Posts by calagan

Sir Clive Sinclair in tech tin-rattle triumph

MEH! Yet another retro handheld

Why so many buttons? It looks like you're just slapping a Sinclair logo onto yet another one of those cheap-ass chinese retro handheld, while removing the ability to emulate the dozen of other 8- and 16-bit platforms.

You really need to provide other incentive than just a big bunch of games which you could download of WoS anyway.

Also, with the recent release of the Recreated ZX Spectrum Bluetooth keayboard, it's a sorely missed opportunity not to support Bluetooth, which would have allowed to do a bit more than playing games on this gadget.

Lastly, what I would really expect on such a device is an Atari joystick port, so you could plug an authentic joystick (my two favourites were the Competition Pro and the Konix) and retrieve those lost sensations.

Linux kernel dumps 386 chip support

Sad day

I think that this great ideal which would aim at being able to run Linux on ANY device prevails over these complexities.

I understand that Linux will not suddenly stop running on 386 boxes, but this is a step in the wrong direction, especially when you consider that with Linux , so much can be done with so little CPU.

Logitech clings onto cost-cutting axe as sales, profit sail away

Blame Google TV

The complete failure of Google TV won't hurt Google that much, but Logitech and others who invest so much in it might not survive it.

Wii U graphics said to be no better than current consoles

We need a Wii with Full HD resolution and backward compatibility - we got it. No need to throw in a $500 GPU in there.

No 'Xbox 720' in 2012, says MS exec

Good news

We saw that Moore's law showed its limits when Intel gave up frantically raising its CPUs' clock speed as it has been doing in the last decade and, instead, multiplying the number of cores.

This slowdown is now also affecting video game consoles. I consider this a rather good news for three reasons:

- Xbox 360 and PS3 owner will be happy that their favorite toy gets extended lifespan

- If there was any XBox 720 or PS4 in the pipeline, MS and Sony wouldn't bother coming up with Kinect or Move

- Maybe this could motivate developers to come up with new game concepts, as opposed to just increased specs (FPS, resolution,...)

Amazon’s shares slashed as profits drop 73%

Bezos is on the right path

The $199 barrier is very important: that's were impulse buys start to kick in.

Although comparing it to the iPad hardly makes any sense, comparatively-priced Android tablets are way behind the Kindle Fire.

Linehan turns IT Crowd off but NOT on again

Chris O'Dowd taking a shot at Hollywood

I think this probably has to do with the fact that Roy (Chris O'Dowd) is trying to make himself a name in Hollywood. We've seen him in quite a few comedies in the last 2 years, Bridesmaids, with Kristen Wiig, being actually quite fun and commercially successful.

Sony names PlayStation Vita release day

This is a lot of portable bang for the bucks, but the design (they should have gone for a slider, like the PSPGo) and the proprietary storage turned me away.

Facebook SIM brings social network to dumb phones

Unexploited Markets...

...is the ideal choice of words when it comes to Facebook.

Nokia pitches cheapest voicephones yet

Nothing beats the Moto F3

Dirt cheap - No idea what it costs now but got one for 30 euros about 5 years ago

Big characters and voice help for grandma

Super long battery life thank to e-ink display

Actually quite stylish, being one of the slimmest phones on the market.

Symbian Anna makes her debut

Will Symbian ever die!?!

Meego users don't want it, and I don't see why Microsoft (and Trojan Elop) would ever want it... So why is Nokia still wasting energy on this bloated dinosaur?

Apple Mac Mini 2011

I have to agreee with Steve on optical drives

Permanently doubling the size of the Mac mini just to allow a one-time install is not worth it.

And for the desperate ones unable to properly configure a bootable USB stick, then I would suggest to go for a cheap external CD/DVD burner, that they'll also be able to share among other gadgets such as netbooks, which have given up the opical drive long time ago.

Google TV box flop costs Logitech $34m

Countdown is on

I bet a large pint of beer with my buddies that Logitech would either go out of business or get acquired by Microsoft within 2 years. I would feel rather comfortable upping the ante right now.

