Re:Its a ZUNE though. Who cares? IT uses WMP .. ew
on
Zune DRM Cracked
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· Score: 1
As a mere Vista user I'm interested in knowing what version of WMP you used Last time I checked Windows Media Player 11 (as it comes installed) doesn't automatically alter your MP3's. I've just moved my vista installation over to a new hard drive and opening WMP for the second time then going to the library drop down arrow then to "More options" The following are the defaults:
[x]Delete Files when deleted from my library
[x]Retrieve additional information from the internet
[x]Only add missing information
[ ]Overwrite all Media information
[ ]Rename music files using rip music settings
[ ]Rearrange rip music in rip music folder, using rip music settings
[x]Maintain my star ratings as global ratings in files
So by default it might add composer information or an auto rating to the id3 tag it won't change the album photo it won't change the artist, it won't change the album name. Compare to my recent expearence with iTunes 7.10 which I installed to see if it had improved. First off it tried taking all my music and putting it into a Itunes Folder inside ther My Music folder, while it was doing this it find the dozen or so WMA's I have and began converting them to AAC's a format. To make matters worse quicktime assumed control for any MP3's I streamed from online (blocking WMP) and it dispersed one of my old compilation albums into a series of single 3 song singles all of which were incorrectly labelled. The fact it won't recognise a flash drive or my PPC phone as something it could sync to was just the icing on the cake for me.
Yes DRM's end is coming and hopefully it will be soon I am truely looking forward to the day when I can just run a media centre PC with all my DVD's & CD's ripped onto it without wondering where I actually stand legally. I own more than 200 DVD's now if I think a film is good I'll buy it at a price I think the film is worth it you don't have to assume I'm a crock.
Do you know I watched this on my Windows Mobile phone and seems to have broken it the video just keeps looping over and over I'm not certain but I think the "happy" midi tune plays every now and again
You've misunderstood, people hate Microsoft because its felt they buy competitors products put there own spin on them and then release them, Microsoft is no longer seen as an innovative company. Google a company widely recognised as innovative products and dozens of Beta's has been buying up a lot of small start-ups the OP was pointing out how similar Google is getting to Microsoft as all Google seem to be doing lately is buying small companies just like Microsoft!
I'm not certain why the article is trying to suggest that it's unfair for small companies to have to pay when they use copyrighted material to help their business. I'm not certain that I even disagree with the price some of the companies are asking for in licensing.
I'm sure some people will rant about freedom of music but the original example was $400 or £200 I honestly don't think £200 a year is that much to ask in licensing costs. The particular café should have factored in the cost of playing someone else's music when they offered the service. Reading the other examples it seems the companies are requesting proportional fee's depending on venue, this isn't some evil RIAA tactic it's a company defending its IP against small business's who have been abusing it.
I agree that the harassment tactics the companies are using is wrong and its what the article should have been about. Perhaps it should have centred itself around the idea that record companies aren't checking to see if their IP is being infringed just sending bills and harassing small business owners into giving them money. I will admit the TV theme tune demand is planly stupid and I'm not sure it would be legal. But obviously the current system needs reworking and *shock* maybe some government regulation or control so small business could navigate the system as well as put what seems rogue traders like man who claimed to own gospel IP and the TV tune claimers out of business.
But as far as I'm concerned small business's getting stung by this have only themselves to blame. Its not hard to ask a performer for a list of songs they plan to play at your venue, its not hard to google those songs and make sure that your not infringing copyright by letting them play, as for the article suggestion this is hurting budding artists I really don't care about cover bands its when the companies try to stamp out original works being played (through asking for a license fee) I'd be worried.
Its probably going to be much cheaper than the iPhone, its small it looks damm good (seriously the photo doesn't do it justice) The UI is WM5 which is 1 hand operable and while websites don't always render properly everything does render, for me the on screen keyboard is a pain (tis why I have a XDA Mini S (HTC Wizard)) but it does have GPS and comes with UK sat nav maps, WiFi, Windows Media Player 10 on it is very easy to use (the on screen buttons are big enough to be hit with your thumb and 90% can be done through the physical buttons) you can sync it a few ways although I prefer to use WMP11 for my own Wizard. At this point I think WMP11 is substanially better than Itunes But then again I've hated Itunes since Version 4. When you couple it with one of these:
Your phone can suddenly store 600 tracks (I currently have 593 with 84MB to spare with them encoded to 128Kbps) oh did I mention its 3G and has a radio built into it? Sure thats not the iPhones 4GB or 8GB but its still pretty good. If you hate that what about:
http://shop.vodafone.co.uk/index.cfm?go=paymonthly .productdetails&pid=445 https://shop.o2.co.uk/phone/Nokia/N95
Anouther extremely nice phone, while not that cheap its a great phone and worth looking into, if you really can't find anything better you haven't been looking, I mean if high memory is what your after Nokia had relased the N90 which was designed to be a music player with a 8GB memory the carriers dropped it because no one bought it but I'm sure its on ebay.
