The 6.5 Groupwise client is great - apparently it's had the bulk of the work and improvements on this version. It's a lot more outlook-like in many ways, and certainly much tidier and more modern looking.
GW7 is yet more polished, but I haven't spent any significant amount of time using it yet. There's proper, native PDA syncing support and these days the Blackberry server-side stuff supports GW6.5+ too. I don't think the typical email user who was used to Outlook/Exchange would find much to complain about these days.
I self-built my current Althon64 home PC and at the weekend one of the tabs the CPU cooler attaches to snapped, cooler flew off with enough force to pull the CPU out of it's socket.
I'd say that's a pretty "serious problem", and it's not like it was a cheap generic board either - it's an MSI K8N with the stock AMD retail cooler. Been in place just over a year (2 days past warranty!), system not moved or disturbed in that time.
I'm wondering how affected those numbers were by large batches of faulty components in that time, like the Fujitsu HDs that would randomly die after a couple of years - I know a large number of our older Compaq desktops at work have needed new HDs at some point, but been rock solid otherwise.
The huge corps tend to get some kind of support arrangement included in their licencing which I guess helps as a fallback and keeps costs fixed.
Without that, Novell charge per-incident which my boss had to use in my last job. It's expensive, about $500 per incident iirc, although with a hefty discount if you're a CNE as you'll need less hand-holding. However, that fee gets you as much support as is needed to fix a problem. We had a load of strange errors in NDS (caused by some very slow/overloaded WAN links, a server with a clock that went forward 50 years at random times, and some schema extensions that went wrong) that were starting to affect day-to-day stuff. The firstline people are really good, but we ended up having a few dial-ins from various people right up to the NDS dev team, and got everything sorted out.
We probably got 20+ man-hours of support, including people with the highest possible levels of knowledge of the product covered in the fee, which is barely what you'd get a bog-standard consultant in for a day for. Very good value as far as I'm concerned - I guess it's balanced out by people getting into a panic and paying for incidents that can be fixed in 2 minutes over the phone.
afaik, they refund the incident fee too if your problem turn out to be due to an unpatched bug.
I'm happy having that sort of arrangement, 99.9% of things can be sorted out by looking at online TIDs/manuals, searching the support forums (much easier since they got indexed by google groups), posting if absolutely necessary and with the excellent paid support there if I'm ever really really stuck.
Open Irfanview (free), half a dozen mouse clicks and it's churning away doing the job.
This is assuming you're not running XP and have the MS Image Resizer PowerToy (also free) which makes the job even quicker. Browse to the folder with the photos (usually MyDocs > MyPics > Folder, or it'll be open after the automatic picture transfer has done it's stuff), Ctrl-A, right-click, Resize Pictures, click on Medium (800x600), OK.
Or just install ImageMagick for windows.
I'm no windows fanboy, but it's easy to automate this sort of stuff on most OSs I've used and Windows is no exception. But hey, if you feel superior typing away commands to do this sort of basic stuff, feel free.
IPX is pretty much dead in the Novell world, and you've been able to run a Novell-based network without it for a very long time.
Sure, you can take the latest NW6.5 and set it up with IPX, traditional volumes and the like and it'll happily take the place of a NW4 server, but the push over the last 7 or 8 years has been towards IP-only. The only reason we still run IPX is because the printers are still set up on legacy queues - soon we're moving to NDPS (introduced in 96/97?), the printers can be set up for plain IP/lpr printing, and IPX can finally go. We got to that state in my last company over 3 years ago, and we had all netware servers everywhere.
Running the Novell client has been optional since NW6 (released over 2 years ago) with native client support for windows/mac/unix (via NFS), and the same functionality was available as an add-on to NW5.1. Certainly in the 4 years or so I've been working with Novell stuff there's been bigger and bigger shifts away from their proprietary pasts and towards more interoperability and use of standards where possible. And more recently, lots of open source too.
As for the filesystem, our usual way of upgrading servers is to disconnect the data volumes and do the upgrade just with sys connected. Then once we're happy everything is OK, put them back. I don't want to have to faff about with converting to a new FS or doing a big backup/restore or copying huge amounts of data between servers when I don't need to. My volumes aren't even that big - some people are running multi-Tb ones that they wouldn't want to move to another FS.
