Posts by Tony McAlinden

The Dragon 32 is 30

Re: Micro Men CD Player Myth

If I remember rightly, they do actually mention the market over-saturation in Micro Men, with a particularly pithy clip from (I think) John Humphreys on the news "Last Christmas every child wanted a computer, this Christmas every child already had one".

I'm still amazed how few people have seen it - for all of its factual inaccuracies (otherwise known as "dramatisation") its a fun movie.

Oh, and hello to Duncan Smeed, who taught me at Strathclyde in a 68K age. Our platform? A bunch of surplus Sinclair QL's given away as a job lot to the Uni by Uncle Clive.

Star Wars visionary becomes one with the Force

Never Mind Star Wars - What About Maplin?

RIP Ralph. A shame that your fine artistic visions largely lined the pockets of the bearded one. I'll remember your work best for your Maplin catalogue covers - equal nostalgia of my youth.

Of course, this was before they re-invented themselves as a cross between Argos and a Pound Shop.

Amazon's Silk looks creepily Phorm-ulaic

Time To Coin A New Word

And that word is Privacytard.

Sheesh, in what way is this different from what Opera Mini has been doing (quite brilliantly I may add) for the best part of a decade?

The most "evil" that's likely to come of this is the "Amazon recommends..." email and sidebars will target something you've been browsing. Know what, there isn't yet "No Click" ordering. No one is *making* you buy these products.

If you're that susceptible to advertising then more fool you.

Three to supply UK Chromebooks' 3G access

Limits? What Limits?

I don't think we should surmise the 100 meg limit (a legacy of the US networks ill equipped for smartphone data usage) would be in place on Three, who have far and away the best mobile broadband at the moment, and which they offer genuinely without limits on many of their Smartphone tariffs.

I'm writing this via one of their MiFi boxes, on a rolling monthly contract £15 for 5 gigs, which compares favourably with any competitors. If I'd wanted to commit to 24 months I'd have had 15 gigs a month for that.

If there is going to be such a miniscule limit, I hope Google have found a way of zero rating traffic to and from their servers - otherwise you could easily get through 100 meg just for OS updates and the like.

P.S. Before someone pimps GiffGaff and their limitless data, my iPhone is on that, but won't be for much longer giving their seeming inability to make their data charging work without breaking connectivity.

Three punts UNLIMITED smartphone package

MiFi By Any Other Name?

I have to say this is indeed very tempting. I don't have fixed line broadband and am using a 3 MiFi which works amazingly well (about twice as fast as ADSL would be here). The only catch is the 5 gig monthly data allowance.

However, this deal, combined with an Android phone running Froyo or above to use its WiFi internet sharing sounds like genius... Something like this one would be ideal:

http://www.expansys.com/huawei-ideos-204827/