Much of the UK analogue output is in semi-widescreen (14:9) now too; gives only small black bars on 4:3 sets and means less stretching for the widescreen TVs to do.
On digital, Sky are about to move their movie channels and stuff like Sky One over to widescreen fulltime. When Sky does it, you know it's popular enough:)
New Saab 9-3 (probably not a common marque in the US) is even neater. In one of the cubbyholes down the centre console, there's a line-in jack. The cubbyhole is a perfect size for an ipod or similar MP3 or MD player, and convenient for reaching the buttons.
We're a GroupWise shop and have been running WebAccess (same thing - web frontend that replicates 95% of the client's functionality) for a few years. We're not a massive corporate either, but have about 300 users at various sites.
For almost all of the "remote email" use people need, WebAccess does the job nicely. It's generally people just checking email/appointments from home or when they're at client sites - they can just type in a URL, put in username/password and be there. Even the people who use VPN also use WebAccess from time to time because it's often more convenient than getting out the laptop, hooking it up to LAN/modem/mobile and syncing.
We have a few people who work from home most of the time and are perfectly happy with WebAccess. I've not used OWA recently, but WebAccess does almost everything people would need, works properly across different browsers, it's very light so it works acceptably even on 9600bps mobile connections (there's even WAP and Palm VI versions) and handles things like spellchecking and addressbooks via Java apps. People can set up and change rules, change passwords, proxy to other people's accounts, access shared folders. If OWA is at that kind of state now then it should also be fine for most.
We also have some people who need to be running the full client and VPN. People who need to sync then work offline or who have more complicated calendars that are better managed by dragging things about than editing individual appointments.
I wouldn't drop VPN, but a decent web frontend for your groupware stuff can reduce a lot of the need for it, and those who just need a quick and easy check of their mail can do it with far less complexity.
It works well. Signed up a few months ago (as well as the postal/fax/SMS versions) and the number of calls has gone down signifacantly. One or two a month is all we get now, when it would be regularly during weekday evenings. The ones that do are either very apologetic for their mistake, or are clueless muppets who haven't even heard of TPS.
Haven't had a fax "survey" (with 50p/min return number) or SMS spam since.
Sainsburys (and I'm sure other supermarkets) in the UK have had "self-scan" in bigger stores for a while - they were bringing it in when I worked there 6+ years ago.
You swipe your loyalty card through a reader, and it unlocks one of barcode readers from a rack. They're like a dumbed-down and smaller version of the ones supermarket staff use for stock control. As you go round, you scan stuff before dropping it in the trolley. When you're done, you go to the checkout, they dock the reader, you pay. Saves unloading everything onto a conveyor, then repacking it all.
To check that you're not "forgetting" to scan items, occasionally they'll do a re-scan on a sample of your shopping. Apparently if it picks up anything it just flags it against that customer's account and it's more likely do to a re-scan next time. Keep doing it, and you end up getting everything re-done anyway, saving no time at all.
May be more private from the checkout staff, but you do have to hold one of their loyalty cards with it registered to your correct address - and they'll probably tracking everything you buy! Depends which one bothers you more I guess...
Sky's own feed quality isn't anything special - a TiVo on High or Best quality isn't missing anything. Sky+ also doesn't let you choose a lower quality to save space - slower-moving programmes that don't need the bitrate can use significantly less.
Sky can also take away control - they have the capability to prevent recording of certain things, or stop you skipping ads when playing back a show.
And while their interface isn't too bad for a plain digibox, it was a mistake to extend it for their DVR box as well. The software generally is a long way behind what TiVo offers, needing a lot of nannying and checking to make sure things get recorded. I just set a season pass or wishlist and let it get on with the job - only maintenance is checking the TV guide on a sunday for anything new or interesting next week.
The Sky+ hardware is good - dual tuners, optical out for DD5.1, etc - and to anyone who hasn't used a TiVo it's brilliant. To those of us who have, it's very much lacking.
Sky+ box with TiVo software would be pretty much ideal, but I'd still rather not have my recorder under Murdoch's control thanks.
Standalone DVRs are coming soon - think Pace are closest to marketing a unit with a freeview decoder integrated. Or I think there's a Panasonic DVD recorder out now which has a HD too - but it's around the 900ukp mark, 500 more than a regular DVD recorder.