NSS is excellent - journalling, excellent with large volumes (can mount a Tb volume in a second), does salvaging of folders as well as files, does snapshots and all sorts of other nifty stuff. It was done from scratch for Netware, I'd have thought it's less effort for them to port it than try tacking it on to a FS they don't know as well.
Like the Psion Series 7 and Netbook then? Could do word processing, spreadsheets, internet stuff on the move in a much more compact case and with considerably better battery life than the laptops of the time.
What happened to it? It bombed. There's PDAs, there's laptops and it didn't sit comfortably in either camp - almost everyone who needs to work away from their desk needs/wants apps beyond the basics, and if it's as a desktop accompaniment the standard PDA tends to do a better job.
In the company I used to work for, they used Excel for drawing floorplans. The surveyors would go out and take pictures, then they'd come back with some sketched floorplans and stick it all in Excel, using coloured cells and arrows/circles/labels as they wanted, to show which pic was for which room. Then they'd embed that worksheet in their word doc.
It was horrible, and frequently they'd managed to change one small thing that would completely screw up the proportions of their worksheet.
I suggested several times that they got Visio or Autosketch or something, but they were too tight to pay for it, despite their average chargeout rates being 70gbp/hour and doing jobs worth 6 figures or more.
The only thing that sucks is that if you delete the actually directory structure (not just files within) then they get dumped into one huge list.
Only on traditional volumes - with NSS volumes (ie. most netware servers installed in the last 5 years or so) Salvage retrieves folders too. Was the big reason for us to move our old volumes over on the fileservers:)
Or better still, PDFCreator does all that for nothing with with no ads or nagging - completely GPL. Comes with a proper no-hassle installer, and is as easy to set up and use as PDF995 or similar.
btw, if you're stuck in archiving hell, there's a nifty program from Nexic called Personal Publisher which takes archives and spits out nice, WA-styled HTML pages from them (or ASCII, or several other formats). Not free - it's about $60 iirc - but very useful.
ps. my users' biggest gripe about WebAccess is the way that "Work in Progress" items just don't show up in WA. Now _that_ is something that's broken:)
While there might be good reasons (or intentions) for that, it does seem to defeat the object of archiving. Like with paper, you should file or keep to hand the stuff you're working on or are likely to need. Once you no longer need it immediately, you archive and away it goes in boxes or gets scanned. Need it back? Wait a couple of days for the box to turn up again.
If people need stuff that's older than 30 days, it's senseless to force them to archive it, especially as you're not saving any space on the GW server. May as well use more space on the GW server and less on the fileserver, there doesn't seem to be a big performance hit as the postoffice grows (10Gb to 50Gb on one, using same CPU/mem). I presume they'd be taking backups of the GW system as well as the fileservers, so again it's just moving data around.
We just quota diskspace - once people hit 100%, they need to archive or delete before they can send stuff. If they really need more than 100Mb, they just get a bit more space.
They wouldn't dream of pulling paper files out of cabinets or off employee's desks after 30 days regardless - why do it with email?
The biggest beef my users have with the web-based client is you can't access your archive.
er.. isn't moving stuff from your GW account and into a file somewhere else the whole point of archiving? How else should it work, in a way that allows the WA gateway to get at an archive that may be on another fileserver, or even the user's PC?
Believe me, "pretty good" is not how I'd describe it. At the moment, services between the two biggest UK cities (London and Birmingham) are seriously disrupted because one of the train operators has pulled almost all of it's trains out of service over safety issues, presumably caused by skimping on maintenance. Calls are being made to do the same on the London Underground Central line, also for safety concerns over old and decrepid trains. Just another week really and it's not suprising any more. During the hot weather in the summer trains were speed-restricted over fears that the poor-quality tracks everywhere would expand and buckle in the heat - while our European neighbours enjoy 200mph trains that operate in all weathers.
Trains into London are mainly used by commuters because the city's so overcrowded there's barely anywhere to park if you did drive. And of course, if you go into Central London by car during the day, you get charged 5ukp for the priviledge.
While travel between major cities via train can be quite a pleasant experience, you often need to start and end your journey elsewhere. Buses sometimes work, taxis are expensive and walking only viable if you have plenty of time spare and aren't carrying much.
Maybe a bike is a solution for the "last mile" at each end? Well, no, not really; none of the train operators are obligated to carry them and while you may get lucky, it's not guarunteed. Going through London, taking them on buses or the Underground is a no-no as well.
