Posts by Andy Worth

Opera sings praises of Microsoft-browser statement

Re:@David Webb

The thing is, Opera may have included all of these features for years but they've managed to put it together in such a way that it feels shit to use. I liken it to certain smartphones - absolutely bundled with features but about as pleasant to use as having your ball hair plucked. It's just a perfect example of something technically excellent but functionally awful.

Opera's lack of browser "market share" has very little to do with MS bundling their browser with Windows and almost everything to do with poor marketing of a fairly poor product.

@David Webb

Your post made me laugh, I especially liked the French Farmer and his "WZF?"

Online campaign urges MPs to block secret expenses

Ridiculous....

I do think that it is somewhat ridiculous that they are even allowed to vote on a change in law which affects their own accountability directly. They might as well do it electronically and ask the question "Do you wish to abuse your power? Yes/No".

EU says Microsoft violated law with IE on Windows

Hahahahaha!

"Under that ruling, Microsoft agreed to separate IE from Windows"

Which will be why half the updates for IE require me to perform a system reboot because it's not at all tied into integral system components......

Realistically they need to ask upon OS install which browser you want installed - which is the only way this could possibly work for the majority of users. That said, they have to use the same rule for everyone and would have to offer the same choices on EVERY OS and not just pick on MS.

To be honest, it sounds like the Opera people are just getting pissy because despite their efforts, they still have one of the least popular browsers, at least among those whose names are relatively well known. MS's monopoly doesn't seem to have affected the take-up of Firefox, which continues to gain ground on IE.

Superworm seizes 9m PCs, 'stunned' researchers say

Re:update your systems

"no antivirus. don't need one. linux is secure by design"

Linux is "more" secure by design, there are also less viruses written for Linux than for Windows but that does not mean you can neglect to install an anti-virus. It almost sounds like you are new to Linux (because you seem almost surprised that it is so easy to use these days) - in which case I am guessing someone you know told you that you don't need an anti-virus on a Linux install.

I've heard it all before and it's a common misconception that you "can't" get a virus on a Linux machine.

Hitachi highlights gesture-controlled HD TV

Re:Only 1 problem..

Well, slightly more than one problem really. I make all sorts of "gestures" in the direction of the TV when I'm losing at various console games, and I don't even want to think about what would happen if you tried to play a Wii game.

Ok, so they could allow you to turn the feature off when you didn't want accidental, or other peoples, or gaming gestures changing the channel for you. Then you'd have to reach for the remote to re-enable it, which kind of makes it completely pointless.

Factor in to that the TV changing channels when you're simply trying to explain the plot of a film to your other half for the hundredth time and this feature seems to be the most pointless inclusion since Britney's underwear drawer.

Techies can be great at inventing stuff but this is one of the cases where someone needed to go, 'err....hang on a sec'.....

AT&T Idolises promotional texting

Bullshit from AT&T

An unsolicited text message IS spam whether they like it or not. The simple fact is that these customers never chose to opt IN to receive these messages and will have to explicitly opt OUT in order to stop receiving them.

I'm not sure which part of that AT&T reckon is not spam.

US lawmaker wants health warnings on video games

Some more health warnings

On Microwaves - May cause injury to pets if you put them inside and turn on

On Kids - Have been linked to excessive tiredness and extreme annoyance for everyone other than their own parents

On Lawyers - Known to induce greed-seeking behaviour

In fact, I demand that every lawyer and child must display a clear warning label of no less than half their size warning you of the dangers.

Ok, seriously - yes there is evidence to suggest that a very small percentage of people are susceptible to violent behaviour as a result of playing violent games (or watching violent TV etc.). However, sticking warning labels on the product will make nob all difference as I am sure that this so called lawyer is well aware. The main problem is with society itself though, but as society doesn't want to blame itself it looks for a scapegoat.

US teen clocks up 14,528 text messages

Re:Remember that americans are charged for incoming texts..

"Divide that by the average time awake (16hours) equals 14.5625......One text every 14.5625 minutes sent.."

Oops, you means 14.56 texts per hour rather, or one text every 4.12 minutes.

During school time I think this is ridiculous. Perhaps she should be paying more attention to her lessons and less to her phone.....