Downside - with no subscription the inital purchase cost has to reflect the hardware, HD, manufacturing/support cost, and the company's profit. And that's before the VAT. Pace's is looking like it won't be much under 400ukp, and that's just for a 20Gb model.
It doesn't cost TiVo anywhere near 10/month to provide the listings data and the freephone number to dial into, the rest helps pay for the subsidised box. Like buying a mobile phone, you don't _have_ to subscribe, but without that subsidy they're very expensive things.
One of the downsides of Sky+ for me (relative to my TiVo) is that it _doesn't_ re-encode - it just uses whatever bitrate Sky decided on.
TiVo at High or Best is (to my eyes) the same as Sky's not-perfect output, and for stuff that doesn't have quick-moving action (that you get artefacts on) you can go down to medium or even basic and still have very watchable recordings. Saves a load of space, and it's still far better than VHS ever was.
The other big reason I like the separation is that something on the TiVo is controlled by me. If I recorded a pay-per-view show, *I* decide when it gets deleted. If the broadcaster flags "no ad skipping" or "don't record this", it won't care less. All of that stuff is under Sky's control on their own Sky+ system, and I can do without that kind of BS.
TiVo's big draw in the UK is that it works with all of the various TV systems. Analogue terrestrial, free-to-air digital terrestrial, Sky, analogue and digital cable.. all it needs is a way of changing channels, usually with IR wands. New boxes get added pretty quickly, usually by people with Pronto remotes emailing the codes to the right techies at TiVo.
Support for everything means a much better potential market. Sky+ still only has similar numbers of subscribers despite much more aggressive advertising and in-store marketing, mainly because they can only ever sell it to their own customers.
Don't know about the rest of their lines, but my year-old Inspiron has floppyless BIOS updates available. Under windows, you just run it and it sorts out the rest on the next reboot. Under anything else (ie. anything they don't support), you can just take your BIOS image and make yourself a bootable CD with the flashing tools on it.
fwiw, the the floppyless upgrade works really well - makes booting to floppy to do the same on my homebrew desktops seem antiquated.
This is all on a massive tangent to the question (and no, you can't just get the GW client to talk to Exchange) but anyway:
Caching mode assumes that you normally have a quick (LAN) connection to the POA. It works pretty well when you have users who are normally in the office, but want their email/calendar available when they're disconnected, or for people who work with attachments of any size (it gets it from the server once then goes from the PC after that). It's OK for collecting mail when dialled in too, but generally it'll try to connect to the POA for things without asking which can get annoying. If you use proxy too, it'll let you try to connect to anther mailbox (in the same way as online mode) without thinking about the state it's in.
I'd say it's also useful if the POA or server goes down, but, well, it doesn't happen;-)
Remote mode gives you more choice about what you cache (like not keeping a local copy of that 20000-message shared folder) which keeps syncs shorter and it has a clear distinction between being not connected and syncing. Far better for field people who want to dial up, get their mail, disconnect, read it all, do their replies and sync again. Features that won't work away from the network (like proxy) aren't available. In caching mode every time they hit "send" it'll try to find the POA to get it out as quick as possible, in remote it'll wait for the next sync.
No idea how well or otherwise Outlook handles this (I've only used it in internet-only mode) but I'd have thought, or hope, that it would have something similar.
I like Groupwise a lot, just wish they'd sort out the clunky, ugly client - Outlook may be a virus-prone bloaty bit of software but it does some things really well.
Yes, and in stores too - picked one up last week. I'd been sceptical for ages but I needed a new VCR anyway and at 150 quid it's the same price as a decent one. The 10/month sub isn't much next to the Sky subscription, ISDN, ISP sub, etc so no big problem there.
Can't imagine life without one now - never used to bother recording anything, especially from Sky and needing to faff about putting the box to the right channel. I don't watch a lot of TV, but it's fantastic to have a few hours a week where I can just flake out in front of some decent TV for a change.
Since that price drop, I know half a dozen people who've gone out and bought them too. TiVo will do just fine IMO.
There's native file access add-ons for pre-6 versions of Netware, or NW6 does it out of the box. It'll talk to Windows, Mac, Unix clients without needing client software (unix side with NFS).
If they won't install it or upgrade, then you're pretty much stuffed:)
I don't quite know what they're up to. Just over a year ago they were showing off their Netdevice software (basic premise - take a server, put in the CD, 20 mins later you've got a NAS that'll work with anything). It looked great - would sit happily in Windows, Novell, Linux, Unix networks, easy to admin from a web browser or via ZEN for Servers, proper NDS/edir support, used the very impressive NSS filesystem, and were promising Mac and WebDAV support in the next release. Basically a stripped-down Netware with some modification for those duties.
