* Posts by Fuzz

989 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Jul 2007

Everything Everywhere prices up UK 4G

Fuzz

EE site

If you look at the EE site it seems the pricing is a little more complicated.

e.g if you already have a 4G phone and you want a sim only deal 5GB a month is £36, still expensive but not as bad.

If you just want data you can get a data only plan which according to the website is significantly cheaper for 18 months than it is for 24 months - £26 for 5GB over 18 months or £36 for 5GB over 24 months.

Fuzz

fallback

The problem here is that EE don't have a nationwide 4G network this means that if they did give you 100GB of data to use you would need to be able to consume it on 4G and 3G and 2G.

Now they could say you can have 100GB of data on 4G and 500MB on legacy networks but this would be a hugely confusing model for most people.

I take it all these packages are advertised as unlimited?

BBC pulls plug Ceefax ahead of analogue TV's end tonight

Fuzz

a little bit lives on

A little bit of ceefax still lives on in the form of the page numbers on the digital service. Football is still on 302 with the brief stories on 312.

Apple banishes Java from Mac browsers

Fuzz

UAC

if your program requires access write access to its own install folder then it is up to the program to set those permissions when it installs. If it doesn't set the permissions then it is the fault of the program not Windows.

Windows 8 'bad' analyst says Store is a weakness

Fuzz

differentiators

I take it this guy hasn't realised that you can plug a mouse into an android tablet? Also most Android tablets support USB OTG you just need the correct adaptor and you can plug your USB accessory in.

As far as I can see the differentiators are the interface which some people will like and some will hate and the full versions of office programs which are irrelevant since the only reason for having Microsoft Office is Excel VBA which you don't get on the arm version.

Microsoft Surface: Designed to win, priced to fail

Fuzz

USP

Microsoft had a USP with the keyboard cover but it stops being a USP if you have to pay extra for it. They should have priced it $499 including the keyboard. I also think the 16:9 ratio is a mistake.

Manchester plods cop £120k fine for USB-stick-inna-wallet data gaffe

Fuzz

"A[sic] unencrypted stick amnesty by the force's data controller.."

So the force has a data controller? Sounds like a good place to start with the redundancies then. If your job is to look after the data and you are not then you should loose your job. This is a basic point, no sensitive data leaves the systems unless it has been encrypted.

Metric versus imperial: Reg readers weigh in

Fuzz

inches

The problem with inches arises when things get small, I can't stand hardware reviews that tell me a laptop is 0.6 inches thick or a phone is 0.35 inches.

While we're on the subject can we start a campaign for tool manufactures to make tape measures with metric on top and inches on the bottom? Or better still ones without inches at all.

Six months under water and iPhone 4 STILL WORKS

Fuzz

fresh water

Fresh water rarely does any damage.

most water damage to phones is caused by the phones being turned on before they're dry.

Microsoft fast-tracks Windows 8 Service Pack updates

Fuzz

update instructions

I see the update instructions tell you to go to "install optional updates" to install the update. For those who haven't used Windows 8, the install optional updates shortcut takes you to the desktop windows vista/7 style updates application. There is also a metro style update app which doesn't seem to be recommended by Microsoft.

I guess this is similar to any instructions from Microsoft dealing with the control panel in XP, the next instruction after opening the control panel is always "click the link to switch to classic view"

Apple to spice up Blighty iPads with 4G

Fuzz

and it will be called?

new new ipad

newer ipad

newest ipad

next ipad

Lenovo unfolds smaller Yoga tablet-laptop hybrid

Fuzz

too big

11.6" is too big for a useful tablet, 13" is crazy

Copper-obsessed BT means UK misses out on ultrafast fibre gold

Fuzz

FTTH is a waste of time

Current FTTH is a waste of time just have a look at BTs current service offerings.

Infinity Option 2 (FTTC) 76Mb down 19Mb up £26 per month (plus telephone line rental)

Infinity Option 3 (FTTH) 100Mb down 15Mb up £35 per month (plus telephone line rental)

The FTTH service isn't worth it until they offer symmetric upload speeds which should be one of the benefits of a fibre connection. Of course the other benefit should be that you no longer need a phone line but for some reason BT make you take one anyway.

View 21 IPTV Freeview+HD DVR review

Fuzz

still think a windows media centre is a better choice

A bit more expensive I think mine was around £300 once you factor in tuners and remote but it has access to all on-line services and there are no restrictions about where you can watch content. Also can play back anything you throw at it. Mine even has a DVD drive in case you're feeling nostalgic.

New Zealand issues Hobbit money

Fuzz

Re: Calligraphically Challenged

"I'm curious how Jackson made three movies out of that skinny book. I couldn't make it last six hours if I had to copy it out by hand."