National Safety Council seeks total* cell-phone driving ban

Re:Passengers aren't as distracting

Well, everyone likes to twist figures to their own devices (so I take most with a pinch of salt) but it has been shown that on average a passenger makes you less likely to crash than driving alone. With the exception of young (mostly) adult men trying to impress, most people drive more considerately and carefully when they have a passenger on board.

I don't quite buy into how they will enforce this though. Does this mean that I might potentially be stopped for talking to myself, singing to the radio or giving a running commentary on how shit other peoples driving is? How would they be able to prove I was on the phone without first arresting me, as my call logs are my own business so they couldn't demand to see them? In fact all I would have to do as they got out of their car is clear my recent call list on my phone and they would have to go to the phone company to get proof.

Just for information I never use my mobile in the car and refuse to answer when I'm driving, but I still think this is a stupid law which cannot be enforced, should they change it. Perhaps instead they should start looking at the people on the road who never should have been given a licence, because they plainly are incapable of controlling a car.

Palm to take on iPhone with web 2.0 banana phone

Too far....

They've gone too far in trying to make it look curvy and hip - in making the sides curve outwards as well, it looks a bit tubby in the middle and nowhere near as sleek as its main competitors.

Take a hammer to your hard drive, shrieks Which?

@Doug Glass

"If you need absolute assurance the data is gone forever, this method will do that"

Actually, this might work in about half of cases, but a lot of the desktop-type drives I take apart still use aluminium platters so hitting them with a hammer would still leave plenty to recover. Even smashing a glass platter would probably leave enough fragments so that a forensic data recovery team could recover some of your data.

Despite Which's claim (with little knowledge or investigation), a series of wipes/writes will destroy your data enough to make it practically impossible for the would-be data thieves to get to. The only ways to be absolutely sure would be to either grind your platter back into dust or melt it, both of which would pretty much guarantee to leave no readable trace of data.

Intel accused of stealing chip virtualization, violating God's law

Umm

He argues a convincing case, perhaps he really can give Intel the secrets that will unlock the world.....

Intel's response was a classic way of them saying "Yeah......whatever...." and putting the phone down.

Twitter's veracity chewed up by Britney's four-foot vagina

Re:hmph

Yes but...

"a confession from pop celeb Spears that her vagina was four feet wide 'with razor sharp teeth.'"

has got to be the funniest thing I will read today.

Boffins bust web authentication with game consoles

Re:title...

Oooh that'll inflame the console fanboi's. Although admittedly you do wonder why they would use a PS3 and not a 360 given the difference in the prices.

Still, I can think of more interesting things to do with 200 PS3's.....

Tabloid girl's jubs freeze at -130°C

Re:A Matter of Degrees

"If you read the article (rather than just looking at the picture)"

Sorry.....there were words?

Noise-cancelling headphones head-to-head test

Prices

The article quotes a price of £195 as an online price for the Sennheisers and then there's an advertisement at the bottom of the page offering them from £139.99. Amazon have them at that price as well.

The Denon's I struggle to find at less than £200, aside from one company who offers them shipped from the U.S., but then you'll spend another £50 on shipping anyway. Oh, and the links provided now draw a blank as they have assumedly been sold.

Realistically if you take your online prices as £140 and £200, then you're paying an extra £60 for the Denon's, which from what I can see just doesn't seem worth it.

If you can fart, you can earn $10,000

@Chris C

Lighten up! I'd be willing to place a bet that more people who read this still think farts are amusing than share your point of view.

"paying actual money for this ridiculous juvenile piece of trash while people are literally starving and freezing to death in the streets"

I do hope that you're the sort of person who recycles every piece of trash, never drives unnecessarily and never wastes money on ANYTHING frivolous, otherwise that sentence is simply full of hypocrisy. I suspect it is more likely that you waste plenty of money on things that other people might not consider a necessity, while these people are still starving and freezing in the streets. Besides, regardless of any of that, who are you to decide what people can or can't spend their spare change on?

It's a dollar at the end of the day. It may be puerile but it's just a harmless bit of fun. If people want to waste their money on it then it's their choice, and I think very few people lead a wasteless enough life to be in a position to play judge and jury.

Global notebook sales finally beat desktops

Market share...

A lot of the growth in laptop sales is down to the appearance of the low-cost notebook, which makes it more financially viable than a desktop when you take everything into consideration. How that can play into Apple's hands I don't know, as they do not offer a "low cost notebook", so this Silicon Valley "insider" may just be talking out of their arse.