Unfortunately it seems to be sitting in the "obsolete" section of the pricelist with no news about future versions. Shame, because it looked like a really promising idea.
It's okay if you need to recover a deleted file. If you delete a folder, you've got to do quite a bit more work to get it back.
That's certainly the case on traditional Netware volumes, but I'm pretty sure (haven't moved to them yet) that NSS ones allow salvaging of folders as well as files.
A 'user' has to have administrative permissions ('S' IIRC) to the folder to undelete a file. To undelete a folder, you have to have Admin priv for the volume.
afaik, they just need to have had read/filescan rights to it in the first place, and create rights for putting the files back. Anything in deleted.sav (where the contents of deleted folders go) do need supervisor priviledges unless you make specific users/groups trustees of it.
It's designed for bikes, but a flip-plate, controlled by the rider, already exists.
Alternatively, there's the Priva-Plate which just uses a big LCD block over the number. Press a button in the car and it greys out your plate. Neat.
Monitoring traffic going in and out of London has been going on for years though - all that's new about this is that they're planning to charge people for it.
BBC 6Music (their recent digital station) seem to have a 3 hour rock show on Saturdays from 9pm to midnight, and it sounds more like that kind of rock.
Only problem is you can only listen to it via DAB, satellite or online. Might dig out my wavefinder DAB thing and have a listen tonight.
Cleartype is overrated. I was looking forward to it, but the standard anti-aliasing actually looks much better on the 19" Trinitron box I've got.
It sucks on the CRTs I've tried too; it's not designed for them. On TFTs it looks fantastic - takes away all of the pixelly sharpness and smoothes everything wonderfully. It's like going from dot matrix to 600dpi laser prints.
Cleartype alone was worth the upgrade on my laptop. Everything else (themes, start menu, etc) were promptly set back to the old style, and with lots of the visual effects turned off (System Properties > Advanced > Performance Settings) it's really snappy. Tried it on a PII-350/256mb and it was still really quick. Shame it isn't so nice out of the box really:)
And what happens when you run out of 07 numbers? Don't tell me "it'll never happen".
They get longer. UK numbers have grown a couple of digits in the last few years, when they run out of numberspace I'm sure they'll do the same thing again.
Same principle applies to things charged at different rates to normal - special rates are put on 08 (like 0800 - free, 0845 - local rate whereever you're calling from and 0870 - national rate). Premium rate is all dumped on 09 - the £1 a minute "advice" lines and the like.
A lot of upheaval, but it makes sense. It was getting silly 5 or 6 years ago with different blocks of numbers being allocated for mobiles and premium rate services seemingly at random and without any way of knowing the cost beforehand if it wasn't stated.
Don't you have that "crazy" per-minute charge for local calls on your land lines? We don't here. Anyway, there's so many minutes included with my calling plan that I've never paid an extra charge.
Not for a while now. The most basic package has a low cost of line rental with all calls paid for by the minute, but there are lots of other options. Pay about £1.50/month more and you get 4 hours of calls included. Pay about £5/month more and you don't pay for local calls. Pay £8.50 a month more and you don't pay for local or national. To avoid dialup ISP charges, you can pay another £5 or so per month.
All pretty flexible. My ISDN package comes with £14 worth of calls a month - I rarely go over that. BT suck on their pricing and availability of broadband, but we're not quite stuck in the dark ages:)
OK, I'm not a salesman - but have had to sit through dozens of powerpoint presentations from them.
From my point of view, if it's that small a meeting (say 2-5 people) they're better off sticking the laptop at the end of the table so everyone can see. It's a lot better than them sitting behind one (as would be done with this flip-round screen) - you end up with something in the way.
Once it gets beyond that size, they're better off with the projector just so everyone can see.
And I don't know about you, but if a salesman came along with one of those I'd be laughing my ass off.
Or instead, get them a 15" TFT for £300 (or $400, whatever). Plug into VGA out on laptop. Problem solved, without forking out $5000.
They'll even fit into one of the thicker laptop cases (in the "printer" compartment), and weigh a hell of a lot less than a projector or this monstrosity.
Solution looking for a problem IMO. Even my mono-screened Dell has a higher res than both of those screens put together.