As an example, I live south-east of London, about 35 miles from the centre. I sometimes visit a friend who lives in the outskirts of Birmingham. Both fairly well connected as places go, and near to large cities. By car it's 160 miles door-to-door and will cost me around 15ukp in fuel (30 return). Even with the awful M25 motorway, it takes around 3 hours, and rarely takes more than 4 hours, even at peak times.
If I want to use public transport for this (and I have done, several times), I have to:
walk to the bus stop (15 mins, free)
bus to nearest town with train station (25 minutes, 1.60)
train to London (40 minutes min, usually around 10ukp return)
Underground to other London station (20 mins, 1.60 (although I think it's gone up recently))
train to Birmingham (2 hours, approx 40ukp return)
train to nearest local station (25 mins)
walk (20 mins)
So well over 4 hours (assuming no delays or waiting time, of which there's plenty) and 50ukp to make the same trip. Go somewhere more obscure and you're really stuffed. Car ownership in some form is essential for most people, and highly desirable for the rest.
Oh, and of our massive taxation on fuel (as well as road tax, car insurance tax and the like), barely any of it is spent on transport - it's used to make up shortfalls in other areas of government spending.
Britain is *not* a good example of a country where a decent public transport system makes car ownership unneccessary.
Lots of decent switches have an option to only allow one MAC address per port - much easier than defining specific ones, and stops people plugging in cheap crappy network equipment which will only cause problems later on.
Now, are you sure that Mini Cooper are built to order ? If you can go to a dealer and drive one home then clearly it is not.
In the UK at least, they are all built to order, it's just that the dealerships will order cars to their spec (popular colours and options). With the MINI, as with most cars, the spec can be changed right up to the point where they start making it.
With a car like the MINI where supply/demand means long waiting times, the dealers will order as many cars as they can then assign those orders to customers later. If a car ends up with no new owner by the time it turns up, it probably ends up on the forecourt and will get sold (probably at a premium) to someone who turns up and says "I want one NOW!"
For most of the orders, a customer comes along, picks their colours and options, and the dealer just changes that order to what the customer wants. It also gives them a bit of flexibility with build dates - when the guy who's bought a new 7-series every 3 years turns up wanting a MINI for his wife, they can juggle the orders to get his done sooner.
I had a tour of the Ford factory at Dagenham about 8 years ago (when it was actually making cars - Fiestas then) and they were all built-to-order. A big label printer churned out barcodes which were stuck to the plain shell, and encoded in that was the trim level, colour, engine and all the other options. As the car went through each stage, it got read and all the different parts got synced with the car they were going onto. Like the description of the MINI plant, you'd have all sorts of different spec cars, for different markets, all one after another.
I think the "we make red ones on a tuesday" mentality died off ages ago, at least in the european car industry.
It's not even like it's underground any more, at least in the UK. I saw WHSmiths had a small half-width player for 50ukp, and they were giving out sheets with the key sequence to make them multiregion.
I bought my last player, a Toshiba SD330e, from amazon.co.uk and it was supplied multiregion out of the box.
Not just 6.5, there's been a Groupwise plugin for Outlook for a long time, going back quite a few versions. I think GW6.5 does native CAP at the server side (in addition to IMAP and POP3 that it has done before) which will let you use Outlook without needing the plugin.
That said, they've improved the 6.5 client a lot over previous versions - it's not quite Outlook but a big leap forward nonetheless.
Not cheap at 350ukp, software is nowhere near TiVo standard, no EPG, and it only has a 20Gb HD but it's on the shelves now and apparently does the job.
I'd buy a second freeview box and a TiVo though!:)
Short answer: yes. A proper TiVo is worth getting.
I believe it is a viable service in the UK. They have around 35,000 subscribers, all either having paid the 200ukp lifetime or 10ukp a month. The guide data (listings, descriptions, etc) is prepared by Tribune and will cost them significantly less than the subscriber cost. Add on a little overhead for running 0800 numbers, their own servers and a few staff and you're still making a fortune. Customer service is handled by Sky, but could be outsourced anywhere if Sky dropped them. I just don't see why they'd cut off a source of revenue (albeit a small one) and effectively shut the door on their return to the UK.