Hours of fun per pound, I like to have fun most of my activities cost a fair bit by buying a PS3 I figure I'll get the same usage that I have out of my PS2. I can't go rock climbing, pitch 'n putt, Bowling, Cinema, riding, drinking every night of the week and so with my dead time I usually read, buy a DVD or buy some programming reference book to learn a language. My reading rate is extremely fast and a 1000 page book can't be expected to last me more than a couple of hours*, my DVD collection is vast but there are only some many times you can watch a film within a certain period of time.
Console games allow you to hang out with friends and provide fun. I was heavily thinking about a Xbox360 but the smaller DVD size (when compared to the original Xbox) and the requirement that games not be HD-DVD disc only or Hard drive only is something I think will hurt the Xbox360 in the long run and probably force anouther upgrade
Perhaps long-term investment isn't correct I'm not looking for finical return on my item I'm comparing hours of enjoyment against cost and how long I think the console is going to last before I have to fork out some cash again.
I beg slashdot can we stop with the rumour mongering, I've finally settled on getting a PS3 when its price drops to a decent level because I figure it will be a better long term investment I've come to terms with the fact I've decided on a console because "it will be a better long term investment". Can we please stop posting stupid rumours and getting my hopes up, honestly I don't see the PS3 price going down before GTAIV.
O2 were the first operator to release PPC/PDA phones in the UK (to my knowledge), in the two local stores, I have the employees know about the XDA's back to front. When I went looking for one they went through my wants and needs before narrowing down which XDA they would recommend. Places like Orange and TMobile don't make a deal about their PDA phones their usually mixed in with the more expensive phones, but O2 do. I'm curious why O2 would take on the iPhone, unlike orange their not losing customers in droves, 3 could do with it as they need market share. Unless the iPhone drops its price substantially I can see the people in the O2 shops recommending an XDA Orbit (thin, light) with a 2GB memory card over the iPhone.
I know your trying to say this is impractical, but I used to sync 1GB of music onto a Nokia 7610 over bluetooth using Windows Media Player 10, I could sync my XDA that way. Most people's music collections are on the PC they use the most, I tend to use a PC for an hour or two, Assuming your on your PC for two hours you could sync upto 1.8GB worth of music, Impractical to load up a device but very handy in shuffling tracks.
The downside is that bluetooth doesn't charge your phone unlike that handy USB cable, which is why I use a cable for my XDA, since a charge a day keeps the nasty "you've used to much Wifi indicator" away.
You are talking rubbish, lets go through some of the hardware I own which works on Vista Home Premimum x64 edition, here is a list of some of the things I have that work:
Canon i865 Driver - First supported in vista x64 but haven't been able to get to work in Xp x64
HP Deskjet 3320 Driver - Unoffically supported since XP x64, preinstalled drivers in Vista
"Smart" Scanner - 4 year old scanner Vista see's it as something else, XP x64 installs normal driver
Creative Audigy SE - all creative cards have atleast basic x64 support the latest revision isn't bad
Creative Vista IM Webcam - Just got support
Avermedia Hybrif DVB AR16 - Had Xp x64 support since it was released
Bluetooth USB Dongle - Sorry the labels been worn off cost £5 in Maplins x64 driver relased 2 months after xp x64
Nvidia/Ati Graphics cards - I do notice a perfomance FPS improvement in HL2 on XP x64 compared to XP on an Nvidia
Hercules Muse XP - Works with the XP driver
Hercules All In Wonder 7500 - Doesnt work in XP MCE but does in XP x64
Hrmmm I've run out of non-standard hardware what I have noticed thanks to Vista x64 is you can now generally expect a "vista compatible" sticker to mean it works with both 32bit and 64bit, before I agree you did have to check although since the end of last summer 64bit drivers existed for close to everything even if they wern't put on the installation disk.As for software? Excusing Doom 3 and Gametap both of which had installers which wouldn't let you install them on anything but XP Pro/Home, I never came accross a XP application which wouldn't install and work without issue on XP x64 from games to industry applications. Vista does suffer here it seems I've lost 16bit applications and my pre 2003 games.
