Posts by Dave 126 10675 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2010
>Don't have the mi-fi with me? Just tether the phone, one widget press, thanks to Widgetsoid
That's alright for many of us, but where I see affordable 7"+ 3G tablets being useful is for people like my old man who much prefer their old Nokia candy-bar or a cheap flip-phone to a touch-screen smart-phone. Small cheap phone with big buttons and a long battery life, plus a cheap tablet to live in the glovebox- a good combo for some!
I guess the bottom line to this review is: is it worth stretching to the extra £35 for a Nexus 7 3G?
I've always had a 1983 Hamley's toy shop catalogue kicking around my house, and this machine is listed simply as the 'M5 Computer' with no mention of Sord- someone has kindly scanned and uploaded the whole catalogue - sorry for the Facebook link: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=286058214747254&set=a.286052674747808.73189.273368722682870&type=3&theater
If you click to get the next pages, you'll see such delights as the Vectrex, Coleco and Sinclair Spectrum.
Yeah, diesels don't give you the oomph when they get revvy like petrols do, and I would imagine that a lot of people have come to diesels in the last few years and could benefit from that pointer. I've had one for ten years in a Peugeot 306 guise, but now have the same engine model in a Citreon Berlingo that has an ECU modded for economy (wretched thing). Unlike the Pug, the Berlingo has a rev counter which I can only assume is to aid economical driving (though annoyingly, it is situated where the speedo was on the Pug).
>3) Being automotive technology, upgrades will be expensive, mainly due to the lock-in - think of the difference in price between going into Halfords and buying a TomTom unit, and approaching your dealer to get an equivalent-spec satnav system installed.
To give another example, the head of Ford UK was on the radio last year, talking about the uptake of DAB digital radio... he said that to factory fit it to a medium-priced car like a Ford Focus would cost around £220. The cost of a consumer buying a pocket DAB receiver, and attaching it to their head unit with an aux cable, plus fag-lighter adaptor and duck tape would be less that £50- I don't think the UI would be ideal, though.
>I hope the positive wins out and I really hope that they make it impossible to watch a movie / TV while driving (like they do in Japan)
I was under the impression that this was the case here in the UK, or maybe manufacturers just implement it that way to avoid lawsuits.
I remember someone turning up at the pub in a brand new 2012 Range Rover with a lenticular display in the middle of the dashboard - it would display GPS to the driver but TV and video to the passenger. (Though the dashboard that almost had me applauding was in one those greenwash Lexus hybrid SUV things- moulded into the dash was not only a DVD/CD player and surround-sound system, but a slot for cassette tapes too. Cassette tapes- wow! - but c'mon, Lexus, you had space to fit an 8-Track, Minidisc, DAT and DCC whilst you were about it! : D)
>Who wants a phone that doesn't offer or run your preferred software?
Preferred software, maybe. But if Facebook's website is anything to judge by (changes without informing users or obtaining consent, constant push against the boundaries of what people consider acceptable re their privacy etc), there is no guarantee that a Facebook app will remain as it was when you installed it; I wouldn't trust it not to 'creep'.
Besides, if you don't know what you are doing, you are probably better off in the walled garden. If you do know what you are doing, you can jailbreak the phone and visit Cydia.
>The Pebble watch has minimal features and only lasts a week. It also adds drain to your phone battery. Mostly from keeping the Bluetooth connection alive at both ends.
There is a more suitable Bluetooth protocol, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_low_energy, but it isn't currently support by Android- so it doesn't make sense for the Pebble watch to use it either.
>Is that "anecdotal evidence"? If some guy turned up to photograph a wedding with a Casio Exilim I'd guess he was either a rank amateur, a chancer or otherwise undeserving of the huge fee most wedding photographers charge.
By 'mirrorless', I mean just that: an APS-C or medium-format mirrorless camera, such as made by Sony, Leica or Canon, not a holiday-snaps point-and-shoot as you had assumed. The purpose of the second camera is usually to avoid having to frequently change lenses on the primary (DSLR) camera, and it doesn't necessarily require the functionality provided by a bulky mirror box.