Homebrew - they're "better" in the sense that you can do other things with them. Run MAME, get your email, play DVDs and MP3s and other nifty stuff. I'm still not impressed by the actual TV recording and playback. I like things that have one task and do it very well - TiVo is in that category. I have consoles to play games on, and if I want to check my email in front of the TV I'll just grab my laptop.
I was really quite skeptical about the monthly subscription, but thought I'd give it a go for a couple of months. It's hard to get across how convenient it is to just forget about TV schedules and just have a box that gets the programmes you like whenever they're on and has them ready for when you feel like watching. That is what really separates the proper PVRs from the homebrew ones, that require far more checking, faffing about and general irritation.
If mine blew up tomorrow and it cost me twice as much to replace it, I would. It's worth every penny.
Write text message - right direction key Switch to silent/vibrate mode - power-3 Phonebook - up or down keys. Press numbers/letters to search. Alarm - menu-5
Really, it's not a problem. The Motorola shortcut menu was the only thing that made their (otherwise awful) UI usable.
It's a different kind of crap quality:) VHS may not have the artefacting, but it's other problems are worse. Even more so if you have a few "short term" videos which you record on over and over.
You choose the picture quality (a default which you can override for specific shows/SPs) but higher quality uses more disk space.
Basic looks pretty horrible, and it does the usual blocky MPEG artefacts when something moves quickly but it's better than VHS at least.
Medium is quite watchable, and OK for fairly static programmes (gameshows and the like)
High is what I use for day-to-day and is very good - I have (UK) Sky Digital as the source and it's as good to my eyes.
Best uses even more disk space, but will be as good as what you throw at it. It's what the live buffer uses and is recommended for sports and other fast-moving stuff.
It's pretty straightforward to upgrade a TiVo to use a (cheap now) 120Gb disk and you can store a lot at High or Best with that.
Boxing Day is a national holiday in the UK (and I think other Commonwealth places) - 26th December. The "day after Boxing Day" referred to is when all the big sales start.
Nothing wrong with having some colour either. Bank of England notes don't have lots of colour, but you can tell the difference between each without a second thought. US currency just seems the same note with a different number on each. And you lot need more coins!:)
There is a way to set the clock - connect it to a phone line and do the daily call. There's no way to set it manually because (for people who subscribe, or will use this basic service) it's always synced anyway.
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The 6.5 Groupwise client is great - apparently it's had the bulk of the work and improvements on this version. It's a lot more outlook-like in many ways, and certainly much tidier and more modern looking.
GW7 is yet more polished, but I haven't spent any significant amount of time using it yet. There's proper, native PDA syncing support and these days the Blackberry server-side stuff supports GW6.5+ too. I don't think the typical email user who was used to Outlook/Exchange would find much to complain about these days.
I self-built my current Althon64 home PC and at the weekend one of the tabs the CPU cooler attaches to snapped, cooler flew off with enough force to pull the CPU out of it's socket.
I'd say that's a pretty "serious problem", and it's not like it was a cheap generic board either - it's an MSI K8N with the stock AMD retail cooler. Been in place just over a year (2 days past warranty!), system not moved or disturbed in that time.
I'm wondering how affected those numbers were by large batches of faulty components in that time, like the Fujitsu HDs that would randomly die after a couple of years - I know a large number of our older Compaq desktops at work have needed new HDs at some point, but been rock solid otherwise.
The huge corps tend to get some kind of support arrangement included in their licencing which I guess helps as a fallback and keeps costs fixed.
Without that, Novell charge per-incident which my boss had to use in my last job. It's expensive, about $500 per incident iirc, although with a hefty discount if you're a CNE as you'll need less hand-holding. However, that fee gets you as much support as is needed to fix a problem. We had a load of strange errors in NDS (caused by some very slow/overloaded WAN links, a server with a clock that went forward 50 years at random times, and some schema extensions that went wrong) that were starting to affect day-to-day stuff. The firstline people are really good, but we ended up having a few dial-ins from various people right up to the NDS dev team, and got everything sorted out.
We probably got 20+ man-hours of support, including people with the highest possible levels of knowledge of the product covered in the fee, which is barely what you'd get a bog-standard consultant in for a day for. Very good value as far as I'm concerned - I guess it's balanced out by people getting into a panic and paying for incidents that can be fixed in 2 minutes over the phone.
afaik, they refund the incident fee too if your problem turn out to be due to an unpatched bug.
