 5. I have been very happy with the 3GS and the apps I use. Admittedly it has its drawbacks; battery life is poor, camera quality is poor. But on the whole it does what I want it to do and does it very well. Synchronisation with the PC (a Mac) is automatic and pain free and charges the phone at the same time.

It is this 'user experience' thing -which has been very good- which is likely to drive me to the iPhone 5.

HP WebOS tablet to ship early July

Andy E
Thumb Down

Not after an iPaQ

I had an iPaq for quite sometime and the thing that really, really let it down was the awful software HP stuck on top of Windows Mobile. (yes I know Windows mobile was not that great either). It made some functions counter intuitive if not impossible. The documentation was not up to much either.

I'm going to give this a miss and see what the reviews are like.

Smart Fortwo Electric Drive e-car

Andy E
Holmes

What I want to know...

...is how many units of electricity (as measured by the domestic electricity meter) does it require to charge the battery from flat?

It might also be useful to know how many units are required to charge it 10%. Then you might have an idea on how much this thing is typically going to add to your electricity bill when you charge it overnight.

I'd like to get an idea of how much it costs to charge verse filling up the petrol version.

Has Steve Jobs killed the consumer hard disk industry?

Andy E
Coat

Inevitable

I think the end of the consumer hard disk drive is inevitable and has probably been accelerated by Apples iPad. However, people rushing to put all of their data on the Cloud is a worrying trend. The companies offering Cloud services to consumers make no significant promises on the security and availability of your data. People should read the Terms and Conditions of the Cloud suppliers. They will see that they are responsible for backing up their data. Just because it is "in the Cloud" does not mean it is going to be available tomorrow.

The IT literate people will probably continue to use home based storage for their music, video, photo's etc. for the foreseeable future. The rest will push everything into the Cloud and scream very loudly when the service goes tits-up.

Can I have my coat please as I need to see how my backups are going?

Apple proposes even tinier SIMs for future iPhones, iPads

Andy E

Re: I wonder why...

I have an iPhone 3GS and it bluetooths seamlessly with my Sony bluetooth headphones and my Vodafone handsfree ear piece. Why do you think it is locked to other Apple devices?

With regards to the Sim card I have only ever had to mess about with them when the kids have broken their phone(s) and we needed to press and old spare into service. Most of the people I know who spend long times on the continent buy a pre-paid local phone. Perhaps I should get out more as I don't know anyone who regularly changes Sim cards.

I expect that changing the Sim format is unlikely to have any effect on the vast majority of users.

NASA restores Pluto to league of planets

Andy E
FAIL

Made up article

Come on Lester you can do better than this. Just because NASA have an old picture of the solar system which includes Pluto does not mean they are waving two fingers at the IAU. A brief search of the site reveals no campaigns to get Pluto restored as a planet.

The article at http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/what-is-pluto-58.html is rather interesting. Perhaps you should have read it first?

Official: Microsoft buys Skype for $8.5bn

Andy E
Coat

Get rid of the competition?

I used to use Microsoft's Messenger quite a bit to keep in touch with family members. The video, speech and text capabilities were adequate for what I used it for. For business, except for the early days, it has been almost exclusively Skype. Especially since my main day-to-day system became a Mac. The Mac clients for Messenger and the open source clones could not hack video. Like a lot of the people commenting, I have never used the pay for service.

At the moment I have two messenger clients -Skype & Messenger- and I suppose in the future I will only need the one. That might be deemed good news :-)

I know - I'll get my coat.

WTF is... IPv6?

Andy E
Thumb Down

No IPv6 here

I just had a look at my Virgin Media supplied cable router. It does not support IPv6. Looking at the logs there are 21 devices with DHCP served IPv4 addresses and a further 6 devices with static IPv4 addresses. At a guess I'd say about 75% of the devices are capable of IPv6 while the rest just aren't.

Before I start to look at IPv6 I will need a new router. Given the horror stories coming out about the new Virgin Media routers, I don't want to go down that route just yet. So there won't be any IPv6 here for quite some time.

Chinese iPad 2 fanboiz in frenzied fight

Andy E
FAIL

Am I a "fanboiz" too?

I find the article pathetic. It degrades anyone who has bought any Apple device just for buying Apple. With regards to the "overpriced, overhyped shit" comment, I have a MacBook Pro which I bought in early 2006 and I use every day. In fact I'm typing this comment on it.

I'm unlikely to replace it until next year and even then it will only be replaced if the performance due to memory limitations (max 2GB memory) becomes a significant issue. 5 years -and counting- of daily use. Thats not bad for a piece of "overpriced, overhyped shit".

Before anyone starts, the Mac shares desk space with a Windows 7 PC. Both platforms have their merits. Just because you own one does not make you a fanboiz.