Last major VHS supplier ejects from tape biz

Well I read it differently.......

Where it said, "According to research by LG Electronics the average person in the UK will spend £350 ($516) on home cinema equipment this Christmas.",

I read it as, "According to a marketing ploy by LG Electronics we need to make everyone feel like the average person will be spending £350 ($516) on home cinema equipment this Christmas so that those planning not to buy anything will feel left out and left behind"

Bees on cocaine: The facts

Spider research

They already did some research of the effects of various drugs on spiders, the results were rather interesting. Go to Youtube and search for "Crack Spider" if you haven't already seen it.

Prolific penis-pill pusher gets slap on the wrist

Re:Pay spam get penis

Really? You can't see the harm of people like this and what they cost the industry in general? The amount companies (not just ISP's but any company which filters its email) spend just to combat the spam sent out so we don't spend half our working day wading through penis enlargement ads? You don't think it affects bandwidth, and particularly slows down our email systems just having to receive and process it?

Spammers should receive jail sentences and the profits from their spamming enterprises seized. I'm not sure how you'd achieve the second part of that but the fine he got takes the piss considering how much he has probably made from it.

Sky 'withdraws' from Tiscali buyout talks

Re:Idiots the lot of them

Attempted trolling = Fail

Surely nobody will fall for any statement basically saying that BT are the countries best ISP?

How Warcraft reigned supreme in 2008

@Heff

You mentioned Star Wars Galaxies and how it was mangled to please the kids who desperately wanted to be a jedi - I was actually intending to post something along those lines as well.

I remember when I started playing that game, and with a whole bunch of friends on Teamspeak we used to go to Dathomir for rancor hunts - as that was the ONLY way you could kill them. Groups used to form at the shuttle port, with 10+ people per time, and it was still about a 50-50 chance of survival.

You see, THAT was fun - that balance felt right. It didn't feel so much like a grind to me back then - but then they nerfed around with the professions and released new armour, which made players (particularly the Teras Kasi hand-to-hand) so powerful that you no longer needed a group to go kill rancors. Going out by yourself and punching a Rancor in the face until it died just didn't have the same appeal - and of course, because you no longer needed a group to hunt, people stopped playing together.

Then there was PVP - full of people exploiting little bugs so that they became more or less unbeatable. Some people would argue that it wasn't cheating because the game allowed it, but it's like using your hand in a game of football when the ref isn't looking.

The whole game descended into a mess of scriptors grinding away professions while AFK, and suddenly instead of a MMORPG, you had a load of people who just happened to be grinding individually on the same server. This was still back in the days when you had to grind professions as dictated by the jedi holocrons, and as a Jedi your character could actually die, losing the perhaps months worth of work you put into it.

Then they nerfed that too and introduced a quest based (in theory) system for becoming a jedi, meaning everyone would just go off and do these quests by themselves. Then eventually they signed the death warrant by making Jedi a selectable profession, so basically you didn't even have to work for it any more - and nerfed the character down so a fully trained jedi was weaker than even some of the other professions.

I got into roleplay with the MERPC, which saved the game for me for about a year, but it was entirely due to the other players and peoples imagination, and if anything in spite of whatever the devs threw at the game.

I can't speak for WoW so much, but it sounds to me very much like it has turned a similar corner that SWG did a few years ago. Whereas SWG alienated it's steady userbase by "noobifying" the game to try and attract more players, WoW seems to be alienating new players by catering solely for its existing userbase. Neither of these is a scenario which bodes well for the future as they both lack the balance needed.

I'd give WoW a year unless they pull something magic out of their hats. Of course there will still be people playing it in a years time, but I can forsee one or more of the other big titles coming in the following months clawing away at WoW's userbase.

Microsoft issues emergency IE patch as attacks escalate

Patch now!

Or just stop using Internet Explorer entirely......

Microsoft knew about Xbox 360 disc-scratch problem, employee claims

@Mark (first post)

The trouble is that you don't even have to "shake it around" - even just tilting the console (say for example your wife decides to dust and just tilts it a bit to dust underneath) was causing the problem. It is basically an issue with the drive not securing the discs well enough. I agree - if you decided to play a game of football with your 360 while playing a game though, you could expect it to cause problems.

