Posts by Mark Lynch 24 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Nov 2006
I recently installed the UNR on my EEE Box and not only was the install really really fast (like 10minutes), but everything worked straight away including my Logitech DiNovo BT keyboard. The new interface they've made is great too, especially if you use it as a little media centre in the lounge.
My sister recently bought a laptop from Dell ireland too and I INSISTED that she not accept the EULA and ask for a refund (she had to install XP anyway for work). She didn't want the hassle but did it anyway and 2 emails later (the 1st one was the typical machine and OS are part of the package) we had a refund of €171 for vista and works. Now that's almost 20% of the price. It's ridiculous! Anyway, glad to see Dell (at least in ireland) are giving these refunds quickly. The joke is when you select a Linux option and the same spec actually costs you more! So even when you want linux it's actually better to order the vista machine and then get the rebate. How long before they cop on ?
"Spain dodges extreme-right-anti-government-invented kiss of death. "
ABC is hardly a much read paper here and right up their with La Razon in its anti-government diatribe. They're acting happy today but they'd probably have been happier if they could fill their columns with editorials about how they were right about Zapatero's jinx. How ridiculous. Barcelona beat Arsenal with him present so maybe his jinx only affects players over 6"4 ?
Most of the N-Gage phones have WIFI and definetely all have bluetooth. You download the game via WIFI or via the PC and transfer it to your phone. As for actually playing them then again WIFI is handy. Most places I go these days there's an open hotspot which can be used for free online gaming. Of course, Nokia are gonna make us pay a bit more for these games I reckon... On the plus side it gets the operators out of the equation.
I know what you're saying about plastic and the N series. I don't like the N95 nor the N80 especially just for that horrible might break feel they have. The N82 is very solid though and I'm pretty sure it's got a metal frame, feels like that to me or something very hard anyway, very similar to what SE do with their phones - mainly plastic but a tough outer rim which is handy when you drop them.
I bought one of these a month ago and really love it. I had abandoned Nokia for SE for many years but this phone has won me back. Personally I love the looks - it's all shiny and metal like. The keys are a tad small it's true, if you've fat fingers this isn't for you. As for playing games I'd say it's as good/better than other phones and playing games in landscape over the Tv-out is a cool option.
One thing the review missed is the uPnP music options. If you have a uPnP compatible device in your home (your PC, console etc) you can use your phone as a remote control which is handy - or you can stream the stuff across to the device, but this is a little slow to respond - maybe 5-10 seconds after pressing play you hear the music.
Oh, and the lenscover has never opened on me by accident and i keep it in my pocket all the time.
I just quickly installed and blocked the the adds on this page by putting in
http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/
much better now as i have more screen space for the comments / articles!
and all this has led me to another useful plugin
http://www.customizegoogle.com/
which can block all the adds in gmail etc...
I think a lot of people are missing the point here. Every El Reg Hack is duty bound to take the piss out of all the big IT names and people who support them (deserved or not, and in this case it's deserved). If they didn't have a scathing sense of humour they wouldn't get hired. And I, along with most other readers, support this!
As for Starbucks coffee being good, what?! There's a reason why Starbucks has no (or hardly any) foothold in any of the major coffee loving countries of europe - Italy, Spain etc... It's because it's shite. And also way over priced.
I never used a landline when I lived in the UK but now that I'm in Spain I use it all the time. Mainly cause as part of my ADSL deal (35€~/ month) I get all national landline calls free (something very common here). Another reason they're becoming more useful is that generally speaking you can skype people to their landline for 2c /min or thereabouts. So I generally talk alot more of late but for free or very cheap. My mobile bill has plummeted.
One comment said the writing's on the wall for fixed line telcos; I would say it's telcos in general who are on the way out. No wonder they're all buying ISP left right and centre.
If even Apple realise that the portable music player is going to be all but usurped by multi function mobiles I don't see why MS bothers.
And in reference to Blain. There are plenty of phones out there with good GPUs right now. The nokia N93 is the best example. TI have made great strides in fitting more and more power onto single chip solutions and getting power consumption down. You have to remember that the resolution is also a fraction of PC screen sizes so the graphics overhead isn't nearly as high. We won't get XBOX standard graphics for another year or two though.
Oh, and I think Highlander's idea is a good one but MS has already lost the PDA war. Java ME rules the roost in mobile games and Symbian in smartphone OS choice.
Shouldn't they be playing counter strike ? The PSOE would be the terrorists obviously so the PP could show them how you really stop terrorists, by killing them! In this virtual world they could also ignore realities such as Iraq and N.Ireland as they (the PP) are so fond of doing.
I'm with James here. There must be a way of simply buying up a load of stock on amazon.com or some cheap software site and then selling it here. Or even if you're not allowed at least you can buy personal your copy there.
Another option which is definitely legal is to buy your version from another EU country. Amazon.de has ultimate for 170€ - about 120 sterling. Amazon.fr strangely enough is charging the UK price - about 500 euro. These must be multi-lingual builds which should certainly include english.
I think the lesson here is that as EU citizens we should all be shopping around.
"Wi-Fi in particular seemed to put a greater strain on the battery, draining it in a day when turned on all the time"
This is true of any phone I've tried with WiFi. Shame. Hopefully some of the inroads intel have made in their N specification regarding powersaving should trickle down into phones.
Well obviously the Portuguese are doing something better here. They are getting 11MW from a mere 52K panels and 60 hectares. Is the huge difference in money, solar panels and area needed explained purely by the difference in climate? Or are the Canadians using old technology ? Surely a consultation with the Portuguese wouldn't go astray.
In fairness I don't see what the Kazahks are worried about - it's the americans he's taking the piss out of. They come off so utterly ridiculous throughout the film. If they could see this they'd probably revoke the .tv domain, but luckily for us it's lost on them.
All these people with iPods must feel a little silly having to hook their phone up to their iPod through yet more gadgetry. I personally just have a phone (a w810) that includes an mp3 player, a radio, expansion slot for more memory, a phone etc etc... and it all works nicely together - leaving me with only one bulge in my pocket. No 3rd party addons needed. I'm sure apple has taken note of this as well as they will no doubt try again to enter the phone market.
Didn't you forget the question mark in the title? I read this expecting C# pulling ahead of Java, but instead I read it to find we still have the same proprietry language as always. For that reason alone it will never pull ahead.
Also from the Visual Basic programmers I know, it is still way more popular that C#. Certainly in terms of day to day usage. Possibly when people are considering what language to start new clean, no dependencies projects, they may opt for C# but I'd say the large bulk of Win32 programming is still done in Visual Basic.
And for them to say Java is borrowing from them is hilarious given that their starting point basically was Java. Everyone in Software borrows but what MS does is more like theft.
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