Posts by xj25vm

Limitations

The thing has obvious limitations - and there are problems with it. But the article reeks of negativism and subjectivity. Envy or bias anyone?

3g/4g in laptops and netbooks

Well, if integrated WiMax or LTE will work as well as integrated 3G is working now - when various manufacturers advertise laptops and netbooks with integrated 3G - but the model is conveniently unavailable for the UK market - I give up.

I've been after a netbook or small laptop with integrated 3G for over a year now. HP has a Mini with integrated 3G for the UK market - but not available in the UK. Same with Packard Bell Butterfly. Toshiba NB-200 used to have a version with 3G - but the new NB-305 doesn't have a version with 3G. Why has the availability of integrated 3G been so poor in the UK? MSI, Acer, Asus netbooks - available with integrated 3G, but not in the UK.

Oh well, just wondering here.

Thank you Lewis for another heavily biased article

So much for journalistic standards. Or lack of.

I guess it is impossible to juts present the facts and stay objective. The temptation to smear left right and centre at what you don't agree with is far too great.

"GM feels that "range anxiety" is a major reason why its original EV-1 battery car of the 1990s failed."

No kidding? EV-1 failed? Or has it been pulled off the market because California watered down it's zero emission requirements - and GM couldn't be arsed? Or somebody received some kickbacks from who knows which corner? Whatever the reason, the EV-1 didn't fail - you can't call it failure when the people it was leased to were begging to keep the cars. That's just a way of avoiding the fact that, for whatever reason, they have taken a moronic decision at the time - and now, 15 years later - can't even produce a car as good as their own EV-1. But they do have enough money to invest in useless PR stories. Nothing changed then.

"and manufacturers can't publicise the worst-case (or even perhaps the likely-case) figures. If they did, nobody would ever buy their products."

Typical example of pulling a statement out of your backside - then passing it on as some sort of hard fact. Says who? Based on what? Well, don't let the facts get in the way of a good story.

"This devastating account by a Car & Driver journo of his recent failed attempt to make a round trip of 181 miles by Roadster (rated range 244 miles) shows that "range anxiety" is definitely a big deal for a prospective battery car purchaser, ..."

'Devastating'? Did anybody die? Has anybody lost a limb? Has there even been any damage to the car? Hmm - not that I can find in that article. Gratuitous use of adjectives. Another ticked box. You are certainly qualified to write. But not for an IT or technical publication. Or any serious journalistic publication. More likely for a soap opera. Your skills will be valued there.

I can't even be bothered to dispute the facts of the article (are there any?) or the fact that GM know they have a crappy product and are slinging mud at (what they perceive to be) their competition. Or that fact that the idiot in the linked article doesn't understand that Tesla is a different product then a regular car - and should have made sure he was happy with his purchase before dishing out 130 grand for it. I will merely try my very best to forget that I have even wasted my time reading such a low grade, biased, undocumented, unprofessional, subjective piece of writing.

Definitely done it wrong

Yeah - he must have sprayed a heck of a lot of propellant in there. This stuffs tends to make a bit of a flame - but with an appropriate quantity - it is a fairly brief flame - not enough to burn anything (except some singed hair or eye brows).

It also works a treat for setting the tyre bead on the wheel rim - brilliant stuff. And the effect is quite spectacular :-)

It's been available for a good while

Trevor wrote:

"From time to time, I am still impressed by technology."

Well, maybe you wouldn't have had to wait so long to be impressed with technology - if you didn't keep your eyes firmly planted on the big boys - Microsoft, Cisco et all. Asterisk runs on Linux, and could do a whole bunch of this stuff and more for years.

"There's nothing in Office Communication Server that a telco or really good PBX hasn’t been able to do for about a decade now. The difference is that now you can run the server for this kind of thing in a VM on second-rate hardware. If you are running the client on a physical box and have a decent headset you are off to the races.