"It’s worth noting that Microsoft has already issued several ‘fixes’, including a disc replacement programme for gamers and a warning sticker placed on new Xbox 360s that tilting the console with a disc inside could result in disc damage"

I loved this line from the article, or at least what they consider a fix. As opposed to actually resolving the problem by fixing the issues with the drive itself, they stick a label on it to say that any sort of movement may cause scratched discs.

To all the people defending it, saying you shouldn't move any device when it's on, I call complete bullshit on that statement. I've owned laptops with DVD drives for years that you can safely move around (or even accidentally knock a bit) while the drive is in motion without scratching crap out of your DVD's. None of the other consoles have ever suffered this problem to my knowledge - so that only leaves it being down to either shit design or production (or both).

Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

Re:If you want service, pay for it

One point which you have completely missed (like most people who seem to agree with Virgin) is that these people are already paying for a service which was mis-sold to them as an unlimited broadband offer. You say that bandwidth costs money, which I agree with, however that just makes Virgin irresponsible for offering a 50Mbps connection which STILL claims to be unlimited.

You try and put all the blame onto the consumer despite the fact that these companies still make offers of a service that they cannot possibly hope to provide. Personally I pay for a 40GB limit and never even get close to that (I download perhaps a few GB of demos and online game patches/mods in any given month, as well as the odd Linux release). If I decided that I needed more than that, I would pay for a more expensive package, but if I pay for something that claims to be unlimited then I don't expect them to throttle it because I don't use it in the way they think I should.

So if you want to blame the lack of bandwidth on anyone, blame it on the broadband companies which claim to sell "unlimited" bandwidth for silly prices. They should be brought into line to advertise and make clear exactly what their terms are, not just call it unlimited and then hide things in the small print. But it is these companies who have given the impression that bandwidth IS free, and the misleading nature of their advertising is STILL pulling in more gullible people.

So how can you blame people for assuming bandwidth is free when everything their broadband provider promised to them suggests it is so?

Apple update purges 21 security vulns from OS X

@Tim Roberts

True, but you have to admit that "Death by squirrel face" was particularly bonkers.

As soon as I saw this story I just saw the fanboi's on both sides lining up to blast/defend OS/X. Personally I'm not a mac fan and think they are overpriced, but let us just face the fact that any OS has its vulnerabilities once enough people decide to try and find them.

Web more popular than sex, says Intel

Just wondering....

Do these percentages roughly correlate with the proportion of the population who can no longer see their own private parts due to the size of their gut? Or in fact more likely, the proportion whose PARTNER can no longer see their own privates.....

Although seriously it shows that the internet, like mobile phones before it (and TV before that etc.) has become something that a large section of people now see as a necessity in their life and not just a luxury. I remember when mobiles were considered a luxury item and now it seems almost nobody can manage without one. Likewise, net access used to be the domain of the geek, but now it's something that everyone needs.

Original lightsabre sale brings big, big bucks

Re:What a piece of crap

"It never looked like such a flaky bit of metal junk in the films, surely?"

But remember, that WAS a long time ago in a galaxy far away so it has travelled a long way and is rather old.....

McCain campaign sells unwiped Blackberry for $20

@ Apocalypse Later

Not that I buy into McCain being too severely disabled to be able to use a computer - because I don't - but how does that excuse him from the responsibility of taking on a member of staff who can cover for his lack of I.T. knowledge?

Personally, if I had a campaign using a large amount of computer-based data and knew nothing about I.T., one of the first things I would do is to hire a decent tech consultant. It's just management 101 really to take on staff who understand the things you don't.

World's first 'thought images' seen on screen

Re:I'm sure it'll be misused by the advertisers

This dream was brought to you by Lightspeed Briefs....

Atari promises it won't suck this time

Re:Ahem...

I was thinking along those very lines. Games released off the back of films are "almost" without exception, shit. I'm actually struggling to think of one that was good, although I'm sure that somebody will be happy to point a couple out.

Abbey IT upgrade 'chaos' hits small biz banking

Re:firefox 3

"Got through the hoops and was told that firefox 3 isn't supported only firefox 2 is supported"

Sorry, so their "upgrade" involved moving the system so that it only supports the version of the browser which the developers say they are soon to stop releasing security patches for? With Firefox being I believe the second most popular browser that must affect a large number of people.

I think I read that on the Reg anyway, that the plan was to drop support for Firefox 2 at some fairly nearby date.

Yahoo! eyes! Sarin!