Driver support has improved your comment was true but not today
Am I the only person who buys anouther printer rather than catridges? We have two printers in my house a Canon i865 and whatever cheap printer I can get (usually a HP) The Canon cost something like £120 and refilling the catridges is around £6 a go. The sad thing is if we actually compare the total cost of the cannon over the last three years against my habit of buying a new £30 printer (with free ink catridges) The new printer every 12-15 months is still slightly ahead.
When you discover things like this you have to ask yourself why the printer companies haven't been taken to task and yes I'm aware the quality of the cheapy printers is less but then both are only really used to print off uni/school reports the reson why its stayed so close cost wise is because the HP catridges tend to last me around a year, where as each of the 4 Cannon's only last 3-4 months of usuage.
I just can't see this working any company that instigates these measures on catridges is just going to lose customers
I'd like to qualify the above "its too expensive statement" with O2 and Vodaphone every Windows Mobile phone is free on £30 a month contracts, Orange have lost competitivness but even they for a 3G WM device wouldn't charge that much. The Nokia N90 which is the current best symbian is free all networks on a £30 a month contract (18 months.) Which makes it roughly £250 more expensive than its rivals.
On top of that, the price difference between USA and UK gadgets is normally the converted rate plus £50 so we could be looking at a £300 device, while iPods can be pricey the iPod market in the UK is teens and UK and American teens are different in one important way. We drink, we go out into town and drink, many of us from the age of 16 (despite government crackdowns.) Most people aren't willing to take expensive equipment out on the town with them in case they lose it, the most common phones I see around town don't cost more than £100, even digital camera's end up being less than £100. Unless the iPhone sells for less than £100 I can't see your normal iPod owner buying it for this reason.
It might do well at enterprise levels but at the very least this thing won't sell to iPod owners until then, hell my free on contract phone is seen as flashy and I've been asked by friends why I would risk taking it out more than once.
His question is a good one, ith every symbian, Windows Mobile and motorolla phone I've used (in the UK) you an set your ringtione to be one of the tracks on your moble phone, since the Nokia 7650 (five year old phone) I'v been able to have an MP3 as a ringtone. (Technically on the 7650 it was a wav file, but the model which came after could.) Ringtone companies haven't died a death in the UK, heck my little sisters Samsung (£90 on PayAsYouGo) can use MP3's as ringtones.
Apple are trying to force people to buy ringtone's through Itunes, thats a money gabbing move not something friendly for consumers.
Its like the FUD about America not being 3G ready so its pointless, 3G phones revert back to the 2.5G network when video service isn't available. 3G offers a quick service and it isn't as power hungry as people suggest, but it adds cost and the iPhone is already far more expensive when compared to other phones.
Finally I'd like to make a small prediction,this year the iPhone is coming to Europe, assuming a closest match deal in the UK (by this I mean a £250 phone with a 18 month contract on a £30 a month contract) it will fail here its too expensive and is behind the times.
C'mon this is slashdot not some message board filled with backwards ill-informed people who like to rant
Re:Vista Transformation Pack
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Pimp Your XP
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· Score: 1
I tried this after running Vista Home Premimum on my desktop I wanted my Laptop (running XP MCE 2005) looking similar. Graphical glitches were everywhere, the worst case was with the start button, occasionally the circle would place itself infront of everything, lose textures and sometimes would disapear. The vista Transformation Pack also had a huge drag effect on my laptop sure it didn't use more resources but the system response times went into the toilet. To cap it off I couldn't get the thing uninstalled (it does warn you about this) since the laptop became unusable I reformated it and picked up a free copy of Vista Business, which runs just as fast as XP does.
Its a great idea but I'd steer clear from this thing.
Priceless
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Pimp Your XP
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Output Firwall £20 (a year)
Directory Opus £35
Stardock £25
Total cost of Pimping your copy of XP to look like Vista £80, the look on your friends face as you tell them you bought Vista Home Basic for £56 Here
Priceless
In all seriousness why bother? The feature's discussed are all availiable in Home Basic and even if you compare this 'pimping' to the Home Premimum edition you can still get Vista cheaper (£70 at This site ) The only reason not to upgrade to Vista and doing this would be hardware incompatibility or your machine isn't capable of running it well (say you've only got 512mb of ram.)