MIRACULOUS new AIRSHIP set to fly by 2013

Andy E
FAIL

Needs better camouflage

Yes it does look a bit like Thunderbird 2 but they weren't trying to camouflage the Thunderbirds. Whoever painted this one was obviously given the wrong brief of where it was heading to.

I'm also wondering what effect a few bullet holes would have on the lifting capability.

Books biz talks up Kindle effect

Andy E
Pirate

Re: It would be better...

While I agree with your argument regarding the pricing encouraging piracy, I have not seen instances were the kindle book price is higher than the physical book price.

Admittedly, I have only had my Kindle a couple of months and have only bought 4 books, and 5 magazines. The books were priced below the equivalent price of the paper book while I think the magazines were of a comparable price. Of course I don't have to pay for postage so I'm probably a few quid better off anyway.

Like you I was bought my Kindle as a present and I also have a lot of books. For reading novels the Kindle (other e-book readers are available) is excellent. As you say "It is convenient, easy to use and easy to read." I don't have to keep finding ways to get rid of books that I have read but don't have the space to store.

I strongly believe that devices such as the Kindle will be the major format in years to come but they do need to get the pricing and distribution model correct to stop piracy killing the market.

Kindle beats Apple's closed book on choice

Andy E
FAIL

Wrong end of the stick

I have a Kindle and several Apple devices. The Kindle is by far the best device for reading text. It is the quality and readability of the screen that decides which device is used as it's the users experience that counts. The fact that I can read the books on multiple devices is a nice to have but not a compelling feature as I use the Kindle for about 95% of the time to read the documents.

I think if tablet makers can use an e-ink type of colour screen then they will displace dedicated e-book readers but until that time, e-book readers will continue to be around.

Facebook Comments kill web freedom

Andy E
Stop

Not everyone uses Facebook

While I agree that Facebook is hugely popular not everyone uses it for a number of reasons. Many people I know won't go near it.

The problem with Facebook last time I looked at it was that it assumed you just have one big group of happy friends. I don't and I expect other people don't either. I have groups of friends, work colleagues, family, and social acquaintances. These are not exclusive groups and someone might be in two or more groups. There are reasons why you might not want to mix your family with your work colleagues for example. I know of several instances were young family relatives have spammed a persons Facebook friends with questionnaires of the level "Whos yr best m8?", or left inappropriate comments on someones wall. It's hardly going to impress your boss. Facebook does not give you that granularity of control.

Facebook has lasted longer than I expected but the next big thing is probably just around the corner. Something that allows you to limit a 'friends' view of your contacts and personal information. When it happens Facebook will probably go the way of MySpace and Bebo.

Andy

Stop sexing up IT and give Civil Servants Macs, says gov tech boss

Andy E
Jobs Halo

Mac Longevity

As a previous poster said without details of the projects he's looking at we don't know what the options are. Personally I have a MacBook Pro that is used for Office, web browsing and e-mail. It's over 5 years old and will probably last at least another couple of years before the 2GB of memory can't cope with the demands of the software. A usable lifetime of 7 years is not bad for a laptop. Of course it came at a premium as I paid about £2k for it, but this included the cost of the software.

Laptop PC's that I have had have only lasted about three years. The processors have been underpowered for the later releases of Windows and memory expansion has been limited. This might be changing with the new high spec laptops which have powerful CPU's, discreet graphics and 8 Gb of memory. But these are expensive systems too.

Giant 5-year-mission aerial wing-ship to fly in 2011

Andy E
Alert

400 ft wingspan?

I think commercial runways are only about 160ft wide. Given that these things have a slow leisurely flight speed the runway could be wider than it is long. Assuming that is, you need a runway for the landing. The Zephyr was hand launched by three blokes.

Apple frees iOS 4.3 two days before iPad 2 Arrival™

Andy E
FAIL

It's a disaster!

I upgraded to iOS 4.3 on a 3GS iPhone and it all seemed to work OK. For some reason it's optimising my photo's at the moment which makes the MacBook Pro's two CPU's run at 100%.

Despite all the new features seeming to work as it should, it is a personal disaster for me - Monopoly has been trashed and all the menu items are being shown in a hieroglyphic font or something similar to Microsofts Wingdings.

For the first time I had actually managed to get ahead and put up two hotels. Now the game is lost and the app unplayable. I'm heartbroken.

Shuttleworth sees fewer clouds in Ubuntu's future

Andy E
Coat

What I hate about Unix and its derivatives...

I cut my teeth on Digitals VMS many, many years ago and one of the things I really liked about that operating system was the command line environment. It had a consistent syntax with the commands and qualifiers. If I wanted to print a file you would type in 'Print'. If you wanted to back something up you would type in 'Backup'. If you wanted to list a directories contents you typed in 'Directory'. Most of the commands were intuitive and could be shortened to three characters once you became familiar with them.. You could refine the commands with '/Created' or '/Modified' date selections for example. As I said, there was a consistent syntax across all the commands.