Agreed... 'telemedicine' is on the rise, as are lower cost medical monitoring devices (Lidl had a wearable heart-rate / blood pressure logger for about £20 the other day, my diabetic mate's device for analysing his blood looks like a funky little MP3 player...)
Bluetooth Low Energy is an open standard, but isn't supported by Android yet.
>Wearing an iWatch will be like saying "I'm a mug, so mug me".
You haven't thought this through.
My date on Saturday did express unease at walking from her hotel to meet me, since she was using her phone's sat-nav to find the restaurant. It should be obvious that using a watch to show bearings to waypoints would be a far less conspicuous way of navigating.
After dinner we hit a bar, and there were a fair few people blokes wearing watches that would cost far more than any smartwatch would. However, this was only evident to me because we were stood in close proximity waiting to be served, and their man-jewellery wasn't obscured by a jacket or shirt-sleeve as it probably would be walking down the street.
@DrXym
Casio already sell a Bluetooth watch with a two year battery life. Okay, the features are limited (though actually useful), but there is always going to be a trade-off against battery life.
You are right in your suspicions that it might be tied to one platform - this Casio watch only works with Apple iOS stuff. However, that is not Casio's fault, because "At the time of writing, there is currently no support for [Bluetooth Low Energy] LE in the Android OS[51][52], although some devices (e.g. Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1[53]) have compatible hardware." (Wikipedia)
You've put too much faith in the Reg article, Mark 1 2.... whilst they said MS were acting 'hot on the heels' of an Apple rumour, it could also be said they are acting in the wake of their own previous efforts, as well as more recent real products and crowd-sourced interest by Sony, Samsung, Pebble and I'm Watch.
With current tech, it might just look like an existing watch:
http://www.gshock.com/watches/Classic/GB6900AA-1
It looks like a normal G-Shock (admittedly not the smallest or most subtle-looking of watches, but far from rare). It is reported to have a two-year battery life based on being connected to a phone for twelve hours a day, and features the following:
- Notification of incoming calls and e-mails via the watch
- Phone Finder function to enable iPhone alarm function from the watch
- Warning vibration when the watch loses its connection to the iPhone
- Time adjustment by synchronizing with time data received from the iPhone
- Built-in tilt sensor to detect movement in the watch, while it is in power-saving mode, to
automatically reconnect to the iPhone
> Why have a timepiece on my wrist when i have one in my phone...
>Still, it is one of those classic "if it works for me it doesn't have to work for other people" kind of thing.
Quite. Personally, I just find it more convenient to look at my wrist than rummage in my pocket for my phone
In a similar vein, I was chatting to my mate who had been charged with conducting a time and motion study in his workplace, but the middle management were sniffy about authorising the purchase of a stop-watch (mainly because they could only use specified suppliers who would charge around £50 per unit). Don't you have a stop-watch on your phone? I asked.
"Yeah, but it doesn't look good if you're walking about the factory floor looking at your phone... it looks like you're faffing around. If you're holding a stop-watch, management can see that you're working".
It's a bit like professional wedding photographers, many of whom would be happy to use a mirrorless camera, if only as a back-up to their DSLR, but they know the clients expect to see some whopping great lumps of Nikon.
Hehe... reminds me of a cover of a Beezer annual from the 1980s... one lad is walking along, chuffed to bits with his new personal stereo, until he sees a Richie-Rich-like boy, being followed by a helicopter that is suspending a hi-fi speaker on each side of his head!
I thought that Fabergé had set the trend for an object being more highly valued for the sheer man hours involved in its creation, rather than just the high material cost, back in the late 19th century. It would be interesting to know how much this crusted iPhone is worth as scrap- probably a high percentage of the reported £15M sum. Though commodity markets are famously volatile, it will probably hold its value better than any other handset out there.
Oh, I don't think think that 'designer' is the correct term for the craftsman who created this thing.