I was going to say....

....Lets just hope that Sarin doesn't get gas!

Mine is the one with the gas mask in the pocket...

America loses 1.9 million jobs in 11 months

Economic "Experts"....

Personally I love the way that these so-called experts now talk about the recession and hopeful recovery of the economy like they know what is going on. Even more, I love the fact that they do this despite most of them being completely surprised by the collapse of the economy.

Plenty of normal (see non-"expert") people, including myself, have seen this coming years ago as it was obvious that the housing market was non-sustainable and people were having to borrow too much. I even avoided buying another house (after selling mine) and started renting 6 years ago as I expected this to happen even before now.

Sadly, none of this helps the people who are losing their jobs and we can only hope that if the economy recovers at some point that some changes are made to help prevent it from happening again. I don't hold my breath though.

BOFH: The Christmas party

Re:Paintballs in the freezer

You don't need to freeze the paintball completely, just keeping them at a relatively low temperature keeps the shell more stiff and means that they flex less in the air (and thus fly more straight). But then I'm going back nearly 18 years to when I used to go paintballing more or less every week.

If you buy decent paintballs, you don't gain any advantage from doing this these days.

As for freezing the shell, well unless your gun is very gentle on the balls (!!!??!) then you'll end up with them shattering and exploding inside your barrel when you fire.

I think that the most painful thing I've ever been hit with (from a paintball gun) was probably a boiled sweet. Unless you count the time that I was shot in the knackers from point-blank range, which hurt quite a lot more.....

MacBook Air owners get laid

Re:Steve 'Dick Turpin' Jobs

"Thankfully I rely on a PC from a manufacturer whose support is second to none"

It must be pretty poor if it comes second to receiving no support at all..... :)

As long as you're not talking about PC World and their "tech guys" or whatever they are called this week, which you have to pay additional money for the privilege of using (???) then you might well be right.

Doctor amputates boy's arm using SMS instructions

@Alan Potter

You should get a better phone. Predictive text understands both words on both my phone and my girlfriends. Although it also understands LOL, WTF and ROFL........

I can almost picture the entire conversation in txt speak between the two doctors.

Microsoft preps IE 8 for the web-challenged

So.....

Is it that IE8 is actually broken, or as I suspect that IE8 is actually working properly as the first standards compliant browser and breaking websites that were designed for IE6/IE7?

So either way it is Microsofts fault, either through breaking their new baby or for having a broken one for such a long time and persuading everyone to break their websites in the same way.

Blu-ray backers highlight rising demand

Blu-Ray quality

Well, I got Blu-Ray with my PS3 and was sat watching it and not noticing much difference between it and the upscaled DVD I had been watching just before. Personally I thought it was a right rip-off.

Then I went and got my eyes tested and found out I needed glasses to un-blur my eyesight! Turns out it looked pretty good after all, but my eyes were too pants to see it.....

I agree with Anonymous Hero though in that they need to get many more Blu-Rays released at the same time as the DVD equivalent. The majority of people wouldn't bother with a BD copy of a film they already own on DVD so they need to get them on offer at the same time.

I think this is another reason for slow take-up as well, as when DVD came out it was a massive improvement over the quality of VHS, so worth re-buying the best of your films. With Blu-Ray it's more of a case of just supplementing your collection by buying the odd BD copy of a really spectacular, effects-laden film.

Hands-free kits make drivers even more dangerous

@Martin

"The upshot of this is, despite your stupid assertion, most motorbike riders are the most defensive and sensible drivers on the road."

This may be true for 9 out of 10 motorbike riders. However, the other 1 in 10 just happen to be among the biggest idiots on the road and give the remaining riders a bad name. As you suggest, it is much more dangerous to the biker than the car driver when they drive dangerously, thus making the "idiot bikers" perhaps the biggest idiots around.

Unfortunately people see these small proportion of bikers and tar every biker with the same brush. A sad fact but that's just the way it works.

Believe it or not I've seen a cyclist using a mobile phone while riding their bike down a busy road one-handed. Considering how vulnerable you are as a cyclist, riding one-handed next to traffic, weaving around a bit because they don't have full control, must be just about the most dangerous thing you can do on the road next to a good game of tiddlywinks on the M1.

Apple unleashes not-crap iPhone iPod earbuds

Meh....