I'm guessing a lot of walking

Big Blue beats off rivals to push out first LTO-6 tape drive

Fuzz

Re: Scaling

Also they should have graphed the rate of increase rather than the actual values as that is what the graph is trying to show.

Happy 20th Birthday, IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad

Fuzz

ctrl key

I see at least two of the machines shown here have the ctrl key in the right place. Why did they ever decide to move it? It's the only thing really wrong with the the current thinkpads.

Pastafarians: Get your noodly appendages off that Facebook suspect

Fuzz

blasphemy

Oh those crazy Greeks with their blasphemy law.

Turns out blasphemy was still a crime in the UK until 2008 and remains a crime in Northern Ireland so maybe they're not the only crazy ones.

Ofcom tries to chop months off EE's 4G exclusive

Fuzz

larger cities?

Do Offcom really have such little understanding of how TV is transmitted?

Don't they realise that TV is transmitted in large groups of antennas each one covering at least one major city and all the surrounding towns, villages etc.

What qualifies as a major city? Most of the transmitters needing a retune are in Scotland and Wales it's only really Winter Hill that covers a few big cities.

Of course it should be easy to sort out if you simply do one a week rather than one a month.

HP Spectre XT 13in Ivy Bridge Ultrabook review

Fuzz

stopping reviewing these favourably

£900 + 1366x768 screen should automatically mean a harsh review hopefully containing words like unacceptable, useless, waste of money.

I talked to a Toshiba guy at a trade fair and asked him why the screen resolutions were so low, he had no idea it was a problem and I can only blame the press for that.

If people are playing a premium price they want a premium product. That means not only a high resolution screen but also 8GB of RAM.

Nokia lops UK Lumia prices ahead of Win 8 phones

Fuzz

Re: What is AT&T U-Verse

Certain "special" apps get to have double size tiles on WP7. My phone has the HTC hub which displays a double width tile with the current weather where I am (yes I know).

Intel: Behold the TABLETS of our partners, proof of Win8's MIGHT

Fuzz

Battery life

So what's the battery life like of the Atom tablets vs. the arm tablets?

Also are the RT x86 tablets capable of installing software outside of the market?

Mozilla's Persona single sign-on service enters beta

Fuzz

Re: Mozilla Persona vs. Mozilla Personas

For those who don't know, Personas with the s on the end are like skins or themes for your browser. Right hand not talking to left hand at Mozilla then.

Apple MacBook Air 13in review

Fuzz

Re: External storage

yes it really is that expensive, forget your cheapo USB stick. You can get a 128GB SSD for £80 that's the whole drive not just the extra 64GB of memory.

Toshiba leaps aboard flash-platter combo bandwagon with a wild cry

Fuzz

MB < GB

" It is 9.5mm thick and spins at 5,400rpm and has an 8MB flash cache"

I think we're going to need more flash than that to make it worth while

Microsoft extends Windows Server 2008 support

Fuzz

mainstream support

I don't think you've read this right.

Microsoft have extended the mainstream support i.e. the product will still be in mainstream support until 2015 after that it will transition to extended support. Where it will receive fixes right up until 2020.

What's interesting here is that microsoft are treating 2012 as the replacement to 2008 rather than 2008R2.

I would imagine far more people are using 2008R2 than 2008

Of course none of this is important, the only important upcoming dates are 2014 for XP and 2015 for 2003 after which there will be no more support for IE6 and the browser can finally be forgotten about.

BT to fibre up another 163 exchanges, coy on exactly where

Fuzz

Crusty old wires

Don't quote me on this but I'm pretty sure that if your connection from your house to the pole is the old style single pair cable in a figure 8 arrangement then openreach will swap it out as part of the FTTC installation.

All the cables from the pole to the cabinet and the cabinet to the exchange should be fairly modern anyway.

iPhone 5 Lightning cables sticking in USB ports

Fuzz

It's no really an issue is it?

Apple probably have a batch of slightly too tight connectors, a visit to the Apple store will get them replaced no question.

I guess the story here is that if I bought a new phone and found the cable was too tight I'd just use a different one out of the drawer. Apple makes you go to the shop and get one from their drawer.

Sky gripe grounded Freeview EPG facelift

Fuzz

buy better equipment

If you don't want to lose your PVR schedules or have to retune when this kind of thing happens, buy some better equipment. A decent freeview PVR should be able to background scan the currently tuned multiplexes finding new channels and moving around the old ones without any kind of manual retune. Retuning should only be required when the multiplexes switch frequencies.

A decent PVR should also be able to maintain series links and scheduled recordings using something better than the EPG number.

HTC hawks fresh WinPho smartphones

Fuzz

choice

So again like the Nokias you have to choose between the high end model that has no SD card support or the low end model with SD card support.