I don’t know about you, but actually do find that kind of cool. Not too long ago this would have been completely beyond the reach of any SME. PBXes were too expensive, and the software solutions were similarly priced. Today, OCS and it’s various competitors are priced right, with only the complication of the install and maintenance being a preventative factor. Five years from now, I am sure the administration of something like OCS will be so simple that every SME out there would be able to host one if they so chose."

Again. Asterisk is free. It runs on top of a free and open source operating system. There are people running it on 266MHz ARM processors. I run it on old pc's starting from 500MHz. It can do Interactive Voice Menu's, Music on Hold, Queuing, voice mail, voicemail over email. It can plug into mobile phones and use a mobile phone as an outside line. It can talk to SIP and IAX clients - software and hardware - and a whole bunch of other protocols. It can plug into a ham radio network. It can do conferencing. Actually, it can do lot's of things. Just look it up. And it could do this for years and years. I have it installed in small companies starting from 5 employees.

Yes, it does require skills to install and configure. But in terms of software and hardware costs - it doesn't get more affordable then that. It is free. People the world over use it in large call centres, small companies, as well as at home to do all sorts of work for them.

OK - so OCS can integrate with AD. But you can make Asterisk do that as well. Samba can talk to AD - and with a little script trickery, you could make Asterisk pull info from there. And that, by itself - is not exactly a revolutionary, killer feature.

Oh, and there are quite a few other software PBX's out there - I only happen to be most familiar with Asterisk.

So rolling your eyes over and being impressed with Microsoft latest gizmo seems somehow unwarranted to me.

Promo alert

"Some two years in the making, it aims to simplify the building of business database applications, particularly at the departmental or small business level, but to do so in a way that respects Microsoft's current ideas about best-practice software architecture."

Wouldn't it be possible to have a way of flagging articles like these in El Reg, or keeping them in a separate section, so that we all know which ones are pure unadulterated promotion - without any critical analysis - and save ourselves the effort of reading them, please? I thought this was The Register, not an in-flight magazine for gullible executives.

Battery life and pc compatibility

Considering they are to be used while out and about, battery life is rather an important aspect. Either including manufacturer's claimed figures, or running a real life test with each pair of headphones would have been useful for comparison purposes.

Another useful bit of information would have been compatibility with pc's. I would fancy a pair of these while around the house, or out of the house but in the close vicinity of my laptop - listening to music without being tethered. I would guess the Kleer format is not compatible - but are all the other (bluetooth) ones automatically compatible?

Yes, but when?

Well, it's all great. But they've been mentioning Bobcat for possibly more then a year an a half. I also have the feeling that Intel is artificially restricting Atom capabilities - for fear of eating into their more expensive products. However, Intel has been selling Atoms now for, what, 2 years or more? It's not only about spec, it's about market share as well. Even if their processor will be better, showing up 3-4 years late is not going to help.

Hmm

'In an interview with that newspaper, he said: "I have to admit that I myself was shocked at how extreme this genre is, and how deranged the imaginations are in this universe.

"But we’re not showing the works for the sake of displaying child pornography. We’re looking for a debate on the issue. So if people are offended by it then they should by all means speak out and say so."'

I don't really get it. So what's there to debate? Even by his own admition, this is the product of some seriously disturbed people. Why feed on their output? I'm a bit lost here.

Indeed

Can't help but join the chorus: WTF? Intel is mainly a hardware company (if you exclude various bits of drivers they develop). What do they have to do with a security software company? Do their *chips* require antivirus protection? Their chips run all sorts of different software on all sort of different OS's - what does that have to do with McAfee? Will they bribe now OEM's not only to use their chips, but their antivirus as well (see Dell case)? Does anybody at Intel understand how computers work?

I would have thought that buying a complementary hardware business (like Nvidia, to compete directly with AMD+ATI) would have made more sense. Or even some OS company - be it RedHat, Suse, Ubuntu, or anything else. Then they could have sold preloaded servers, with everything built and loaded in house.

Oh well, I must be missing the point here.