I'm happy having that sort of arrangement, 99.9% of things can be sorted out by looking at online TIDs/manuals, searching the support forums (much easier since they got indexed by google groups), posting if absolutely necessary and with the excellent paid support there if I'm ever really really stuck.
Open Irfanview (free), half a dozen mouse clicks and it's churning away doing the job.
This is assuming you're not running XP and have the MS Image Resizer PowerToy (also free) which makes the job even quicker. Browse to the folder with the photos (usually MyDocs > MyPics > Folder, or it'll be open after the automatic picture transfer has done it's stuff), Ctrl-A, right-click, Resize Pictures, click on Medium (800x600), OK.
Or just install ImageMagick for windows.
I'm no windows fanboy, but it's easy to automate this sort of stuff on most OSs I've used and Windows is no exception. But hey, if you feel superior typing away commands to do this sort of basic stuff, feel free.
IPX is pretty much dead in the Novell world, and you've been able to run a Novell-based network without it for a very long time.
Sure, you can take the latest NW6.5 and set it up with IPX, traditional volumes and the like and it'll happily take the place of a NW4 server, but the push over the last 7 or 8 years has been towards IP-only. The only reason we still run IPX is because the printers are still set up on legacy queues - soon we're moving to NDPS (introduced in 96/97?), the printers can be set up for plain IP/lpr printing, and IPX can finally go. We got to that state in my last company over 3 years ago, and we had all netware servers everywhere.
Running the Novell client has been optional since NW6 (released over 2 years ago) with native client support for windows/mac/unix (via NFS), and the same functionality was available as an add-on to NW5.1. Certainly in the 4 years or so I've been working with Novell stuff there's been bigger and bigger shifts away from their proprietary pasts and towards more interoperability and use of standards where possible. And more recently, lots of open source too.
As for the filesystem, our usual way of upgrading servers is to disconnect the data volumes and do the upgrade just with sys connected. Then once we're happy everything is OK, put them back. I don't want to have to faff about with converting to a new FS or doing a big backup/restore or copying huge amounts of data between servers when I don't need to. My volumes aren't even that big - some people are running multi-Tb ones that they wouldn't want to move to another FS.
NSS is excellent - journalling, excellent with large volumes (can mount a Tb volume in a second), does salvaging of folders as well as files, does snapshots and all sorts of other nifty stuff. It was done from scratch for Netware, I'd have thought it's less effort for them to port it than try tacking it on to a FS they don't know as well.
Like the Psion Series 7 and Netbook then? Could do word processing, spreadsheets, internet stuff on the move in a much more compact case and with considerably better battery life than the laptops of the time.
What happened to it? It bombed. There's PDAs, there's laptops and it didn't sit comfortably in either camp - almost everyone who needs to work away from their desk needs/wants apps beyond the basics, and if it's as a desktop accompaniment the standard PDA tends to do a better job.
In the company I used to work for, they used Excel for drawing floorplans. The surveyors would go out and take pictures, then they'd come back with some sketched floorplans and stick it all in Excel, using coloured cells and arrows/circles/labels as they wanted, to show which pic was for which room. Then they'd embed that worksheet in their word doc.
It was horrible, and frequently they'd managed to change one small thing that would completely screw up the proportions of their worksheet.
I suggested several times that they got Visio or Autosketch or something, but they were too tight to pay for it, despite their average chargeout rates being 70gbp/hour and doing jobs worth 6 figures or more.
Only on traditional volumes - with NSS volumes (ie. most netware servers installed in the last 5 years or so) Salvage retrieves folders too. Was the big reason for us to move our old volumes over on the fileservers :)
Correct. LP mode existed before NetMD too.
Or better still, PDFCreator does all that for nothing with with no ads or nagging - completely GPL. Comes with a proper no-hassle installer, and is as easy to set up and use as PDF995 or similar.
btw, if you're stuck in archiving hell, there's a nifty program from Nexic called Personal Publisher which takes archives and spits out nice, WA-styled HTML pages from them (or ASCII, or several other formats). Not free - it's about $60 iirc - but very useful.
ps. my users' biggest gripe about WebAccess is the way that "Work in Progress" items just don't show up in WA. Now _that_ is something that's broken :)
While there might be good reasons (or intentions) for that, it does seem to defeat the object of archiving. Like with paper, you should file or keep to hand the stuff you're working on or are likely to need. Once you no longer need it immediately, you archive and away it goes in boxes or gets scanned. Need it back? Wait a couple of days for the box to turn up again.