Only Samsung are clever enough to realise that your top model should give away features to the lower end.

Bonking payment by NFC doubled by Olympics splash

Fuzz

contactless payments

contactless payments work well if they can speed up transactions to reduce the length of queues. I recently travelled on the M6 toll and you can now wave your card. This works well because it's slightly quicker than posting your card into the slot. If, however, you were to use your phone for this it would be far slower.

1. unlock your phone

2. load the NFC app

3. choose the correct wallet

4 enter a pin to unlock the wallet

These are not steps you need to be doing when you're in a queue.

Paying in shops doesn't work either currently because to pay with your card you have to tell the shop assistant that is what you want to do and wait whilst they tell the till you are paying by card and only then can you wave your card. The system needs to be

1. shop keeper says that'll be £3.49 please

2. customer waves card

Until the system works like that it's a waste of time.

Microsoft promises two-step IE fix

Fuzz

Re: Just fix it quick please

"For the sake of completeness you left out Safari."

So did Apple on windows machines, they gave up on it a few months ago. The windows 8 browser choice screen doesn't include it.

Apple iOS 6 review

Fuzz

Re: Mutual Benefit

I can't believe these kinds of features are only just being implemented on modern smartphones.

I'm pretty sure the auto reply with text feature was available on my Ericsson T28 if not it was definitely on the T39.

The Do not disturb feature used to be part of Windows mobile you could set the phone to switch to your meeting profile when your calendar showed you as busy. Of course this feature (along with almost everything else) went missing in WP7.

ITU suggests replaceable cables for power supplies

Fuzz

forget the itu

This needs to be mandated by the EU.

there's no need for all the different voltages we have now just have 2 or 3. Small devices like phones, cameras and tablets can use 5V which can be supplied via a USB plug. Larger devices like laptops can use 19V with a large coax connector. If a large coax connector isn't the best design make something flat but make sure it fits in both ways round. Maybe have a middle voltage like 12V for routers, battery chargers and anything else.

Make all cables detachable, make all PSUs sold meet strict efficiency requirements. Make the PSUs universal, sell them as single, dual or tri voltage. Tri voltage PSUs can do all 3 voltages, single can just do 5V. For the multi voltage PSUs make them able to automatically choose the correct voltage based on the attached cable.

Microsoft, RIM ink new licensing agreement

Fuzz

Re: Its about time...

Some facts.

1. It's perfectly possible to install extra filesystems on windows the manufacturers just need to write the driver and provide it for people to install

2. Manufacturers could choose to use any filesystem they like in the device and then use PTP or similar to attach the device to the computer

3. exFAT is the default file system for SDXC memory cards this means that all cards sold are preformated with exFAT

I'm not saying that Microsoft aren't using their position to gain license fees, just that there are ways around it that the manufacturers choose not to use so it's obviously worth their while paying Microsoft to use the technology.

Win8 tablets may cost MORE than iPads – AND LAPTOPS

Fuzz

Taichi

Why would I want to pay for two 1920x1080 panels when I can only use one at any one time?

Also I had a chance to play with a Samsung 10.1" Windows RT tablet and it's too big. The stupid 16:9 aspect makes the tablet far too wide to hold comfortably in one hand when using landscape and it's too tall in portrait mode.

Manchester is 'PIRATE CAPITAL of the UK'

Fuzz

population

The population of Manchester is around 500000 but that doesn't take into account the Students or people who live in the Manchester area (Salford, Stockport, Trafford)

The total population of Greater Manchester is over 2 million. Without seeing some raw figures for the study I would guess this will somewhat skew the figures.

iPhone 5: UK pay-monthly tariffs compared

Fuzz

Sim cards

I wonder if O2 are only "coming soon" because they've made the same error of judgement over sim cards as giffgaff.

Traditionally if you want a micro sim from Giffgaff your request is forwarded to a giffgaff member who cuts a regular sim down to the correct size and pops it in the post. Of course this isn't possible with the new nano sim and now giffgaff gave announced they will have a solution in place in the "coming months".

BT gets postcode knickers in twist, plants Shoreditch on Mount Everest

Fuzz

not just postcodes that are the problem

The other problem with this map is that even if you make it work and show where you live. All it tells you is the status at the surrounding exchanges, it doesn't actually tell you which of these exchanges provides your telephone line.

If I type my postcode I see that all the surrounding exchanges are enabled and accepting orders bar one which has no current plans, I wonder which exchange is mine?

I spy: Drug drops and foxy couples

Fuzz

Re: 10x optical zoom?

32x on a camcorder/camera is not the same thing as 32x on binoculars.

32x zoom on a camcorder means the telephoto end of the zoom lens is 32x the wide angle.