Every Unix/Linux command line environment I have looked at has been a nightmare. There's a wide variety of utilities with non-intuitive names and overlapping features. There is an inconsistent approach to the way switches are used and again they are non-intuitive. I'm amazed that this approach has continued for so long. I always get the impression the utilities were written by clever people who just happen to be lazy and can't spell properly. Hence you get utilities like rsync and one letter switches. It's just madness.

Rant over. I'll get my coat, it's the one with the Welcome to 'Plain English Campaign' pamphlet in the pocket.

Mozilla challenges Apple, Google with 'open' app store

Andy E
Pirate

Trojan? There's an app for that...

Given that the Android phones have been the target of poisoned apps from the official store with all their resources to check the apps, who's going to trust an app from a small outfit with limited resources to check whats actually being offered for download?

Just wondering.....

Audyssey South of Market audio dock

Andy E
Gates Horns

It's an expensive docking station....

At the end of the day it's an iPod/iPhone docking station. While the capacities of the iPod/iPhones keep getting bigger, the menu interface for sorting through them begins to struggle the more albums/tracks you have. While I don't doubt its build quality or audio capabilities its an awful lot of money to pay for something (iPod/iPhone) that has a fairly short lifetime before they are replaced. This is more pronounced for iPhones which tend to be replaced when the current contract comes to an end.

Apple have been the market leader or quite sometime which has ensured that the format of the iPod/iPhone docking station has remained stable and consistent. However, there is now a lot of competition out there and the Android phones are proving to be very popular. How long will the i<whatever> docking station continue to be in demand?

Andy

Cobol cabal will take over THE WORLD Australia

Andy E
Unhappy

Modern stuff

I'm from the old school who learnt assembler, Basic, Fortran, Cobol a few others and dare I say it, Bliss-32. After many years doing other stuff I decided to have a go at an object orientated language and as I have a Mac it happened to be Objective-C which I'm told is based on C. I have so far written three small applications (apps?) and two of them were from examples in books.

Compared to any of the older languages Objective-C is difficult to read, difficult to understand and don't get me going on the subject of header files in different directories to the source code. I can't see how anyone but the original developer can support an application written in this language.

And this is supposed to be progress?

Andy

Oracle gives 21 (new) reasons to uninstall Java

Andy E
Alert

What about the OSX users?

You can't easily uninstall Java from Apple's OSX. Might be an opportunity for the AV firms to sell a product to the Mac crowd. Looking forward to a useless bit of software that hogs all the resources, gets in the way when you try to do something and won't protect you from infected web sites.

It's going to be just like Windows !

Adobe open source code backs – gasp! – HTML5

Andy E
Stop

Flashed before my eye's

I use Apple's Safari on a MacBook Pro and every now and then it crashes. The culprit is always reported as Flash. Now this could be down to Safari's poor support/implementation of Flash or because Flash is inherently buggy and unstable. I'm not technical enough to make sense of the crash dump output to come to a decision. However, I have also experienced the same behaviour using IE on Windows. I certainly don't miss Flash on my iPhone.

As an aside, I was recently at a presentation where the presenter put up a slide containing a pie chart. It had two segments which from memory were: time spent using Adobe products 3%, time spent updating Adobe products 97%.

iControlPad: The answer to mobile gaming control 'mares?

Andy E
Happy

Ring, ring

What happens when you get a phone call?

Just wondering....

ROBOT COP scatters LIVE GRENADES in San Francisco STREET

Andy E
FAIL

Scattered live grenades ?

The grenade fell out of the paper bag. Probably not something the operator was expecting to happen. Moving the robot before locating the grenade was not a good idea. I wonder if the operator was a newbie?

To put things straight:

1, The grenade was not scattered across the street using it's mechanical arm, it fell out of a paper bag.

2, The robot is being operated by a human and is not capable of being enraged.

3, The robot ran over the grenade because the operator did not know where the grenade was and was stupid enough to move it, not because it was trying to detonate it.

I think you should get a job with the Sun newspaper. They always seem to have space for a big tit.

Mac daddy predicts all-knowing, all-seeing UI

Andy E
FAIL

Listening and speaking is so very slow...

Awhile back when I fist got my Mac, I wrote an Applescript to read out e-mails using one of the Mac's built in voices. It also responded to voice commands allowing you to select e-mails, speak them and delete them. It was fun to do at the time but it's not used now. The reason? It is far, far faster to read the e-mails and use a mouse.

Who are the biggest electric car liars - the BBC, or Tesla Motors?

Andy E
Alert

Just visiting - can I plug my car in?

