Posts by madgunde

Clash of the compacts: Eee vs Air

Give me a break

The MacBook Air could be the primary and sole computer for most computer users. The EEE could not, no matter how many ports it's got. When someone is at home or the office and needs all those USB ports, they can have a hub on their desk with everything connected, but when on the road, the average mobile PC user doesn't connect more than one USB device at any given time. If you are one of those VERY few who actually needs to, then a) don't get a MacBook Air, or b) buy yourself one of those portable USB hubs.

I think the EEE PC is 'neat', but I certainly wouldn't cherish using it all the time for anything more than web surfing, email and IM. Forget managing your photos, or a decent music library, or running any REAL applications at full speed.

Frankly, I think the whole comparison is a joke and if you can't understand why the MacBook Air costs more than the EEE, then you really don't have a strong grasp of technology.

Japanese Wii sales rain on PS3 parade

Once again, everyone misses the big picture

Sorry folks, but to compare PS3 and Wii sales while ignoring PS2 sales is like comparing iPhone sales to only one particular model of Nokia phone, and then claiming that Nokia is doomed. Sony's strategy has been to continue to sell AND support the PS2 for the entry-level market, while slowly phasing the next-gen PS3 as it's replacement, just as they did when the PS2 replaced the PS1.

According to the latest weekly Japanese sales charts, Sony is selling AT LEAST as many TV consoles per week as Nintendo is selling. So sure, Nintendo got a nice jump on sales, but Sony is now moving as many consoles as Nintendo, some weeks more. About half of those console sales are PS2s, which are more likely than not to turn into PS3 sales down the road.

Look what happened to PSP sales when they released the new model and a single Final Fantasy title came out for it. It handily outsold the DS. What do you think is going to happen when Killzone 2, MGS4, FFXIII, Home, LittleBigPlanet, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, DualShock 3 and the $399 40GB PS3 hit the market? Sony has sold over 100 million PS2 consoles. What console do you think the majority of those players have their eye on for their next long term purchase? It's not the Wii, that's for sure.

Get over it. The Wii doesn't compete with the PS3. Anyone who was going to buy a PS3 didn't chang their mind and buy a Wii instead. They may have bought a Wii, but they still want and plan to buy a PS3. By 2009, the lot of you who think the Wii is king of the hill are going to look mighty foolish.

Apple iPhone

Re: Number of features...

"So if you only want a few features, go out and buy a mid-range feature phone, which is what this thing is, albeit a very good one. One thing it is NOT is a smartphone. Apple are very good at two things: making shiny objects, and marketing. In this case they are aiming a mid-range feature phone at people who are too thick to use a smartphone and they're calling it a smartphone. Confused?"

@ Neil Hoskins

By what or whose measure is the iPhone NOT a smartphone??? I can install third party apps on it, it has an advanced networking stack, can surf the web, syncs full contacts with addresses, photos and notes with a PC or Mac, full POP/IMAP email clients and WiFi. As for third party apps, there are two IM clients available for it, FTP client, SFTP/SSH client & server, Terminal shell, full BSD subsystem, eBook reader, several IRC clients (both GUI and terminal-based), has a fully skinnable UI, games, VNC client, extensible dictionary app to name a few with more coming out weekly. So please enlighten us as to how you can claim it's NOT a smartphone?

It's bad enough that people try to bash something by applying labels, it's worse when those labels are not even accurately applied.

"The iPhone is a pile of old junk compared to a decent Windows Smartphone.

Its slower, lacks 3g, lacks a keyboard, it lacks a lot."

@ Damien Jorgensen

iPhone's onscreen keyboard does the job perfectly well and a hell of a lot better than Windows Mobile phones that lack a keyboard, that's for sure.

If the iPhone is such a pile of junk, then why did it blow the Nokia N95 and HTC Touch out of the water on usability?

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9037858&pageNumber=1

I guess those other phones are even bigger piles of old junk then. I'd also like to point out that user satisfaction rates for the iPhone are off the charts. Maybe there's something you don't know?

Re: Fair and balanced

"No video rotation (potentially reducing the value of the big screen quite a bit)"

@AB

By this statement, it's obvious you've never seen an iPhone or at least used one. The iPhone always plays video in landscape mode, since all video is wider than it is tall. So no, you can't watch the video in portrait mode, not that you'd ever want to. You seem to think the iPhone does it the other way around, and I don't blame you, it wasn't even worth mentioning and the fact that it was mentioned automatically lead you to the assumption that the iPhone forces you to watch video in portrait mode, which isn't the case.

I suggest you stop commenting on a product you've never tried and hold off forming an opinion on it until you've actually tried one. That goes for the rest of you armchair technology analysts. Face the facts, the vast majority of people who use the iPhone can't stop singing it's praises, so we're supposed to take tech advice from people who haven't even used one?

Re: What's so "new" about the iPhone?

"I'm still trying to sort out what is so exciting and new about the iPhone. It's just a Treo without the convenience of the keyboard.....and without the convenience of being able to easily pack it full of other 3rd party apps!"

