Posts by MattyB

Just rang Orange...

.... Was told their terms and conditions were clear; no cancellation.

Rang Ofcom, was told to ring Orange back and quote General Condition 9.6:

9.6 Communications Providers shall:

give its Subscribers adequate notice not shorter than one month of

any modifications likely to be of material detriment to that Subscriber;

(b) allow its Subscribers to withdraw from their contract without penalty

upon such notice; and shall,

(c) inform the subscriber of their ability to terminate the contract without penalty if the proposed modification is not acceptable to the Subscriber.

Ofcom also said if Orange refuse again, ask for the refusal in writing so that it can be provided to Ofcom and the Ombudsmen as evidence.

Off to ring Orange again now, got a feeling I'm going to be playing the long game on this one.

Sales team are Rubbish

Just tried to order one on their website, came up with an error on all three of my cards, so I rang the sales team who:

1) Had a go at me because obviously I'm not smart enough to enter my card details correctly.

2) Told me it was my banks fault (three different banks?)

3) Told me I would have to wait 5 days and then ring them again to place an order as I'd "confused their system by calling".

I will never be giving Nokia any of my money after my experience just now.

As Usual......

...... A wonderful piece of engineering by Apple.

The demo's that I've seen seem to show that Apple has taken a gamble on people not wanting to multi-task in favor of making sure that whatever you happen to be running runs smoothly.

Personally, I'm in two minds. the 64GB version would be adequate to replace the personal laptop I carry around on business trips (ok, it's a macbook), but I'm not loving the idea of not being able to watch a movie while I web browse and clear up the days Emails.

But, I can see a legitimate use for this device in my home. I spend hours a day with my laptop open, either web browsing or reading articles, often with the stereo or TV on. At times like this I could easily replace my laptop with this device. Unfortunately I can't see myself being able to do without the laptop during that one in ten time that I need to do more than one thing at once.

End result (as I have just stated to the other half with puppy dog eyes) "I won't buy one for myself, but if somebody wants to buy me one I'm not gonna say no"

Not on a Socket A processor

Wikipedia article here....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSE2

AMD's implementation of SSE2 wasn't until the AMD64 platform, which as the poster above pointed out requires at least a socket 754 motherboard.

So.......

......It's an Acer Aspire Revo?

Actually this may not be a bad thing, this credit crunch business has hit my shiny thing budget pretty hard. More choice usually results in lower prices so I may be able to convince the other half it's a worthwhile purchase if the price drops accross the board.

Another Reason.....

Why I will be running Cat6 around my next house when we come to decorate each room.

Wireless is incredibly unreliable on my home network, and powerline has allowed my downstairs neighbor access to my uPnP server as the "encyrption" included with the powerline adapters is XP/Vista only and my uPnP server is on my NAS.

Although I must admit, I'm much more excited than the missus about the prospect of a fully distributed gigabit LAN.

Not a Bail out, a development loan

"They got a $465mil in "bail out" money and post a $1mil "profit?"

Isn't that really a $464mil LOSS?"

They didn't receive a bailout, they qualified for a development loan which will be paid back with the profits from a more commercially viable electric sedan that they will develop as a result of the loan.

@ Man Outraged

Where does it say that El Reg have one in their office to test?

Yeah but look at all it can do....

I've had a 209 since November last year and in the time up to now I've only just begun to realise what it can do.

Initially I just wanted a mirrored NAS that I could store all my movies and music on after having lost 300GB worth in a hard disk crash, but soon after I realised it could:

- Stream via uPnP via built in Twonky Server

- Act as an iTunes server

- host an FTP server accessible over the internet for uploading and downloading files.

- Same as above over HTTP

- Design and Host my website, forum and blog.

- Forward IP information to a 3rd party DNS company

- Stream music through a web interface over the internet

- Host an Email server

- Host 2 printers and share them over the network

- Act as DHCP server for the network

- Connect to IP cameras on the network and act as a server for them

- backup to a USB drive via a one touch button (slow as hell for an initial load but can properly sync rather than wipe and reload everything on the target drive).