My Sony phone had an option to stop charging at 95%- though it seems to have disappeared with the ICS update. Back in pre-iPod days, it was Sony who put more effort into promoting their portable audio players as being 'premium', and claims of quick charging often formed a part of it.
> cheap camera-toting aircraft can be used by anyone from terrorists to quarrelling neighbours
Terrorist A: So, we want to to blow up a crowd of people here and inflict a lot of casualties, but where best to plant the bomb?
Terrorist B: I know! I know! We could use an RC quadropter with a video camera to survey the area first.
Terrorist A: Nah, we can't do that, that would be illegal.
Um, how would any legislation work work, exactly?
You really aren't missing much in this video. It is 1:17 long, and spends that time telling you that a motor is also a generator, and that it takes energy to make something spin. That it is it. It is wholly generic, except for the last two seconds when the voice-over tells us "we have developed a new way of making fly wheels, then it fades to black.
And there are more Welsh speakers in the US, and in Patagonia, than in Wales... the former got very vocal when Bill Clinton used the verb 'to welsh' to describe a group that had reneged on a deal.
I was amused to visit the Regional Museum in Ica, Peru, to see the name Adolfo Bermudez Jenkins writ large across the entrance.
>"And then on from there to Saturn's moon Titan, where Earth's population evacuated to."
It's a new form of spacecraft propulsion... you have the reaction mass.
The sub-editor character in season 5 of The Wire explained it well to an underling:
"Buildings are evacuated, people are not. Well, you CAN evacuate a person, but I don't think that's what you mean in this context"
I was just thinking about sci-fi films that have used a real, solid location instead of CGI sets... interior locations that spring to mind (and please contribute):
Aliens- an old power station
Silent Running - an aircraft carrier
The Abyss - an unused cooling pond at a nuclear power station
Not just the Subaru Impreza, but a Prodrive-tuned Subaru Impreza, from the company who did Colin McRae's winning cars. Humberside police were the first to have one, as a few criminals tried some off-road evasive tactics. As well as being faster, the Prodrive versions have panels underneath to protect the car from rocks and debris.
Its amazing how people don't get it.
I have one friend who occasionally send me one long paragraph, a rant about all the different issues and annoyances he is currently suffering with his PC... I keep trying to educate him about bullet-points - or even just line breaks - but it doesn't seem to sink in. I try to get him to look at the way (some) instruction manuals, texts-books or magazines are laid out to clearly present information, but no...
On another note:
One small backward step we have is that many of us use webmail through a browser, depriving us of the line indent traditionally associated with the Tab key.
The article reminded me of the text books on electronics written by Forest M Mims III
Link to a picture of one his book pages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_Mims#Author
An interesting bloke, worth spending five minute reading about. He made an analogue computer in high school, then a navigation aid for his blind grandfather using infra-red LEDs, and developed an interest in amateur rocketry (which caused some panic since he was posted in Vietnam at the time).
"That one bloke who ranted on about it isn't indicative of Microsoft's official position on the matter whatsoever, especially as he has nothing to do with the development of the next Xbox at all."
It is important for companies to get their message out clearly about their products . Anything that has to be explained away (even if the explanation is valid) or clarified is taking away from the attention that prospective customers will give to your proper message.
Far more people will hear "MS man said..." than will hear "...but he was speaking in a personal capacity and is not related to the project being discussed" and that's just the way the world works.
He was well aware that there was an information vacuum on the subject, and that rumours and opinions were circulation, because it was what prompted him to make the remarks in the first place.
Rather that drip feed 'iWatch' rumours, lets have a round up of other attempts at a smart-watch, past and present.
We could include the Casio Databank watches, the Swatch pager watch, that Microsoft thing one held in-front of a monitor... current efforts include the Sony watch, Pebble, I'm Watch, and a Casio G-Shock with Bluetooth.
No more than your PC is... you might have only have turned it on to watch a locally-stored movie, but if it finds an internet connection it will still want to check for updates etc I can always turn off my WiFi or unplug the ethernet cable, though.
Two minutes sounds a little excessive to connect to XBOX Live, though.
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