Re: Advantages of LiquidMetal

Barbarossa wrote:

"The best of both worlds is to have a part made of a lightweight porous closed-cell ceramic and then to fill the spaces with a LiquidMetal alloy (think of a brick soaking up molten aluminum and then cooling.) "

Well, can't say that I'm an expert in alloys - but even I can see that when your metal/alloy is going to expand and contract due to variations in temperature - your porous ceramic is going to shatter into a million pieces. I think you need to rethink a bit your strategy.

Also, how exactly is your ceramic porous, if it is closed cell? It's either one or the other.

Maintenance

Oh yes, what a delightful thing. A kitchen full of uber-complicated gadgets, software, appliances, processors etc. etc. Plenty of people can barely cope psychologically with their car or computer being defective -having to wait for it to be fixed and having to foot the bill. How wonderful it will be when everything in the house will go nuts, the wrong food will be served (and suggested), the lights will be stuck on the wrong mood, the hologram chef will keep on talking bonkers or go round like a scratched vinyl disc.. All this while waiting for the appointment with the fancy engineer to come and reboot the system, apply a new firmware, run an antivirus check, find that out-of-production spare part. Well, you get my drift - I think I will be happy to lay on my sofa and have some rest after a day of stress in work, thank you.

iPlayer over 3G + iPlayer website

@Stuart Castle

I don't know about other networks, but I have watched plenty of times BBC iPlayer over Three with 3G dongle on my laptop. So at least they don't seem to ban it. Maybe it is BBC who detects and stops mobile phone browsers from accessing it?

On a different note - what do people think of the 'new' and 'improved' BBC iPlayer website. As far as I'm concerned, it looks like they tried to fix what was not broken. They turned a fully functional website, which could be accessed easily and content could be found with a simple search or by browsing categories, into a more modern looking, but useless jazzy interface. All of a sudden page content is structured all over the screen, with things laid out in columns, rows, expanding boxes and everything in between - all at the same time. Menus left, menus right, suggestion boxes. I really can't make heads or tails as to how this is better then the old layout. It certainly looks slicker - but it's twice as difficult to find something.

The problem is with the development model

I use Thunderbird as my daily mail (and calendar app), and although I love the 'idea' of Thunderbird - something feels more and more wrong with it. With every new version and subversion - if feels like things are going in the wrong direction. Yes, some of the new features are useful, and overall, it serves me well. But what is happening with Mozilla Foundation is worrying. If feels less and less like a real FOSS project - and more and more like a typical, corporate software development environment. You can't help but notice less and less focus on the real user. And all these comments are aimed at Firefox too.

One of the things that I always loved about true FOSS projects is how focused they are on the user. One developer (or a team of developers) get together, and work hard to write a piece of software that satisfies a need. FOSS projects always felt so functional. None of that marketing driven non-sense - and extra bells and useless features - to justify a 'new version'. None of the 'let's change our product because the competition has done so as well'. Sure, there are projects where the aesthetics and bells are high on the agenda (something like Gnome comes to mind). But these projects would be interested in bells and whistles due to their very own nature. A browser and an email client is a functional piece of software. It needs to be fast, efficient, secure, do a good job. When the front page/upgrade page of Firefox featured in bold and enthusiastic mode their promotion of 'personas' as their new killer feature (I don't think it was called that, but it was certainly allocated a lot of space) - I felt sick in the stomach. I know this. I've seen it before. When you use a piece of commercial software for years - which is good, and efficient, and stable. And all of a sudden the company that makes it is taken over by marketing people, and they start adding features of little use, and turn it into a bug ridden piece of useless bell-ware. Because they have to justify new versions and attract new customers and sales.

And here within lies the problem. Mozilla might be not for profit - but the people working for it are not. They have families, they have mortgages, they have jobs. And they have to hang onto those jobs. And justify their salaries. And make lots of noise about it. And make sure their jobs keep on rolling along. Pure, typical corporate culture. A typical FOSS project can afford to add just necessary features - and stop when nothing else is needed. But not one where people are paid money.