I know the Swiss Franc is reaching insane heights lately, but Logitech really has to stop ruining decent innovative products by charging way too much for them:

- the Harmony remotes: excellent but way too expensive

- the squeezebox: not bad, but way too expensive

- IP camera alarms system: looks great but 3-4 times more expensive than comparable products

- GoogleTV, see other comments in this post

- ...

Punters favour Amazon to block Apple tablet flood

An e-Reader is not a tablet

It's just plain nonsense to put Amazon and iPad in the same chart. The Kindle is meant to read books whereas the iPad is a mobile computing device.

Of course you can read books on the iPad, but it's painful to the eyes (especially if you've already spent the whole day working in front of a computer) and those who've tried to bring their iPad to the beach (or the park) to read a book on a sunny day have clearly understood the benfits of the Kindle e-Ink technology.

Seagate, WD should put a gun to Brussels' head

Samsung and Hitachi want out - With good reasons

The technology is obsolete and the market is nearly ready for flash-based only storage (where there is still a good deal of competition),

It just need this nice little boost from the EU.

Twitter buys Tweetdeck for $40m – report

Better focus on the iOS and Android versions

... Because any software relying on (soon-to-be Microsoft) Adobe Air is not a good long-term investment.

Cisco, Microsoft, NetApp chum up against VMware

Sad state of affairs

This is what happen when you are a smaller player with a superior product: the big names with subpar products win anyway using unfair strategies, such as unhealthy alliances, which surely won't benefit the customers in the end.

Microsoft resuscitates 'I'm a PC' ads to fight Apple

Why a Brit?

I've been told that any time they need some kind of expert, US TV networks bring in a Brit.

Does this also apply to MS commercials?

Is there some kind of inferiority complex going on?

Facebook fails webmail tests

V-Zug kicks Miele's ass

V-Zug, with it's Swiss quality definitely kicks Miele's ass.

The Sandy Bridge Hackintosh

OK on VMWare Player/Workstation

I've got a working Snow Leopard VM running in VMWare Player (VMWare Workstation also works) but never succeded to get it to run on ESXi. I'll give it another shot when Lion comes out.

I’m not a Trojan horse: Nokia’s Elop hits back at neigh sayers

European vs American market: wrong debate

Where did Elop get the idea that American would love WP7 any more than Europeans?

Having lived for years on both ends of the Atlantic, I have to say that taste for good phone is not different on either end. The main difference are the fact that CDMA still survives in the US and also that the big telcos (ATT, Verizon...) really get to decide which phone do or doesn't reach the american customers.

In any case WP7 is clearly "too little too late" and this will drive Nokia to its knees.

Oracle forms new 'axis of evil' against open source, claims Adobe

Not much of an Ellison fan but...

...Wasn't it the right move to can OpenSolaris? Wouldn't it be better is all Open Source backers would focus on OSs based on the Linux kernel?

Adobe declares 'LOVE' for Apple

Adobe killed Flash by not improving it

Since the acquisition, Adobe hasn't done much to improve former Macromedia technologies: ColdFusion is dead, Dreamweaver is getting worse at every CS release , while Flash is still buggy, not secure and way too CPU-consuming.

Steve Jobs is not the only one who has griefs against Flash (MS also joined the bandwagon), he's just one of the few actors on the market who can actually afford to side against Adobe.

Biz Linux needs Office license to run MS web apps

Unintentional compatibility

I certainly doubt that MS cares about the Linux desktop crowd at all.

IMHO, the only reason Office Web Apps run on Linux is because MS had to update Sharepoint to accommodate the growing population of Firefox/Chrome/... Windows users, fed up with being limited to IE. From what I recall, this took place with the release of MOSS 2007 SP2. Hence, by making Sharepoint Firefox-compatible, they unintentionally made it Linux-compatible.

Microsoft kills off newsgroups

Tighter control

Back in the days when I was working as a support professional at Microsoft, when call volume was low, we were happy to be able to log some working time reading and answering the newsgroups and hence avoid a slap on the fingers at the end of the month.