What makes my life better? Well my user experience has been improved this makes me slightly happy (well less irritated with the drudge of computer work) so what do I like?
Network Synching - This is available in the Business and Ultimate editions of Vista, while 3rd party solutions probably exist and XP may even have been capable of this the ability to plug my laptop into my home network and have it sync my university work folder with the folder on my PC (retaining newest copies) is something incredibly useful for me as a student in keeping work backed up. I had a system in place (which failed me once at an important moment) this is effortless and does the same job.
Games folder - I know this has now business purpose but being able to put all my games into one folder is helpful in getting at them. I'm well aware that in Xp you would only have to navigate a few folders but this takes that away gives me pretty pictures and also has the windows Index thing which is an interesting and something I can see as useful for the future.
Windows Index - I like the concept, the idea of seeing recommended 4.1 and minimum 3.6 on a box instead of reading the specifications is something I like. It simplifies things and creates a bit of fun normally for benchmarking I'd use 3d Mark xxxx however just being able to go I've got a score or 4.5 is easier. Its also useful for problem solving when a friend has been complaining about his slow laptop, you convince a reload might help since its showing other problems, you put Vista on and the indexing service shows everything on the system scoring a 5 except the ram which is a 2 you can suddenly see the issue, prove it and then help them speed the thing up.
Start Bar - This may be stolen the idea of hitting the windows key and typing a word quickly to open up a program is something I find useful and makes things that little easier. The down side of this is I loved the ability to hit the windows key then one of the shut down shortcuts, the removal of this is a negative for me.
Proper Drivers - Sounds stupid but I have benefited from this, I used to use XP x64 there was no cannon i865 driver for it so I was stuck driverless. My Creative Audigy also has driver issues, in XP Pro SP2 it can sometimes get stuck repeating sounds (after I close a game) in Xp x64 hiss was introduced on the inputs which rendered them useless. In Vista x64 I don't have the overly repeating sound issue and the hiss is a constant so programs like audacity can easily remove it without effecting my voice which is a huge plus. There is also a Canoni865 driver which has been a pain to setup for my networked i865 but I can print from my desktop again! The Audigy driver isn't perfect and doesn't support dolby yet (so WMP doesn't play sounds for DVD's, however powerDVD still works as normal.) I'd like to point out the Audigy SE driver in Ubuntu is finiky to setup and buggy so Vista really does have the best driver for it (atm)
Autosetup - Setting up Vista is like setting ubuntu (minus openoffice) up, everything auto installs from the initial installation. Its infinitely better than Xp's and makes things that little bit easier.
UAC - I like this, firstly I only see it when I authorise Fraps to run (or if I'm running VS2005) secondly I've been able to train my family (when they use my laptop or desktop) to read the messages and actually think before clicking. I'm aware that many dislike it, but....
There's more but I have to dash off as I'm late for a meeting at the end of the day there isn't a compelling reason to upgrade. Most people won't notice the extra features and the only real time I would recommend upgrading is when you upgrade your PC. If you need to use hardware that isn't supported or software which doesn't function then use Xp or 98 if you must, don't complain because the new 'feature rich' OS wants more resources and supports DRM. Xp was a great step forward, vista's more like a baby step of improvements.
I'm curious are you spouting the usual slashdot group think opinion, what is actually getting in the way? My expearence has shown it to be XP with a few little extra features which make my life better. I'll admit for most people there isn't a great incentive to upgrade but if you have its worth using. I'm curious what's your answer going to be?
If you don't like it don't use it, just don't be a karma whore. Sure Vista can be slow but then running vista on 512mb of ram is like running XP on 128mb's, something you shouldn't do. Can we actually see a compelling reason rather than the usual rants?
Applications have ruined it, I used Facebook because it was simple and clean. The UI has been altered into some horrible javascript thing and my simple wall and profile have been replaced with slideshows, paid for sent images and a bunch of other rubbish.
Facebook is turning into Myspace, anyone know of online social networking thing thats like the facebook of two years ago?
Itunes since version 4 has been a beast on windows, I had switched to it (from Winamp) because it honestly seemed the best music player, but its got bigger, slower and more encumbered since version 4 was released. I'm actually using windows media player 11 right now because it provides me with the features I want in a music player (sync music to phone), its quick and handles all media.