Just as a final point - an aspect which typifies what seems to be happening at Mozilla. Thunderbird and Lightning project have needed desperate work in certain essential and very functional aspects for years. One is getting rid of the mork database format from various back-end bits of Thunderbird. Mork is an outdated and inefficient database format (even by the admission of various people involved with the project) and a resource hog. It also makes it nearly impossible to let other apps talk to the data stored by Thunderbird. The other is the Lightning/Sunbird calendar project, which is still quite slow, needs polishing, and a lot of extra useful functionality - one of them being, critically, in the are of syncing with a calendar server and other calendar devices (SyncML for mobile sync etc.). All this is potentially very useful stuff - but it is not sexy. So it is rather low priority and it stays low priority and it sees little to no progress at Mozilla. A true FOSS project would have handled first the high functionality, non sexy stuff. Not creating personas and other jazzy non-sense that adds little to the usefulness of the app.

iPhone promotion

Sometimes I wonder if the Reg is not an iPhone/Apple promoter in disguise. It just dawned on me that, for all the proclaimed lack of affinity for the above product and company in the Reg editorial department, there isn't a week without at least one article about them. Yes, El Reg might be bashing above mentioned product/company - but they are still keeping them in the news. After all - that's what it takes. If they would be completely ignoring them - that would, after all, be much worse for Apple and their products, wouldn't it?

Confusing

"It also disclosed that no private companies, other than its own IT service providers and those contracted by councils to deliver services, such as BT, are able to access the CIS. It stressed that private sector companies are only able to do so on a restricted basis."

So, which one is it? No private company, or a whole bunch of IT suppliers (anybody knows how many are there) working with councils, or all private companies, but on a 'restricted' basis?

Well done terrorists - you done it after all

It looks like the terrorists have achieved their goals after all. Turning our society in a bunch of fear mongering, suspicious, out of our minds lunatics who have willingly sacrificed their freedom, quality of life, humanity - because we are obsessed with absolute, abject fear.

So, according to this radio advert, every loner, slightly missfit, miss-adjusted, everybody who is a little bit weird, a little bit unusual, a bit non-conformist, uncommon in any way - will end up being the target and victim of our 'safety-for-all' antiterrorism effort. All we have to do is just keep our heads down and act like a flock of sheep - making sure we don't do anything different then the next guy - and the next after, and the next million. I was brought up in a communist regime - and this all starts to look pretty much the same. We were told the same things by the internal 'security' police about keeping an eye on our neighbours for the sake of the 'mother country'. My goodness, it really looks like one of those scary futuristic films. When the hell did people stop having any balls and started caring so little about their freedom and their soul?

So it gets read of crap - and we get something useful in exchange

This is nothing new - it has been around for a while. Even during WWII various countries (including Britain) were producing natural gas on small scale to power vehicles and other machinery. Small biogas home digesters seem to be very popular in India and other countries in warmer climates. Search the web for "kristianstad biogas" and see an example of a large scale application of biogas use in Sweden - where the biological waste of an entire city (including recyclable rubbish) is used to produce biogas for electricity, heat and transportation.

OK - it seems that there isn't enough of it to replace a significantly large proportion of our energy use. But I suggest a different way of looking at it. This is crap that we don't want, don't need and it costs us money to get rid of (including any compost type material from household waste). This process will turn it into a form of energy which can be used in various forms (electricity production, heat production, transport) in the local economy. That, plus perfectly harmless liquid fertilizer at the end of the process - which can be used straight away by the agriculture in the fields. How can that be bad? Maybe it's not as profitable as oil, but we are talking about a process which happens here, in the local economy. Not buying energy in various forms from foreign countries.

If we assume that financially it is barely paying for itself - when you factor in the fact that it also keeps wealth in the national economy, it has positive ecological impact, it generates some employment locally and it gets rid of stuff we have no need for - that surely adds up to something more then desireable.