@buddypepper

What's new about the iPhone is that it doesn't suck. Period. I buy new high-end phones every year, and none of them are as satisfying, productive or live up to their promises (or my expectations) like the iPhone has. For once a company has released a phone that isn't all about a bullet-point list of features. They built a phone that *gasp* is actually designed to function well! The reason the iPhone doesn't need a million customization options is because Apple took the time to figure out every detail about how it should work. The rest of the handset makers give you tons of customization options because they have no idea how to make it work well, so they leave it up to the end user to waste time futzing around with every little option to try and get it to a point where you can put up with it, yet no amount of customization can get the other phones to work as well as the iPhone does right out of the box. Yay for fresh thinking!

Re: YouTube

"I should point out - which I didn't in the review - that the YouTube app doesn't work after unlocking."

@Tony Smith

If you use the latest version of iNdependence to activate your iPhone, YouTube does work, and works well! My wife and I have an unlocked iPhone on the Rogers network in Canada, and the YouTube app works on both of ours.

I documented our experience and have a link to the latest iNdependence on my blog: artofgeek.com </shameless plug>

Apple sells one in six US laptops

Re: FUD?

"As for Apple laptops (and indeed desktops), i would suspect that they're growing popularity owes an awful lot more to Bootcamp than it ever could to OSX."

@Rich Bryant

Boot Camp, along with Parallels and VMWare Fusion, are just the safety blankets that make a Windows user feel 'safe' about their switch to a Mac. I'm not doubting that there aren't some misguided people who buy a Mac to use solely as a Windows machine, but I think anecdotal evidence indicates that this is extremely rare, otherwise Mac OS X would be losing market share, which it clearly isn't, as indicated by web usage reports.

Apple's switch to Intel processors has made buying a Mac a no-brainer of a decision. You can have it all. Mac OS X, sexy hardware, great performance, AND full compatibility with those pesky Windows apps you need for work, or the latest Windows only game. The best part is, when you're done work or playing games, you can shut down Windows and surf the web with impunity with no worries about your machine getting hosed by some virus or infested with spyware.

For most switchers to Mac however, I think the reliance on the safety blanket is short lived as users quickly realize they can get everything they need done in the much more satisfying Mac OS X. That Boot Camp partition or virtual machine disk image ends up getting wiped within a year to reclaim disk space for more important stuff, like your photos, music and home movies. ;-)

Xbox 360 Elite games console

XBox Live Gold

Why no mention of the fact that you have to pay $50US/year to play online, something that the PS3 offers for free? That should be on the chart, and after only a year or two, pushes the price of owning a 360 over the cost of owning a PS3.

I also agree that the PS3 should have rightfully got the edge on size and weight. It's not like you can play the 360 without it's power supply, so if you want to move it around, you have to factor in the power brick's the space and weight. Not to mention the inconvenience of having an external power supply. The PS3 uses just a regular power cable like any other AV device or PC.

Also no mention about having to use expensive proprietary storage options on the 360, while the PS3 supports standard USB hard drives and can be user upgraded with standard SATA hard drives up to 320GB. 360 is stuck at a maximum of 120GB.

The 360 also only supports Microsoft's webcam, the PS3 supports any old standard USB camera.

Seems to me if the comparison table were a bit more thorough, it should be a draw, or the PS3 should have a slight edge.

El Reg lobs iPhone at Genius Bar

Re: One more thing

Eric said:

"Hi i posted something earlier in the comment string. I had and have no beef with the reasons for the El Reg "journalist" returning the phone. Bad internet speed / coverage, fingers too big - fine.

It's just the comments like "you're just one of the lemmings..." etc that are just sooo El Reg vs. Apple. I simply meant to point out that this would never happen with any other company's product and the register. If thousands lined up and bought a puke-green halo edition xbox360 - well they're perfectly well adjusted enthusiastic gamers. If you pranced around 3 years ago with a brand new $500 Razr - well you appreciate good phones with a nice form factor. I could go on and on..."

My sentiments exactly. There are idiots on both sides, and the over generalized anti-Apple user comments are proof of this. Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean everyone else who does is a mindless lemming. Funny thing is, there as many (if not more) Apple bashers on this forum than Apple fanboys. Ironic that the bashers are bitching that there are so many fanboys.

Grow up people and realize that spewing over-generalized insults is a surefire way to lose any and all credibility.

Romanian cops cuff drunk, naked, handless driver

Re: Never mind now they cuffed him...

@Steve Sutton

You know, for someone who supposedly is annoyed by all the exposure the iPhone is getting, you're really not helping your situation. Did you annoy yourself when you wrote that post?

US PS3 sales hold up as Wii, Xbox 360 numbers dip

Re:PS2 Outselling

Sorry JP, I disagree with you. Every PS2 Sony sells is money in their pocket and one less sale of a Wii or 360. Plus, every PS2 sold it more likely to turn into a PS3 sale in the future. You're delusional if you think a person who would buy a PS2 would buy a PS3 instead if the PS2 weren't available. They'd buy a Wii instead. Why? Because it's cheap. That's why they're buying a PS2. Sony is hedging their bets and are the only company that has something to offer both casual mainstream consumers and hardcore gamers. Their strategy will pay off in the long run.