Posts by AndyMulhearn

Hello, Dixons Carphone? Yep, we're ringing from a 2015 handset. Profits down 60%, eh?

Call charges

I bought a Nokia 6 from them a month ago. Nice phone and if you enable developer mode and turn off all of the animations madness the performance problems people have mentioned is way less of an issue.

The phone wasn't in stock but delivery was next day so they took my mobile number to call me when it was ready for collection. When I got no call, I called the shop on the number on the receipt to check. I got through three times but never got an answer so Ient to the shop anyway and got the phone, along with leaving a bit of a rant about calling an getting no response.

When I got my next phone bill I found a £5.45 charge on it for three calls. Calls to the shop I'd made to check if the phone was available. While I should have spotted this from the number it was on a receipt so a direct number for a paying customer and it does seem a but scummy to charge someone to do business with you.

It will be a cold day etc.

Intel to slap hardware lock on Management Engine code to thwart downgrade attacks

Next week we’ll find out that the ME has an embedded management engine of its own (MeMe?) and that’ll get hacked too. And the following week... what a complete mess IT has become.

I think you mean Mini ME?

Disk drive fired 'Frisbees of death' across data centre after storage admin crossed his wires

Nova 3

I used a DG Nova 3 when I started at GEC in 1979. Usually a nice, quiet system although taller than me and wider than I was at the time, perhaps not now though. Even when an engineer was checking out the disk it stayed relatively quiet but with the cabinet open and the disk slid out for access, the movement of the heads caused the machine to shake from side to side.

Stop all news – it's time for us plebs to be told about BBC paycheques!

Re: Talent

I find it odd the way these people are all referred to as 'talent': Graham Norton has talent whereas Huw Edwards is just a news reader.

Compared to Dan Walker he is talent.

EE looks at its call charges, hikes a bunch, walks off giggling

And Line Rental?

Intel inside: Six of the best affordable PC laptops

Re: Mid year resolution?

Colour me in complete agreement with the 1366x768 point.

Doctor Who trashing the TARDIS, Clara alone, useless UNIT – Death in Heaven

Reality Dysfunction

Unfortunately the whole story screamed at me ripoff of Peter Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy. Nothing more to be said really, other than that the first 15 minutes of the penultimate episode was pretty good but then it all disappeared down the crapper. Capaldi has the look and the skills to carry it off and be one of the better Drs. but not if he's going to be continually fed this kind of drivel.

Nokia Lumia 530: A Windows Phone... for under £50

Re: For the price of a night out

Strange. I've had a Moto G for about six months now and it's been good enough that I bought one for my wife to replace her knackered xperia. The only problem she's had is that the xperia could go a three or four days between charges where the G doesn't but she got used to charging it more frequently and it's been otherwise fine.

Bearing in mind the earache I'd have got if it had been a poor performer, I've been pretty pleased with it.

iPad? More like iFAD: We reveal why Apple fell into IBM's arms

Re: One does not replace the Rolls every year!

HKmk23: Now those cheap and cheerful phones with almost no upgrades (Android are you listening?) have become a disposable item.......!

There are a few honourable exceptions, the Moto and Nexus ranges, where the degree of customisation by the vendor is either non-existent or so small that it upgrades are relatively low cost and they do actually arrive. My Moto G went up to 4.4.4 last night with no problems at all and the nexus 7 a few weeks back.

By and large you're completely correct in terms of upgrades although the fact that a phone doesn't receive the latest version of Android OS doesn't mean it stops working overnight, witness the number of people around still using devices running gingerbread.

BlackBerry BLOODBATH! Company warns of nearly $1bn quarterly loss

Re: Shame

+1.

I've been using a Q5 for a week now and I'm wondering why all the negative press. The OS is stable and responsive. Messaging is better than the old Torch I used before the upgrade. Battery life is more than good enough. Apps? Shmapps, it's a phone not a games console. And it's costing me £3 per week for 24 weeks, so a total of £72.

OK, so a BB should have a trackpad and it's taking me a while to get used to it not having one but I'm getting there but aside from that, I'm really struggling to see why people don't like BB10 and the phones.

Microsoft exec: No 'Plan B' despite mobile stumbles

Re: There's the Kool-aid...

The duplicate stuff hasn't made it as far as Office and as far as I can tell is only in stuff like textedit or preview...

Having said that, It's still a broken paradigm IMHO.

Pop tix touts slung in the cooler for 4 years after £3m web scam

Re: What's the world coming to?

Well yes, I'll concede that one. But adjusted for inflation, a 1963 take of £2.6 million is around £50 million current value which split 18 ways comes to £2.6 million each. It must have taken a fair amount of effort to piss the equivalent of that all up the wall in the 60s...

What's the world coming to?

When an ordinary decent criminal can't steal money and hang onto it.

Watching Buster at the weekend I was astonished, and then not surprised really, at how many of the Great Train Robbers actually profited from the robbery, i.e. bugger all of them. Most had the cash nicked by friends who were also villains of one form or another, got nicked with it in hand or blew it on the high life. But then in theory they're not generally the sharpest knives in the drawer...

Dixons and Microsoft haggling over Surface RT Ts&Cs

Re: why can I hear bells ?

I think they still are one of the major outlets in the UK; it's just that they're not as big or important as they once were.

RIM shares jump as analyst decides it isn't as dead as he thought

Re: Why not?

And therein lies the rub. If the playbook loses the ability to go direct to email servers without BIS/BES in the way when the BB10 upgrade comes out, it'll be a dead duck IMHO.

RIM shares take a bath after uninspiring BlackBerry 10 unwrap

Last best hope

As a Blackberry user who doesn't really like Android, has spent enough on Apple gear and finds the idea of buying a Microsoft mobile phone laughable for too many reasons, this comes as really bad news.

18 months ago when I took out a contract with Blackberry it looked a sound decision, now? I'd be daft to go with a Blackberry.

Metro breakdown! Windows 8 UI is little gain for lots of pain

Gave it a spin last night

I agree pretty much completely with the write up and comments. I built a VM using the latest version last night. Installation was completely painless and then I met metro and it all went downhill from there. There are little tiles with words on them which on a tablet would be single click to activate but here there double click.

So I doubt click on IE and browse a bit. And then spend the next five minutes trying to work out how to get back to the desktop to do something else. And fail miserably so in the bin it went.

OK so this is going to get some people's goat but the way Apple have introduced some of the themes from iOS into Lion has been completely the reverse. Fullscreen is there if you want to use it, and I do, and the gestures are fine and enough like iOS that you learn them once. But I don't like launchpad, so I don't use it. And I don't need to, the old ways of working are still where you expect them.

Someone needs to give the guys at redmond a shake or this could be another Vista/Windows ME...