And to the above poster - it is true that raw biogas comes with sulphur componds in various forms - but it seems that this can be solved at the production point using not very complicated or expensive (industrially speaking) biogas scrubbing methods. Just see google.

I don't understand why so much opposition.

How about high quality 3G first

I don't know about others - but I just can't understand the move to 4G yet. I mean, the networks are congested as they are - and 3G is not running at full capacity at the user's end. And the mobile providers (and the ISP's) are complaining that we are using too much data and paying too little for it. I say, if they invest properly in 3G capacity - and I can get good and clear 1mbs or 2 mbs everywhere I go - I will be happy with 3G. What is the point in them spending money on 4G - when they didn't spend enough money so that we have enough of the theoretical max 7.2Mbs enough of the time? How am I going to be better off with their 4G networks at max 70mbs - when I will probably still get 300kbs because of insufficient network capacity?

Title

Oh dear - so AMD are struggling a bit. I have to confess that, in spite of having bought mainly Intel for myself in the last few years - because I was after ultra low power and long battery life laptops, I am still a fan of AMD deep down in my heart. Please, no flame wars now. They just have that underdog, endearing quality about them. Still struggling along, still doing their best, at good value prices. And I have still bought many desktops for clients with AMD processors all this time. Their desktop processors are perfectly decent and good value.

No matter if they manage to close the gap on Intel or not, I am still of the opinion that they are necessary. Along with VIA (and increasingly the ARM crowd, in a round-about way, if you will) - the only direct competition in the field to Intel. And as the Dell settlement of the other week showed - we certainly need some healthy competition in the industry.

So where is the big advantage?

TBH, I am a bit puzzled by all this bru-ha-ha surrounding contactless payments integrated in credit/debit cards. You still have to have your card with you, you still have to present it at the check-out/till. They will still ask you for your pin - just not every time. The major difference is that, instead of inserting the card in the card reader for the sensor to read it, you are going to wave it within a few centimetres of the sensor. I really can't comprehend what is the big progress. Take the current system, ask people for their PIN at random, not on every transaction, limit it to £15 per transaction - and it's exactly the same. Without rolling out a completely new set of equipment/infrastructure. I'll be darned if I understand where is the big progress.

Another thing that I find a bit of a paradox is that with all this chip+pin - there was less of an incentive for a street mugger to get your cards - as they became less and less useful on their own - as the chip+pin implementation was covering more and more premises. Definitely less useful then being mugged for good old fashion cash. Now we are turning a full circle - and getting mugged for your cards may just become attractive again. They could (at least try and) use the stolen cards - no signature or pin required (at least for a few transactions, anyway). The cards would have value even to a low tech would-be mugger. How funny history can be sometimes.

TalkTalk has been an MVNO several times already

I'm assuming this is just a statement from TalkTalk copied and pasted as an article. Wasn't really anybody at The Reg able to spot the fact that TalkTalk has been an MVNO for many, many a year now? Just not a very successful one, perhaps. I have been with TalkTalk mobile for about 1.5 years, starting from somewhere early 2006. This was using T-Mobile as a carrier.

Then there was Talk Mobile (single 'Talk' - not two of them!). I know, very smart of them - trying to confuse their own customers. With different set of support phone numbers - just so that you had to spend the whole day figuring out which TalkTalk MVNO department you really belonged to. I believe this was using O2's network - but I'm not completely sure on that. Definitely using a different carrier then TalkTalk mobile.

Then they had FreshMobile (which apparently closed this spring) - and another MVNO which I can't remember. OK, you might argue that FreshMobile actually was part of Carphone Warehouse - but the other two are more obvious - just look at the names.

So please - the article should really read - "TalkTalk is to (re)launch (another) own mobile service".

And to El Reg - I am disappointed.

I see ...