I guess restricting support to the forums will also allow MS to have tighter control on how much time the support folks actually spend helping users in there.

First mass-produced camera heads to auction

better than the iPad

At least this thing has a camera... not like the iPad

Paris, because it's trendy to bash on the iPad lately

Apple iPad vs netbooks: fight not over yet

He did it right

I actually found this launch (and the first hand-on videos) very reassuring:

- I was expecting it to be overpriced: it starts at $499 ($629 with 3G) and the 14.95/month for 250MB data plan is quite affordable

- I was wondering about typing: the keyboard dock looks really good

- I was worrying about eye-strain: the IPS screen is nearly as comfortable to the eyes as a Kindle

- I was wondering about software availability: it runs 99+% of the current iPhone software library

- I was wondering about productivity: they redesigned iWork for the iPad and if you get the keyboard dock, it should work quite well.

As per the comparison with netbooks, I'd say that it's nearly impossible to get MacBook-like build quality and design on netbooks (probably only the Nokia Booklet 3G comes close) so the iPad is a good compromise, without ruining yourself. Moreover, being only 0.5" thick, it's much more portable than a netbook.

I'm no Apple fanboy (hell, I don't even own a "Jesus Phone"), but I definitely will put this gadget on my wishlist.

Once impenetrable PS3 cracked wide open

Too early to call it

I've been following GeoHo's blog and tweets for awhile now and I tend to share reknown PSP hacker mathieuh's pessimism about this project. GeoHot replies to mathieuh's very precise questions were hardly convincing.

There's big chance that nothing would come out of this, due to unforseen security hurdles, so it's definitely too early to call victory.

Sony beefs up slimline PS3

Want one

I'm not at all into Final Fantasy, I'd upgrade the HDD to 500GB anyway, but still... I WANT ONE!

Palm waves farewell to Windows Mobile

Good news

There has been a long time when hardware manufacturers didn't have any other choice other than WinMo if they wanted to build a high-end smartphone. Those days are over: I feel as if we're back in the early nineties when dozens of computer manufacturers were competing for the lead, each with their own innovations

Sony Ericsson's Pureness set for pre-Christmas launch

I don't get it

How are those two gals even related? They don't look like each other at all

Volkswagen unveils Yorkshire-friendly e-car

You mean a "Yaris for the 21st century"?

How does this look like a Beetle?

I'd expect more from VW than such a boring car with a 2013 production date. By then, Nissan, Honda (and maybe Mitsu) will own the market.

Sim-free Palm Pré pre-orders tip up in UK

Rip off?

Either those resellers are trying to rip us off, or the Pré is bound to fail completely with such an unrealistic price tag.

Even with a $300 or $350 subsidy, the Pré doesn't stand a chance at surviving against the Android crowd at this price.

Apple gobbles world's flash memory

Really Evil

It was evil in the first place to make iPhones without external storage, forcing storage-hungry users to shell out big bucks for iPhones with bigger flash memory .

But now, the rest of us, non Apple fashion victims will have to suffer overall flash memory price increase due this evilness.

Asus intros stylish binary-inspired monitors

Adjusting the height?

Pretty fancy, but it fails in my book if I can't adjust the height. The ability to turn it vertically should also be standard nowadays.

Palm introduces Pré junior

No wi-fi => Chinese Market?

Since the Chinese government doesn't like wi-fi enabled phones, maybe junior might be a good candidate to compete with the iPhone over there?

The keyboard seems more confortable than on Pre Senior

Sony to ship Chrome Vaios

What's in it for Sony?

How about Google Talk / Voice / Maps for the PSP?

How about a Chrome browser for the PS3?

How about ChromeOS to replace the defunct OtherOS on PS3 Slim?