For a user who doesn't care about features IE7 (which is being pushed in the windows world) is a great browser (with minor tweaking) it opens web pages and is quite quick. Firefox is quite evilly installing itself on machines and it is great for power users (please note I feel Firefox is evil because of all the program installers which default its installation) then you have Opera which I hear does proper rendering.
Elegent software which has easy to find secuirty problems, huge differences in rendering, buggy as hell, I always though IE7 and Firefox were simple to use and their default setup makes them user friendly. I can't get this bera to even install, Apple made a huge fanfare about this product and I'm finding yet anouther reason not to switch.
While I appreciate most of the applications you can get for a mobile phone are Java games, the market is heading towards smartphones using a version of symbian. The iPhone is really aimed at two parts of the mobile phone market, the first is the current PDA market (so blackberry's in the USA and Windows Mobile phones in the UK), the geek/hobbyist which would be the highend Nokia Symbian & Windows Mobile users, its price tag would young teen market (atleast in the UK) as most young teens (I am one and know many others) could afford one (sadly most have iPods) but own small cheap phones because they don't like taking expensive phones out and around with them. I don't understand that thinking myself but then again my last two phones have been free on contract.
I'm aware the American market does have carrier's which lock down phones but most of the rest of the world doesn't suffer this. About the most invasive I've seen is this annoying sidebar Orange stick on all their mobile phones, then again Orange is currently losing customers in droves (least in my home city) because of their new rigid pricing policy. By limiting themselves the way apple have to web 2.0 they've taken the java route on other lowend phones, sure Java can do all sorts of things but the only things that are prevelent for java phones are games. When you compare Doom and Snails (both of which are availiable for Symbian and Windows Mobile) the game selection for Java phones is not as good.
I have no idea how well this would do in American but if the pricing plan were to stay the same in the UK it would tank as its far too expensive for example, I believe the Samsung E900 or Sony Erricson W800i are the current trendy phone's for iPod owners both of which are £80-100 on pay as you go, for the more serious phone owner you have the Nokia N90, Blackberry and Windows Mobile selection all of which are free on 18 month plans, the iPhone is slated to be £200 on a 24 month plan (converting from american dollars.) Symbian and Windows Mobile 5 both have very good User Interfaces, I've yet to meet a person who could tolerate a non symbian phone once they had owned one and to this day every single person who has seen my Windows Mobile phone has been able to get to solitare in seconds (without assistance.)
Without a decent SDK I see the iPhone heading down the Java capable phone route, you'll get hundreds of cheap rubbish games oh and an expensive version of Pacman and Space Invaders.
Who modded you intersting? "Corrupt Windows Parition" so the idea of reinstalling windows from the system restore disk deleting the 'corrupt' partition then creating anouther one wasn't obvious? I've used very worn out drives and rescued them for windows, pre-XP I had a floppy disk which would delete a partition, create a new one and quick format it. That dos disk allowed me to put Windows 98 on a machine which had a bad boot sector. XP's installation gives you the option of quick format which generally overcomes most bad sectors. I'm all for praising Ubuntu (I'm a fan of Feisty Fawn) but can we do it about something which windows hasn't been able to do for years (Linux may also have been able to.) I agree setting up XP can take an hour or two (vista for me is closer to an hour) and yes Linux is faster at installation, but thats not news.
I have no idea if this particular phone is good or not that review was quite pants. For starters yes its larger and heavier than most smartphones most Windows Mobile phones are, is it substantially heavier than those? Mentioning outlook synching and the fact location appears with the appointment makes me question if they even used a Windows Mobile 5 phone (hint a WM5 does just that.) What is a 'heavy' document and how does WM6 compare to WM5? I want to know if the word functionality is better I already know trying to open a 2MB document in Word Mobile takes ages (10 seconds or so.)
That review was awfull to read, they didn't compare it with other offerings or even talk about its features my computer iliterate sister could have done a better job.
I owned a Hercules All in Wonder 7500, if I wanted to play games I had to use the Ati 7500 driver (for lord of the rings I had to use the 8500 driver or suffer strange texture effects) for the tv turner I would then have to switch the All in Wonder 7500 driver. If the driver had been consistant I wouldn't have minded for example Uru: Ages Beyond Myst didn't require me to switch driver, Republic and Sims required the 7500 driver and the previously mentioned Lord of the Rings wanted the 8500 driver. Sims 2 ran using the All in Wonder driver, Sims 2 university would crash frequently complaining about the driver.
I've only owned the one ATi card but it was enough to put me off them.