Yes and no. The basic phone packages with BT have low monthly rental and all calls are per minute, then there are packages that add more to the rental but with more stuff added. I forget the figures, but getting "free" local calls (max length 1 hour, then they start charging) off-peak adds about 30% to the line rental. They go all the way up to "free" local and national calls - this whole idea is a relatively new one to BT.
Both at uni and my current employer, it's just firstnamelastname. No length limits, no remembering combinations of character limits, and no collisions so far as you can have the same username in different OUs and it couldn't care less. Chances of having two people with the same name in the same office (each 100 users max) is exceedingly low. At uni they used an OU per entry year per department.
Find it hard to believe that people still run systems with 8-character limits on usernames, yet use the micros~1 gag:)
Except that most of the UK (in terms of land area) is not covered yet - and the rollout has basically stopped. BT have converted exchanges in the areas where it thinks it can make the most money (mainly in large towns and cities) and now the rest of the country will be done on a "business case basis"; ie. unless we're likely to get enough subscribers we won't convert your exchange.
This may be understandable in the most far-flung rural areas, but I live in the south-east of England. I live less than 40 miles from central London, just outside of a large town. And we have no cable (thus no cablemodem) and there are no plans to upgrade the exchange to ADSL. It was only about 12 years ago the exchange was upgraded to digital (tone) dialling; before it was the click-and-bang pulse sort.
Even modems don't work properly on many lines in Britain - as BT started running out of capacity in exchanges (new housing development and people ordering more lines for fax/internet) they started splitting lines with DACS. One copper line, add a couple of cheap DACS boxes and you've got two lines, saving BT the expense of running more cable. It completely fucks up 56k modems - you might get 28k on a good day, and even then there's no stability.
My "broadband" choices are limited to:
- ISDN at around 27ukp/month, plus 20+ for a flat-rate ISP (which is what I do). That's at 64k too, no flat-rate ISP offers 128k.
- leased lines. No way at that sort of cost. 1500+ukp to install, then around 500ukp a month just for 256k.
Slashdot Mirror
Much of the UK analogue output is in semi-widescreen (14:9) now too; gives only small black bars on 4:3 sets and means less stretching for the widescreen TVs to do.
:)
On digital, Sky are about to move their movie channels and stuff like Sky One over to widescreen fulltime. When Sky does it, you know it's popular enough
New Saab 9-3 (probably not a common marque in the US) is even neater. In one of the cubbyholes down the centre console, there's a line-in jack. The cubbyhole is a perfect size for an ipod or similar MP3 or MD player, and convenient for reaching the buttons.
Very slick.
We're a GroupWise shop and have been running WebAccess (same thing - web frontend that replicates 95% of the client's functionality) for a few years. We're not a massive corporate either, but have about 300 users at various sites.
For almost all of the "remote email" use people need, WebAccess does the job nicely. It's generally people just checking email/appointments from home or when they're at client sites - they can just type in a URL, put in username/password and be there. Even the people who use VPN also use WebAccess from time to time because it's often more convenient than getting out the laptop, hooking it up to LAN/modem/mobile and syncing.
We have a few people who work from home most of the time and are perfectly happy with WebAccess. I've not used OWA recently, but WebAccess does almost everything people would need, works properly across different browsers, it's very light so it works acceptably even on 9600bps mobile connections (there's even WAP and Palm VI versions) and handles things like spellchecking and addressbooks via Java apps. People can set up and change rules, change passwords, proxy to other people's accounts, access shared folders. If OWA is at that kind of state now then it should also be fine for most.
We also have some people who need to be running the full client and VPN. People who need to sync then work offline or who have more complicated calendars that are better managed by dragging things about than editing individual appointments.
I wouldn't drop VPN, but a decent web frontend for your groupware stuff can reduce a lot of the need for it, and those who just need a quick and easy check of their mail can do it with far less complexity.
It works well. Signed up a few months ago (as well as the postal/fax/SMS versions) and the number of calls has gone down signifacantly. One or two a month is all we get now, when it would be regularly during weekday evenings. The ones that do are either very apologetic for their mistake, or are clueless muppets who haven't even heard of TPS.
Haven't had a fax "survey" (with 50p/min return number) or SMS spam since.
XP seems to handle hibernation somewhat better than win2k - maybe it just writes what's actually being used to disk rather than everything.
On my 8200 with 512mb, win2k would take 15-20s to hibernate, XP is more like 7-8s.