If people need stuff that's older than 30 days, it's senseless to force them to archive it, especially as you're not saving any space on the GW server. May as well use more space on the GW server and less on the fileserver, there doesn't seem to be a big performance hit as the postoffice grows (10Gb to 50Gb on one, using same CPU/mem). I presume they'd be taking backups of the GW system as well as the fileservers, so again it's just moving data around.
We just quota diskspace - once people hit 100%, they need to archive or delete before they can send stuff. If they really need more than 100Mb, they just get a bit more space.
They wouldn't dream of pulling paper files out of cabinets or off employee's desks after 30 days regardless - why do it with email?
The biggest beef my users have with the web-based client is you can't access your archive.
er.. isn't moving stuff from your GW account and into a file somewhere else the whole point of archiving? How else should it work, in a way that allows the WA gateway to get at an archive that may be on another fileserver, or even the user's PC?
Believe me, "pretty good" is not how I'd describe it. At the moment, services between the two biggest UK cities (London and Birmingham) are seriously disrupted because one of the train operators has pulled almost all of it's trains out of service over safety issues, presumably caused by skimping on maintenance. Calls are being made to do the same on the London Underground Central line, also for safety concerns over old and decrepid trains. Just another week really and it's not suprising any more. During the hot weather in the summer trains were speed-restricted over fears that the poor-quality tracks everywhere would expand and buckle in the heat - while our European neighbours enjoy 200mph trains that operate in all weathers.
Trains into London are mainly used by commuters because the city's so overcrowded there's barely anywhere to park if you did drive. And of course, if you go into Central London by car during the day, you get charged 5ukp for the priviledge.
While travel between major cities via train can be quite a pleasant experience, you often need to start and end your journey elsewhere. Buses sometimes work, taxis are expensive and walking only viable if you have plenty of time spare and aren't carrying much.
Maybe a bike is a solution for the "last mile" at each end? Well, no, not really; none of the train operators are obligated to carry them and while you may get lucky, it's not guarunteed. Going through London, taking them on buses or the Underground is a no-no as well.
As an example, I live south-east of London, about 35 miles from the centre. I sometimes visit a friend who lives in the outskirts of Birmingham. Both fairly well connected as places go, and near to large cities. By car it's 160 miles door-to-door and will cost me around 15ukp in fuel (30 return). Even with the awful M25 motorway, it takes around 3 hours, and rarely takes more than 4 hours, even at peak times.
If I want to use public transport for this (and I have done, several times), I have to:
So well over 4 hours (assuming no delays or waiting time, of which there's plenty) and 50ukp to make the same trip. Go somewhere more obscure and you're really stuffed. Car ownership in some form is essential for most people, and highly desirable for the rest.
Oh, and of our massive taxation on fuel (as well as road tax, car insurance tax and the like), barely any of it is spent on transport - it's used to make up shortfalls in other areas of government spending.
Britain is *not* a good example of a country where a decent public transport system makes car ownership unneccessary.
Lots of decent switches have an option to only allow one MAC address per port - much easier than defining specific ones, and stops people plugging in cheap crappy network equipment which will only cause problems later on.
Now, are you sure that Mini Cooper are built to order ? If you can go to a dealer and drive one home then clearly it is not.
In the UK at least, they are all built to order, it's just that the dealerships will order cars to their spec (popular colours and options). With the MINI, as with most cars, the spec can be changed right up to the point where they start making it.
With a car like the MINI where supply/demand means long waiting times, the dealers will order as many cars as they can then assign those orders to customers later. If a car ends up with no new owner by the time it turns up, it probably ends up on the forecourt and will get sold (probably at a premium) to someone who turns up and says "I want one NOW!"
For most of the orders, a customer comes along, picks their colours and options, and the dealer just changes that order to what the customer wants. It also gives them a bit of flexibility with build dates - when the guy who's bought a new 7-series every 3 years turns up wanting a MINI for his wife, they can juggle the orders to get his done sooner.