Why buy or wait for Apple ones anyway? I got myself a set of Sennheiser MM50iP which work in the exact same way as the ones Apple provide with the iPhone but with much better sound quality. They are about £35-40 if bought online, have a mic for hands free and a button which works the same as on Apple's set.

I admit that I know very little about earphones in general, but these sound pretty good to me and stay in my ears so they'll do me just fine.

ASA slaps beer-punting ladyboy

@Pierre

"Sex is bad, don't do it. If you MUST have sex (for reproductive purpose), then don't get pleasure out of it."

Ahh....so that's where I've been going wrong all these years!

As for the ad, well if I'm honest it would do anything BUT make me want to buy the beer.

US Army in $50m video game upgrade

Re:War Games?

Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?

Unofficial fix issued for Vista networking flaw

Lol

I just knew when I clicked on the comments that there would be plenty of posts saying things along the lines of "The unofficial fix is to install XP".

The sad thing is that it is actually true.

US prosthetic todger pair plead guilty to conspiracy

Re:So who did they conspire to defraud?

Your comparison is not even close. I could technically use a pen to commit crime if I stuck it into a persons eye or used it to write out my ledger of tax evasion. But, like a computer, a pen has millions of completely legitimate uses and are not advertised as tools to assist you in breaking the law.

Aside from perhaps as a stag/hen night jape, I can't think of any legitimate use for a realistic fake penis and bag of synthetic piss, considering I have real ones of both at my disposal.

I do agree with Brent Gardner to a point, that it is not really your employers business if you drink or take drugs in your own time if it does not affect your work. I'm not sure if tests like these will ever be introduced in the UK (or indeed if they already have) but it would require some change to your contract of employment in order to implement.

Personally it doesn't bother me, as I don't use illegal drugs and only very rarely drink, but I can see that some view it as a breach of their right to privacy.

Jamming convicts' mobiles works

Better solution in the UK....

They just need to invent an electrical field which can make mobiles explode. Prisoners here are not supposed to have a mobile phone anyway, so it (according to a prison nurse I knew) is quite common for them to be stored up the ass. Exploding the phones whould sort out the population issue in prisons.

If that is too extreme for you, a field which forces phones to ring. Then you just look for the prisoner whose ass is playing the Nokia tune, or vibrating steadily with a very pleased look on his face.

iPhone developer stoops to straight bribery

@Joe K

Well, basically if you ignore the 5 star system and actually read the reviews it is pretty easy to determine a decent app from a crap one. If you can mentally filter out the obviously very biased reviews or the ones left by a whiner then you can get a good mental picture.

Unfortunately it is always a feature of any public rating system, that some people will just give either a full rating or the minimum one, just because they lack the intelligence to justify anything in-between. So you take note of the reviews that look to be written by people with a reasonable level of intelligence and you'll soon get the picture.

Ofcom: Where's the broadband beef?

Get caller ID

I have Caller ID on my home phone and don't answer any call that comes from a withheld number. this cuts the chances of receiving a nuisance or telemarketing call that I cannot identify. I think if you go for the privacy option on a BT account, the basic caller ID is even free now, or was when I took it up anyway.

Those silent calls are really annoying though, but you can get your own back by ringing the same companies freephone number repeatedly (After dialling 141 before the number of course) and sitting silent on the end of the phone until they hang up. Not that I've ever done that of course, it just sounds like fun.....

The Apple Armada - Still worthy of the Jolly Roger?

Re:Apple won the home?

I was to say, since when did Apple "win the home"? I can name plenty of people who own a PC at home but only a rare few who own a Mac. The only area that the Mac has ever really taken a hold of is with the "creatives".

If anything, Apple made a mistake by aiming their whole brand at image over competitive pricing. Macs have always been the territory of things you buy if you have more money than sense, because there's no other good reason to own one at home unless you work with the creative software a lot. I remember a friend trying to convert me to Mac quite a few years ago, showing me how it can emulate Windows and run Windows apps. but then I pointed out that so can my Windows PC, and it cost me a quarter of the price.

Just like the iPhone, Apple devices are mostly overpriced and sold as a status symbol. I'm not denying that some of them (including the iPhone and iPods) look great and work very nicely, but for me they went the wrong way. The trouble is that they left it too late and now can't change. If they cheapen themselves now, they lose that part of the market they have and it'll be a gamble to see if they can steal any of the existing PC market share.