Sainsburys (and I'm sure other supermarkets) in the UK have had "self-scan" in bigger stores for a while - they were bringing it in when I worked there 6+ years ago.
You swipe your loyalty card through a reader, and it unlocks one of barcode readers from a rack. They're like a dumbed-down and smaller version of the ones supermarket staff use for stock control. As you go round, you scan stuff before dropping it in the trolley. When you're done, you go to the checkout, they dock the reader, you pay. Saves unloading everything onto a conveyor, then repacking it all.
To check that you're not "forgetting" to scan items, occasionally they'll do a re-scan on a sample of your shopping. Apparently if it picks up anything it just flags it against that customer's account and it's more likely do to a re-scan next time. Keep doing it, and you end up getting everything re-done anyway, saving no time at all.
May be more private from the checkout staff, but you do have to hold one of their loyalty cards with it registered to your correct address - and they'll probably tracking everything you buy! Depends which one bothers you more I guess...
Sky's own feed quality isn't anything special - a TiVo on High or Best quality isn't missing anything. Sky+ also doesn't let you choose a lower quality to save space - slower-moving programmes that don't need the bitrate can use significantly less.
Sky can also take away control - they have the capability to prevent recording of certain things, or stop you skipping ads when playing back a show.
And while their interface isn't too bad for a plain digibox, it was a mistake to extend it for their DVR box as well. The software generally is a long way behind what TiVo offers, needing a lot of nannying and checking to make sure things get recorded. I just set a season pass or wishlist and let it get on with the job - only maintenance is checking the TV guide on a sunday for anything new or interesting next week.
The Sky+ hardware is good - dual tuners, optical out for DD5.1, etc - and to anyone who hasn't used a TiVo it's brilliant. To those of us who have, it's very much lacking.
Sky+ box with TiVo software would be pretty much ideal, but I'd still rather not have my recorder under Murdoch's control thanks.
Standalone DVRs are coming soon - think Pace are closest to marketing a unit with a freeview decoder integrated. Or I think there's a Panasonic DVD recorder out now which has a HD too - but it's around the 900ukp mark, 500 more than a regular DVD recorder.
Downside - with no subscription the inital purchase cost has to reflect the hardware, HD, manufacturing/support cost, and the company's profit. And that's before the VAT. Pace's is looking like it won't be much under 400ukp, and that's just for a 20Gb model.
It doesn't cost TiVo anywhere near 10/month to provide the listings data and the freephone number to dial into, the rest helps pay for the subsidised box. Like buying a mobile phone, you don't _have_ to subscribe, but without that subsidy they're very expensive things.
One of the downsides of Sky+ for me (relative to my TiVo) is that it _doesn't_ re-encode - it just uses whatever bitrate Sky decided on.
TiVo at High or Best is (to my eyes) the same as Sky's not-perfect output, and for stuff that doesn't have quick-moving action (that you get artefacts on) you can go down to medium or even basic and still have very watchable recordings. Saves a load of space, and it's still far better than VHS ever was.
The other big reason I like the separation is that something on the TiVo is controlled by me. If I recorded a pay-per-view show, *I* decide when it gets deleted. If the broadcaster flags "no ad skipping" or "don't record this", it won't care less. All of that stuff is under Sky's control on their own Sky+ system, and I can do without that kind of BS.
TiVo's big draw in the UK is that it works with all of the various TV systems. Analogue terrestrial, free-to-air digital terrestrial, Sky, analogue and digital cable.. all it needs is a way of changing channels, usually with IR wands. New boxes get added pretty quickly, usually by people with Pronto remotes emailing the codes to the right techies at TiVo.
Support for everything means a much better potential market. Sky+ still only has similar numbers of subscribers despite much more aggressive advertising and in-store marketing, mainly because they can only ever sell it to their own customers.
Don't know about the rest of their lines, but my year-old Inspiron has floppyless BIOS updates available. Under windows, you just run it and it sorts out the rest on the next reboot. Under anything else (ie. anything they don't support), you can just take your BIOS image and make yourself a bootable CD with the flashing tools on it.
fwiw, the the floppyless upgrade works really well - makes booting to floppy to do the same on my homebrew desktops seem antiquated.