... just what the world needed. Another NAS/file server product, based on proprietary protocols and standards. My question is - if that motherboard dies - can you just pull out the hard disk(s), plug it/them into a 'normal' computer and extract your data - or you're stuffed because of their proprietary RAID-like (but-not-really-RAID) format? And please don't suggest buying another one of these to solve your problem - because in few years time there might not be one for sale (or a follow-up/compatible model), the line might have been discontinued etc.

Also, even if (theoretically) you can extract the data - I assume you wouldn't be able to just plug the hard-disk(s) into another proprietary NAS from another manufacturer and be on your way in 15 minutes with minimum re-configuration (like you would be if you ran a Linux RAID box, for example). You would have to sit and wait while everything is being copied over, then go through re-configuring your new (and different) NAS product all over again.

OK, I'll grant you that for those who don't want to get their hands dirty with configuration files and real RAID - it is less technical to use (until you run into real trouble). But please, do make the point that going down the route of a Linux (or some other *NIX) RAID system based on regular/commodity hardware of some sort has the advantage of a much broader compatibility and flexibility - and quicker recovery time in case of (specially) hardware failure.

Hmm

Well, can't claim to be an expert in the field - but the Chinese have been selling small full electric cars in the US for few years now. And the new Chevy Volt (which the stolen research I suppose was for) can only do 40 miles on electric only (apparently). Can't help but think they should have gone and stolen stuff from some other company that has stuff worth stealing - we don't really want another car which can barely qualify as a hybrid - and can't even muster similar specs to cars which have been on the market for a good while. Oh, I know - they should have stolen the specs of the old GM EV1 - at least that could do about 130 miles on a charge - better then the new and 'improved' Volt.

Well, just my opinion anyway. It's Friday and it has been a long week, after all :-)

The future

Well, in the absolute long term, the mobile networks are fighting the same kind of loosing battle that ISP's fought in the 90's. Sure they will make a whole wad of cash in the meanwhile though, for as long as they can :-)

But in the end, all we need from them is their dumb data pipes - be them 3G, or 4G or whatever else will be around by then. As far as I can connect my Android phone, tablet/pad thing, laptop or whatever else shrunken down device to the Internet through their infrastructure - I don't care about their 'enhanced' services and whatever else they offer. As small devices (such as phones and tablets) will eventually standardise, so that I can efficiently use on the go my email, IM, voip and other open standards way of keeping in touch - I don't need their keeping me tied to various proprietary services on proprietary devices. A simple, reliable mobile Internet connection will solve all my communication needs. You can already do that with a laptop and 3G dongle today - you can send and receive emails, you can make VoIP calls (I've been doing it for over a year), you can do instant messaging. It's just cumbersome, and not as reliable as it should be. But as things improve, it will be even easier to get it all done. So in the end - it is the dumb data pipe that will triumph over 'enhanced add-ons'.

I know, it's not what the operators want to hear - but it will get there. Nobody pays nowadays per email sent, or for specific services to regular ISP's. All you want is a reliable connection with sufficient monthly bandwidth. The rest you can take care of yourself.

Long live the future.

Alternatives

Or, you can use PulseAudio. True, it might not look as good as the reviewed kit - but with a wifi router, and small computer being the server, a pair of active speakers of your choice, and a laptop of any kind serving as the controller - both the server and the controller running Linux, of course - you have a full equivalent setup. The system can look as good as you want it to look if you buy really nice speakers - the rest being pretty much hidden from view.

One or two advantages that I can spot is that you can have multiple 'controller' laptops connected to the same server, and the other one being that pretty much anything you play from the laptop - including BBC iPlayer, movies, YouTube - can go through the wireless sound system.

But yes, I'll be the first to admit it that it takes much more effort to setup then the reviewed system.

How about Google's marketing clout

Has anybody factored in as a cause for Chrome's rise Google's marketing clout and agreements with other suppliers of software? It seems that nowadays you can't install any piece of software (well, I'm exaggerating) on Windows without being offered (or pushed into) Google Chrome. All sorts of free software, including if I remember correctly Google Earth, Picassa, Real Player and others install Google Chrome with them. The owners of at least three quarters of computers I found Google Chrome on had no idea how it got there. In my opinion, really bordering on spyware installation tactics.