... just hoping

PSP Go pulled to pieces

Embedded battery

Looks like they embedded the battery in hope to keep it away from those "pandorized" batteries enabling custom firmwares. This is a bad trend (Apple does that too on their new MacBooks) because batteries don't last forever and it makes the PSP useless when the battery is dead, as it wouldn't be worthwhile to replace it at that time .

While you're checking out iFixit's site, don't miss the awesome "banana teardown" :-)

Communist car given electric overhaul

Would prefer a sedan version...

...but I'd definitely want one anyway

Orange declares mobile broadband price war

Will it ever replace ADSL/cable?

Is there any place in the World where 3G/HSDPA access is available without monthly bandwidth limit?

The speed would be sufficient to make it a replacement for ADSL or cable.

Fans decry tennis gal's breast-slash plan

Pleeeeeease sign the petition!!

Pleeeeeease sign: tennis would be "flat" without it

http://www.petitiononline.com/sisice/petition.html

KOffice 2.0 available for early adopters

re: KWhy?

The multiplicity of apps is much less of a problem than the multiplicity of file formats.

As long as open source alternatives are not up to speed with MS Office, I find a little competition more than welcome to boost the envelope.

I share your disappointment with KDE4 (which is gradually getting much better), but if I was to switch back to KDE, I would certainly give KOffice a try.

Pioneer unplugs tellies and 10,000 workers

Sorely missed

The plasma fans will sorely miss the Kuros: nothing came even close in terms of quality. However, IMHO, there wasn't much hope for the future of this technology.

Sony stands by 10m PS3 full-year sales forecast

@Lee

I think it's inaccurate to classify the PS3 as a hardcore gamer-only machine. The titles available for download on PSN can keep most casual gamers happy (e.g Eden, Calling All Cars, Lumines Supernova, Fl0w, etc...). Moreover, folks who bought the PS3 for its Blueray/Media Center capabilities are usually way past the age of hardcore gaming.

On the other hand, EA, Activision and others will gradually abandon the Wii, as they did with the GameCube and once again Nintendo will have to keep his much-hyped baby on life support all by itself.

Realistic

I think the goal is realistic: the Wii crowd will eventually get bored of playing Wii Sports and seek a console with a wider offering of decent games.

Moreover, HDTVs have been selling really well lately and the PS3 is the perfect addition to them.

Even if the hardware sales goal is not met, I wouldn't worry too much: a large part of the income is coming from software licensing and on that front, being the only console to this day that hasn't been hacked is a huge advantage.

Yahoo! lobs! Briefcase! into! rubbish! bin!

Is Flickr next?

I can't sleep at night, worrying about my terabytes of photo disappearing into thin air.

PS: LOL @ "the Mountain View Chocolate Factory"

Humvee with frikkin laser on it takes out killer robot

Naive

I find pretty naive for folks to think that americans and their feeble-minded friends have a monopoly on UAVs. Anyone with above-average skills, access to the local RadioShack and some time on his hands could build one.

And in any case, the feeble-minded friends (eg. Saddam or the Afghan Mujahedins) have a nasty tendency to become enemies or even join the Axis of Evil club.

Ubuntu's Shuttleworth praises Windows 7, welcomes fight

Give away Windows 7 for free and kill Ubuntu

Shuttleworth makes an interesting point saying that dirt cheap XP OEM licences hurt Ubuntu a lot.

I think MS should consider giving away Windows 7 for free if they want to maintain their lead. In any case, the real cash cow is Office, not the OS.

Microsoft ditches Comcast shares

Net neutrality issues?

Maybe it has to do with this:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/21/fcc_letter_comcast_voip_traffic_management/

In any case, the fiddling Comcast has recently been doing with their customers' bandwidth could turn a lot of them away (it would turn me away if I was one of their customers).

LG shows off quad-band GSM watchphone

Finally

It looks like LG finally managed to come up with a usable watchphone, after several attempts by less-serious manufacturers. I doubt anyone would actually use the built-in microphone, but if you pair that it with a bluetooth headset this would really make my day.

People have been complaining about its size, but it seems to fit quite well the guy in the video, who doesn't seem to have an oversized wrist.