This is all on a massive tangent to the question (and no, you can't just get the GW client to talk to Exchange) but anyway:
;-)
Caching mode assumes that you normally have a quick (LAN) connection to the POA. It works pretty well when you have users who are normally in the office, but want their email/calendar available when they're disconnected, or for people who work with attachments of any size (it gets it from the server once then goes from the PC after that). It's OK for collecting mail when dialled in too, but generally it'll try to connect to the POA for things without asking which can get annoying. If you use proxy too, it'll let you try to connect to anther mailbox (in the same way as online mode) without thinking about the state it's in.
I'd say it's also useful if the POA or server goes down, but, well, it doesn't happen
Remote mode gives you more choice about what you cache (like not keeping a local copy of that 20000-message shared folder) which keeps syncs shorter and it has a clear distinction between being not connected and syncing. Far better for field people who want to dial up, get their mail, disconnect, read it all, do their replies and sync again. Features that won't work away from the network (like proxy) aren't available. In caching mode every time they hit "send" it'll try to find the POA to get it out as quick as possible, in remote it'll wait for the next sync.
No idea how well or otherwise Outlook handles this (I've only used it in internet-only mode) but I'd have thought, or hope, that it would have something similar.
I like Groupwise a lot, just wish they'd sort out the clunky, ugly client - Outlook may be a virus-prone bloaty bit of software but it does some things really well.
UK launch is planned in March, according to this week's Computing or IT Week.
Yes, and in stores too - picked one up last week. I'd been sceptical for ages but I needed a new VCR anyway and at 150 quid it's the same price as a decent one. The 10/month sub isn't much next to the Sky subscription, ISDN, ISP sub, etc so no big problem there.
Can't imagine life without one now - never used to bother recording anything, especially from Sky and needing to faff about putting the box to the right channel. I don't watch a lot of TV, but it's fantastic to have a few hours a week where I can just flake out in front of some decent TV for a change.
Since that price drop, I know half a dozen people who've gone out and bought them too. TiVo will do just fine IMO.
There's native file access add-ons for pre-6 versions of Netware, or NW6 does it out of the box. It'll talk to Windows, Mac, Unix clients without needing client software (unix side with NFS).
:)
If they won't install it or upgrade, then you're pretty much stuffed
I don't quite know what they're up to. Just over a year ago they were showing off their Netdevice software (basic premise - take a server, put in the CD, 20 mins later you've got a NAS that'll work with anything). It looked great - would sit happily in Windows, Novell, Linux, Unix networks, easy to admin from a web browser or via ZEN for Servers, proper NDS/edir support, used the very impressive NSS filesystem, and were promising Mac and WebDAV support in the next release. Basically a stripped-down Netware with some modification for those duties.
Unfortunately it seems to be sitting in the "obsolete" section of the pricelist with no news about future versions. Shame, because it looked like a really promising idea.
It's okay if you need to recover a deleted file. If you delete a folder, you've got to do quite a bit more work to get it back.
That's certainly the case on traditional Netware volumes, but I'm pretty sure (haven't moved to them yet) that NSS ones allow salvaging of folders as well as files.
A 'user' has to have administrative permissions ('S' IIRC) to the folder to undelete a file. To undelete a folder, you have to have Admin priv for the volume.
afaik, they just need to have had read/filescan rights to it in the first place, and create rights for putting the files back. Anything in deleted.sav (where the contents of deleted folders go) do need supervisor priviledges unless you make specific users/groups trustees of it.
It's designed for bikes, but a flip-plate, controlled by the rider, already exists.
Alternatively, there's the Priva-Plate which just uses a big LCD block over the number. Press a button in the car and it greys out your plate. Neat.
Monitoring traffic going in and out of London has been going on for years though - all that's new about this is that they're planning to charge people for it.
BBC 6Music (their recent digital station) seem to have a 3 hour rock show on Saturdays from 9pm to midnight, and it sounds more like that kind of rock.
Only problem is you can only listen to it via DAB, satellite or online. Might dig out my wavefinder DAB thing and have a listen tonight.
Cleartype is overrated. I was looking forward to it, but the standard anti-aliasing actually looks much better on the 19" Trinitron box I've got.
It sucks on the CRTs I've tried too; it's not designed for them. On TFTs it looks fantastic - takes away all of the pixelly sharpness and smoothes everything wonderfully. It's like going from dot matrix to 600dpi laser prints.