Not fully relevant conclusions

In my experience over years with inkjet printers and all-in-ones with various clients - there are other factors which are relevant when buying and using them. For example you might be rating the Epson relatively high because it is fast - but I found inkjet Epson printers in general to be rather weaker machines then Brother and HP. They seem to develop mechanical faults easier - and their print heads just don't last very well. Also, many of the current generation all-in-one Epson's are really clunky and noisy - they just feel really cheaply built inside. Another gripe I have against Epson printers is their cartridge chipping system - which seem to go wrong so many times. Compatible or original cartridges not being recognised correctly or at all, printers of the same model, but with several different generation of cartridge chipsets - so if your printer was manufactured before a certain month, only some chipped cartridges work - while after a certain month - other generation of chips work. And we are talking about the same model here.

On the other hand - the HP might look good when comparing the price of original cartridges - and they are indeed on average sturdier printers then other inkjets. But the fact that the cartridge includes the printhead on their consumer grade inkjets - which makes it impossible to replicate by other companies - is an important factor. It means you will always be limited to original cartridges, or refills - and refills can be problematic - as the printing head can dry out, or the person who used the cartridge before you might have refilled it already several times and the printing head on the cartridge is worn out etc.

All-in-all - I found Brother inkjet printers/all-in-ones the best compromise. They seem to be stronger and last better then both Canon and Epson printers. I have used them at clients for years with compatible (brand new) cartridges without any visible side effects. Their Windows software and driver support is perfectly good. Not so good if you want to use them with Linux. I haven't managed to get any of them working with Linux yet - but there is supposed to be some support. All the current ones that I know of can scan over network - which is nice. And if you buy one of the ones which take cartridges from the LC900 (mostly discontinued), LC1000 or LC1100 series, you can easily find cheap brand new, non-original replacements for very little. The supplier I currently use (available on the internet) charges £2.99 for a full, 4 cartridge set. It will make a huge difference in running costs, specially when printing photos. And yes, you might say that my printer is going to last 3.75 years instead of 4, because I've used non-original ink - but by then, I would have saved enough money on ink to buy another 4 printers - so who's winning and who's loosing here?

And a note on the above comment(s) about HP printing and scanning software. I agree. It seems like the HP department in charge of printer/scanner software is hell bent on destroying the one which actually makes the printers. The printers are quite decent, strong, fairly well performing. On the other hand, the software is bloated, buggy, and worse of all - the updates keep on breaking working installations. So many times I had calls from clients with HP printers or scanners which either have stopped working - or entire functions have disappeared from their software. Just to discover that HP Update has done the deed. I always uninstall HP Update as soon as I install an HP printer or scanner. Then you will be ok.

There you go - that should round up nicely that review.

Is the 3g version available in UK anywhere

Does anybody know if the 3G version is available in UK anywhere? The Packard Bell UK website only lists the black version without 3G or Bluetooth. And Currys, Comet, Amazon etc. all list only this model. The version with 3G would be way better then without - not having to carry the extra dongle.

I don't understand why so many models of netbooks and small laptops have 3G as an option in their spec - but they are never available with 3G in the UK - only somewhere else. Some agreement with the 3G network operators of some sort?

Also, has anybody noticed that this might be the only true sublaptop at the moment out-there? I mean, in the vein of legendary Sony TT/TZ/TX series - a tiny 11 inch machine, with everything integrated (including, crucially, optical drive) - and a non-Atom processor. I couldn't find anybody else doing this at the moment. The trend to drop optical drives out of small laptops seems to have truly taken over the industry. I still prefer an optical drive as I still use it a lot - and my main machine over past 3 years - with 11 inch screen, Intel SU2500 processor and an optical drive has served me very well so far.

Well, I'm done ranting now :-)