- Act as a TimeMachine backup drive (with a bit of tweaking)

- Act as a torrent and HTTP/FTP download server.

- Join the Mule file sharing network

And I'm sure there's more I'm leaving out, I've used quite a few of these features but not all of them. Sure, there are some I will likely never use but I doubt anyone will manage to use ALL of the above.

And the QNAP team are constantly pushing out updates with new features, and the QPKG facility allows third party software to be installed and accessed via the web interface.

I'm more than satisfied with my decision to buy the 209, even though transfer speeds aren't that great. If the 219 addresses these issues then I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a good all round NAS product.

Why?

I still don't understand why people spend so much money on digital music streaming - especially when using loss-full media formats such as MP3.

What I did was buy a Netgear MP101 second hand off of eBay for £14 and connect it to my existing stereo Hi-Fi. Slotted into my existing home media network nicely, receives everything off of my NAS drive (has a built in uPnP server) and doesn't look half bad sat in the Hi-Fi rack.

Anti-trust?

"Of course if MS did this with Zune marketplace (or whatever they have for it) we'd hear no end of anti-trust arguments - why is it Apple can continue to get away with it?"

PURELY playing devils advocate, but both stores offer DRM free music downloads. The argument that iTunes only allows synchronisation with approved devices does hold some water in my book, but it's always been just a tool for synching music with an iPod. Unfortunately it's now grown into something much much more so people are quick to argue that it's an anti-trust violation as it doesn't allow synchronisation with 3rd party devices. To be honest the reason is probably also to do with Apple not wanting 3rd party devices messing up iTunes libraries, as well as protecting their market with the iPod.

Lets face it, the iPod has basically saved Apple's neck and seen use of Mac's in the home increase alot over the past 5 years or so, Apple aren't going to want to give that up. I wouldn't either in there position TBH, but that doesn't make it a valid reason, perhaps it should be seen in an EU court, much like the IE / WMP/ Windows issues.

Blimey.....

This takes me back....

"some of the early GSM handsets needed the whole card to hold the SIM in place"

I remember my first mobile, a Phillips 301, it was the size of a housbrick and it took the credit card sized SIMs. It had a single line, sideways scrolling LCD display. Used to take forever to read a text message as there was no way of forcing the scroll. Oh, and it could store a total of.............. TEN TEXT MESSAGES. That being said, I never lost the thing once.

A reasonable update

I've bought one of these for my other half as her birthday is in a few days and she's been in the market for a new laptop. It far out-performs my mid-2008 macbook, the graphics chipset makes this laptop, for me anyway.

I've discovered I'm slowly becoming an Apple convert, I was brought up on IBM clones with DOS and Windows, but now I'm finding it's worth paying the premium for Apple hardware to get something that acts, looks, and feels a lot better (in my mind). I was slightly concerned about the whispers (read: yells) I had heard about Apple's customer support, but the one time I needed them (for a failed DVD drive in my macbook) they handled everything promptly and efficiently, even offering to replace my damaged media.

Each to their own at the end of the day, personally I don't mind paying the extra for a machine that meets my requirements and looks good while doing it :-) It's certainly better that the 17" Tosh that the other half has been lugging about.

QNAP NAS + USB drive backup

Personally I have a QNAP 209 with two 1TB drives, mirrored and then a seperate 1TB USB drive for a seperate backup (to protect against catastrophic failure of the QNAP). Good thing being that the QNAP has a one touch backup to USB drives so anytime I make a significant update to my video library I reconnect the USB drive and hit the backup button

Sooooo Many choices.....

A PS3 or Xbox360 can stream from a UPNP source (bot sure if your NAS has a UPNP server). Failing that your best bet (IMO) is to get an Apple TV or a nettop PC and install XBMC (it will install on either, check youtube for a how to on Apple TV). XBMC plays back most file types and will check with online databases to download DVD thumbnails for all your files.