Cleartype alone was worth the upgrade on my laptop. Everything else (themes, start menu, etc) were promptly set back to the old style, and with lots of the visual effects turned off (System Properties > Advanced > Performance Settings) it's really snappy. Tried it on a PII-350/256mb and it was still really quick. Shame it isn't so nice out of the box really :)
And what happens when you run out of 07 numbers? Don't tell me "it'll never happen".
They get longer. UK numbers have grown a couple of digits in the last few years, when they run out of numberspace I'm sure they'll do the same thing again.
Same principle applies to things charged at different rates to normal - special rates are put on 08 (like 0800 - free, 0845 - local rate whereever you're calling from and 0870 - national rate). Premium rate is all dumped on 09 - the £1 a minute "advice" lines and the like.
A lot of upheaval, but it makes sense. It was getting silly 5 or 6 years ago with different blocks of numbers being allocated for mobiles and premium rate services seemingly at random and without any way of knowing the cost beforehand if it wasn't stated.
Don't you have that "crazy" per-minute charge for local calls on your land lines? We don't here. Anyway, there's so many minutes included with my calling plan that I've never paid an extra charge.
Not for a while now. The most basic package has a low cost of line rental with all calls paid for by the minute, but there are lots of other options. Pay about £1.50/month more and you get 4 hours of calls included. Pay about £5/month more and you don't pay for local calls. Pay £8.50 a month more and you don't pay for local or national. To avoid dialup ISP charges, you can pay another £5 or so per month.
All pretty flexible. My ISDN package comes with £14 worth of calls a month - I rarely go over that. BT suck on their pricing and availability of broadband, but we're not quite stuck in the dark ages :)
OK, I'm not a salesman - but have had to sit through dozens of powerpoint presentations from them.
From my point of view, if it's that small a meeting (say 2-5 people) they're better off sticking the laptop at the end of the table so everyone can see. It's a lot better than them sitting behind one (as would be done with this flip-round screen) - you end up with something in the way.
Once it gets beyond that size, they're better off with the projector just so everyone can see.
And I don't know about you, but if a salesman came along with one of those I'd be laughing my ass off.
Or instead, get them a 15" TFT for £300 (or $400, whatever). Plug into VGA out on laptop. Problem solved, without forking out $5000.
They'll even fit into one of the thicker laptop cases (in the "printer" compartment), and weigh a hell of a lot less than a projector or this monstrosity.
Solution looking for a problem IMO. Even my mono-screened Dell has a higher res than both of those screens put together.
Yes and no. The basic phone packages with BT have low monthly rental and all calls are per minute, then there are packages that add more to the rental but with more stuff added. I forget the figures, but getting "free" local calls (max length 1 hour, then they start charging) off-peak adds about 30% to the line rental. They go all the way up to "free" local and national calls - this whole idea is a relatively new one to BT.
Both at uni and my current employer, it's just firstnamelastname. No length limits, no remembering combinations of character limits, and no collisions so far as you can have the same username in different OUs and it couldn't care less. Chances of having two people with the same name in the same office (each 100 users max) is exceedingly low. At uni they used an OU per entry year per department.
:)
Find it hard to believe that people still run systems with 8-character limits on usernames, yet use the micros~1 gag
Except that most of the UK (in terms of land area) is not covered yet - and the rollout has basically stopped. BT have converted exchanges in the areas where it thinks it can make the most money (mainly in large towns and cities) and now the rest of the country will be done on a "business case basis"; ie. unless we're likely to get enough subscribers we won't convert your exchange.
This may be understandable in the most far-flung rural areas, but I live in the south-east of England. I live less than 40 miles from central London, just outside of a large town. And we have no cable (thus no cablemodem) and there are no plans to upgrade the exchange to ADSL. It was only about 12 years ago the exchange was upgraded to digital (tone) dialling; before it was the click-and-bang pulse sort.
Even modems don't work properly on many lines in Britain - as BT started running out of capacity in exchanges (new housing development and people ordering more lines for fax/internet) they started splitting lines with DACS. One copper line, add a couple of cheap DACS boxes and you've got two lines, saving BT the expense of running more cable. It completely fucks up 56k modems - you might get 28k on a good day, and even then there's no stability.
My "broadband" choices are limited to:
- ISDN at around 27ukp/month, plus 20+ for a flat-rate ISP (which is what I do). That's at 64k too, no flat-rate ISP offers 128k.
- leased lines. No way at that sort of cost. 1500+ukp to install, then around 500ukp a month just for 256k.
"Broadband Britain"? What a fucking joke.