I have been looking at e-cars to see if they would suit my usual travel requirements. Most of the time I have a daily six mile drive to the train station. Quite often I have to go round the M25 on a round trip of 180 miles to visit a customer. Less often I visit friends and family which did include trips to the Scottish borders - a trip of 340 miles.

With the longer journeys it would make sense to charge the car while I'm there. It would be nice if the people I'm visiting could pay for the electricity but how much would it cost them? I might not be invited back once they got the electric bill.

Vulture 1 rolls out of fab bunker

Andy E
Alert

But can it fly?

What testing have you done to make sure the thing will actually glide? If it is aerodynamically unstable I think it is likely to breakup on the way down.

Anyway, I do wish our intrepid pilot all the best!

Spending Review? Why not axe the Information Commissioner?

Andy E
IT Angle

FOI Requests

I have seen FOI requests used maliciously. The organisation - who is at the lowest level of local government (run by volunteers) - received regular FOI requests from the same person. Each time one was responded to, another would arrive. They appeared to be sifting through all the information looking for something they could use to disgrace/discredit/embarrass one of the individuals involved in the organisation.

The effect was that the admin person was kept very, very busy!

There is an argument for merging the various functions but you must admit that the legal technicalities involved in implementing the respective laws of each function are very complex. This might be better with separate functions each specialising on their own subject.

BTW - there is an IT angle on this. We are in the process of stuffing everything we can on the web site. The FOI person will be able to spend many hours or even days with their favourite browser looking at all the information, while the admin person can take a break.

Symantec pushes mobile security onto Android and iOS

Andy E
FAIL

Will it be as bad as their PC software?

I have just spent a Sunday morning cleaning a Trojan off a PC allegedly protected with Symantec's 360 security suite. Even though the Trojan has been known about for at least 4 years, the Symantec software failed to spot it. This is not the first time I have had to clean out a virus because the installed Symantec software decided to take the day off.

Symantec anti-virus software in particular has a very poor reputation and from what I have seen, rightly so. It's CPU intensive, pervasive, delights in stopping you from doing what you want to do and is basically crap.

Seeing as it hogs resources on a PC it should be fun to see it try and run on a smart phone.

Office for Mac finally breaks out of Microsoft

Andy E
Coat

Get ready to move your e-mail to Apple Mail

I have been following the development of Office 2011 as I use Office 2008. Unfortunately most of my customers use Office so i'm forced to follow the herd. Having said that, Entourage was not too bad and I successfully used it with 6 e-mail accounts and at least a dozen rules to give me the environment I wanted.

Where it gets interesting for Office 2011 is that Entourage is not included in the basic edition. I only need the applications in the basic edition and an e-mail client. The switch to Apples Mail was very, very easy and free. I managed to get the accounts setup and all the e-mail imported into Mail in a day. While there are some very good points about Mail (multiple Account support is better) it does have some drawbacks. For example you have separate Address book and Calendar applications and the Junk e-mail filtering is not as good.

Having dropped Entourage I'm now in the position were I could upgrade to Office 2011 but I don't have a compelling reason to do so. I think I'll hang on to the cash and stick with Office 2008 until that must have feature in Office 2011 materialises.

Mine's the one with the AppleScript book in the pocket...

MS Office for Mac 2011 out in October

Andy E
Paris Hilton

Full comparison with Mac Office 2008 required!

I have been using Office 2008 for sometime now and on the whole it's not bad. I even use Entourage which has -admittedly- very, very, occasionally crashed. But to say its "crash happy" is stretching things a bit. Entourage gets used to service 6 e-mail accounts with well over a dozen rules. There are over 150 folders and about 20 categories. It does its job to send and retrieve e-mail and remind me when appointments are due as well as any Microsoft app did.

What is a pain in Office 2008 Entourage is backup. There's no integration with Time Machine or an in-built backup facility.

Paris as she obviously has a headache thinking about those backups...

Andy E
WTF?

Re: I presume...

...you realise that the article was about Office for Mac 2011. Presuming that people who bought Office for Mac 2011 were running it on a Mac, then It would be more than that crappy ribbon (if there is one) stopping you from running Wordpad.

However, you could run the TextEdit program...

Apple coughs to iPhone 3G IOS 4 upgrade problems

Andy E
Happy

Mines OK

I did the upgrade with no issues. Battery life seems unchanged at just over a day. Apps still work. Phone still works. Music player still works. Photo album still works. Syncs OK.

Not much to say really other than compared to the Nokia N95 that it replaced, it's on balance a better phone/PDA/music player with an inferior camera.

It just works :-)

NatWest sets lawyers on student site

Andy E
WTF?

Hang on - there's a typo here!

The first sentence on the 118student.co.uk page in question reads "...opting for their student bank accounts that any other bank..." THAT any other bank ?

Bloody students. Don't they teach them anything these days.

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