I had a tour of the Ford factory at Dagenham about 8 years ago (when it was actually making cars - Fiestas then) and they were all built-to-order. A big label printer churned out barcodes which were stuck to the plain shell, and encoded in that was the trim level, colour, engine and all the other options. As the car went through each stage, it got read and all the different parts got synced with the car they were going onto. Like the description of the MINI plant, you'd have all sorts of different spec cars, for different markets, all one after another.
I think the "we make red ones on a tuesday" mentality died off ages ago, at least in the european car industry.
It's not even like it's underground any more, at least in the UK. I saw WHSmiths had a small half-width player for 50ukp, and they were giving out sheets with the key sequence to make them multiregion.
I bought my last player, a Toshiba SD330e, from amazon.co.uk and it was supplied multiregion out of the box.
Not just 6.5, there's been a Groupwise plugin for Outlook for a long time, going back quite a few versions. I think GW6.5 does native CAP at the server side (in addition to IMAP and POP3 that it has done before) which will let you use Outlook without needing the plugin.
That said, they've improved the 6.5 client a lot over previous versions - it's not quite Outlook but a big leap forward nonetheless.
Pace have a twin-tuner freeview PVR out now, stocked by argos and Comet.
Not cheap at 350ukp, software is nowhere near TiVo standard, no EPG, and it only has a 20Gb HD but it's on the shelves now and apparently does the job.
I'd buy a second freeview box and a TiVo though! :)
Short answer: yes. A proper TiVo is worth getting.
I believe it is a viable service in the UK. They have around 35,000 subscribers, all either having paid the 200ukp lifetime or 10ukp a month. The guide data (listings, descriptions, etc) is prepared by Tribune and will cost them significantly less than the subscriber cost. Add on a little overhead for running 0800 numbers, their own servers and a few staff and you're still making a fortune. Customer service is handled by Sky, but could be outsourced anywhere if Sky dropped them. I just don't see why they'd cut off a source of revenue (albeit a small one) and effectively shut the door on their return to the UK.
Homebrew - they're "better" in the sense that you can do other things with them. Run MAME, get your email, play DVDs and MP3s and other nifty stuff. I'm still not impressed by the actual TV recording and playback. I like things that have one task and do it very well - TiVo is in that category. I have consoles to play games on, and if I want to check my email in front of the TV I'll just grab my laptop.
I was really quite skeptical about the monthly subscription, but thought I'd give it a go for a couple of months. It's hard to get across how convenient it is to just forget about TV schedules and just have a box that gets the programmes you like whenever they're on and has them ready for when you feel like watching. That is what really separates the proper PVRs from the homebrew ones, that require far more checking, faffing about and general irritation.
If mine blew up tomorrow and it cost me twice as much to replace it, I would. It's worth every penny.
On my Nokia 7210:
Write text message - right direction key
Switch to silent/vibrate mode - power-3
Phonebook - up or down keys. Press numbers/letters to search.
Alarm - menu-5
Really, it's not a problem. The Motorola shortcut menu was the only thing that made their (otherwise awful) UI usable.
It's a different kind of crap quality :) VHS may not have the artefacting, but it's other problems are worse. Even more so if you have a few "short term" videos which you record on over and over.
You choose the picture quality (a default which you can override for specific shows/SPs) but higher quality uses more disk space.
Basic looks pretty horrible, and it does the usual blocky MPEG artefacts when something moves quickly but it's better than VHS at least.
Medium is quite watchable, and OK for fairly static programmes (gameshows and the like)
High is what I use for day-to-day and is very good - I have (UK) Sky Digital as the source and it's as good to my eyes.
Best uses even more disk space, but will be as good as what you throw at it. It's what the live buffer uses and is recommended for sports and other fast-moving stuff.
It's pretty straightforward to upgrade a TiVo to use a (cheap now) 120Gb disk and you can store a lot at High or Best with that.
Boxing Day is a national holiday in the UK (and I think other Commonwealth places) - 26th December. The "day after Boxing Day" referred to is when all the big sales start.
:)
Nothing wrong with having some colour either. Bank of England notes don't have lots of colour, but you can tell the difference between each without a second thought. US currency just seems the same note with a different number on each. And you lot need more coins!
There is a way to set the clock - connect it to a phone line and do the daily call. There's no way to set it manually because (for people who subscribe, or will use this basic service) it's always synced anyway.