32x zoom on binoculars would mean that at maximum zoom objects viewed through the binoculars are 32x larger than they would be in real life.

The two things aren't really comparable.

Also in this situation the digital zoom is important, the imaging sensor is about 4 megapixels. HD video is around 2 megapixels, that gets you from 10x to 15x without any up-scaling.

Windows Phone 8 stands a chance as Apple, Android dither

Fuzz

Re: Contact cards

Agreed

I have facebook, gmail, hotmail and exchange/outlook accounts on mine and have no problems. Editing the contacts is easier because they're cloud based. If there is a limitation in editing those contacts it's not the fault of the phone but the cloud provider. The gmail tools for editing are pretty decent and support import and export to csv for more complicated edits or transfer between systems. I've never noticed a problem with editing contacts via outlook and owa is pretty decent.

Final Office 2013 for ARM may not ship until January

Fuzz

Re: Oh, you have it wrong ..

It doesn't support pop3 but it does support imap and it supports smtp

Microsoft keeps Win Phone 8 under hype-boosting wraps

Fuzz

disappointment

The only thing hype will bring is disappointment, nothing ever lives up to hype.

Apple have just announced their new phone and it will be in peoples hands in just over a weeks time. If Microsoft want to attract people away from Android and iOS they need to announce features and an availability date. All we know about WP8 is that you can resize the live tiles, this isn't enough to make people pass up a phone they can buy for one that is coming at some unknown point in the future.

If Microsoft have killer features they should tell people about them otherwise forums like this one will just remain awash with criticism of the 7.5-8 upgrade path.

Apple Lightning adaptors reveal limitations

Fuzz

which is it?

"Apple has introduced a Micro USB adaptor for its new Lightning dock connector. Speed freaks will be disappointed to hear its a USB 2.0 connector."

...

"It's not yet clear whether Lightning is based on USB 3.0, but given that all new Macs now support the standard, it seems unlikely that it's USB 2.0 only."

So do we know that the connector is usb 2 as the top quote implies or do we believe the bottom quote which suggests it's most likely USB 3?

Personally I think USB 3 is unlikely here, the connector seems to have 8 pins (assuming there are 8 mirrored pins on the other side to facilitate the dual insertion) which is only just enough for usb 3. On top of USB they need at least two pins for SPDIF or similar digital audio.

Google sneaks in back door, slips YouTube onto iPhone 5

Fuzz

dukebox?

Are they not Jukeboxes?

Microsoft preparing for diskless Windows 8 PCs

Fuzz

Re: Still haven't separated OS and Data

redirected special folders have been around since at least XP, maybe even 2000.

NTFS partitions can be mounted in folders in the same way you can on linux.

Windows 7 introduced (to windows) the idea of libraries, where you can group several folders together so you could have your documents folder spread across several disks but all accessed together.

The problem is most people don't have a clue about this stuff or why it's useful. I recommend to most people they just have one big partition and just take decent backups. I see a lot of laptops where the OEM has split the disk into two partitions for OS and data but the owner doesn't understand that so they have a full C drive and an empty D. Since keeping your data on a separate partition doesn't remove the need for backups and most people don't regularly reinstall their OS, I think most people are better off with a single partition.

There is life after the death of Microsoft’s Windows 8 Start button

Fuzz

Re: Not this "pin everything to the taskbar" argument again

How small is your screen?

I can fit around 40 task buttons on a 22" screen. I have the ones I use all the time (about 15) pinned and everything else is launched by searching the start menu.

Personally I have no problem with the Windows 8 start screen apart from the way the search no longer automatically selects settings or documents when the applications are exhausted

Fuzz

Re: Stardock

are you sure it was 98. I think it might have been possible in 95 with IE 4 installed.

Ten digital radios to suit all budgets

Fuzz

price

I'll echo the comments on price, for DAB to take off in any meaningful way the price needs to come down.

I've just bought a new DAB for the car so I can listen to 6 and sports extra but in the house I have a squeezebox which uses the Internet.

For a static radio the Internet wins you get almost endless choice in stations from across the world and you don't have to worry about signal strength.

My mum has two DAB radios in her house and she listens to both of them on FM because they sound better. Too many homes are on the limit of acceptable DAB reception and people don't want to have roof top or loft aerials for the radio.

Fox to release movie downloads weeks before discs

Fuzz

endless rental

I passed on the chance to see this in the cinema because the reviews were mixed. I'd like to see the film but I don't want to buy it. I'll probably watch it once.

I don't need it before the DVD release either, I'll happily wait.

Just let me watch the film once, in HD with decent sound for a reasonable (£2-3) cost. If I can buy the film to watch as much as I like for £10 this seems reasonable to watch it once.