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That would be great example except http://www.expansys.com/p.aspx?i=145613 and http://www.laptopshop.co.uk/acer-travelmate_c213tm i_vista-tablet_pc-4-t2.htm kind of show that Vista has made it onto Tablets. My biggest issue with Tablets is the hardware & price can't compete with laptops. As for WinFS wasn't some form of that originally planned for windows 95? Nice joke but you kind of shot yourself in the foot
As a mere Vista user I'm interested in knowing what version of WMP you used Last time I checked Windows Media Player 11 (as it comes installed) doesn't automatically alter your MP3's. I've just moved my vista installation over to a new hard drive and opening WMP for the second time then going to the library drop down arrow then to "More options" The following are the defaults:
[x]Delete Files when deleted from my library
[x]Retrieve additional information from the internet
[x]Only add missing information
[ ]Overwrite all Media information
[ ]Rename music files using rip music settings
[ ]Rearrange rip music in rip music folder, using rip music settings
[x]Maintain my star ratings as global ratings in files
So by default it might add composer information or an auto rating to the id3 tag it won't change the album photo it won't change the artist, it won't change the album name. Compare to my recent expearence with iTunes 7.10 which I installed to see if it had improved. First off it tried taking all my music and putting it into a Itunes Folder inside ther My Music folder, while it was doing this it find the dozen or so WMA's I have and began converting them to AAC's a format. To make matters worse quicktime assumed control for any MP3's I streamed from online (blocking WMP) and it dispersed one of my old compilation albums into a series of single 3 song singles all of which were incorrectly labelled. The fact it won't recognise a flash drive or my PPC phone as something it could sync to was just the icing on the cake for me.
Yes DRM's end is coming and hopefully it will be soon I am truely looking forward to the day when I can just run a media centre PC with all my DVD's & CD's ripped onto it without wondering where I actually stand legally. I own more than 200 DVD's now if I think a film is good I'll buy it at a price I think the film is worth it you don't have to assume I'm a crock.
Do you know I watched this on my Windows Mobile phone and seems to have broken it the video just keeps looping over and over I'm not certain but I think the "happy" midi tune plays every now and again
You've misunderstood, people hate Microsoft because its felt they buy competitors products put there own spin on them and then release them, Microsoft is no longer seen as an innovative company. Google a company widely recognised as innovative products and dozens of Beta's has been buying up a lot of small start-ups the OP was pointing out how similar Google is getting to Microsoft as all Google seem to be doing lately is buying small companies just like Microsoft!
I'm not certain why the article is trying to suggest that it's unfair for small companies to have to pay when they use copyrighted material to help their business. I'm not certain that I even disagree with the price some of the companies are asking for in licensing.
I'm sure some people will rant about freedom of music but the original example was $400 or £200 I honestly don't think £200 a year is that much to ask in licensing costs. The particular café should have factored in the cost of playing someone else's music when they offered the service. Reading the other examples it seems the companies are requesting proportional fee's depending on venue, this isn't some evil RIAA tactic it's a company defending its IP against small business's who have been abusing it.
I agree that the harassment tactics the companies are using is wrong and its what the article should have been about. Perhaps it should have centred itself around the idea that record companies aren't checking to see if their IP is being infringed just sending bills and harassing small business owners into giving them money. I will admit the TV theme tune demand is planly stupid and I'm not sure it would be legal. But obviously the current system needs reworking and *shock* maybe some government regulation or control so small business could navigate the system as well as put what seems rogue traders like man who claimed to own gospel IP and the TV tune claimers out of business.
But as far as I'm concerned small business's getting stung by this have only themselves to blame. Its not hard to ask a performer for a list of songs they plan to play at your venue, its not hard to google those songs and make sure that your not infringing copyright by letting them play, as for the article suggestion this is hurting budding artists I really don't care about cover bands its when the companies try to stamp out original works being played (through asking for a license fee) I'd be worried.
Your in the UK? Pop into your local O2 store and look at this:
O rbit_-_Sat_Nav
y .productdetails&pid=445
https://shop.o2.co.uk/phone/specification/O2/Xda_
Its probably going to be much cheaper than the iPhone, its small it looks damm good (seriously the photo doesn't do it justice) The UI is WM5 which is 1 hand operable and while websites don't always render properly everything does render, for me the on screen keyboard is a pain (tis why I have a XDA Mini S (HTC Wizard)) but it does have GPS and comes with UK sat nav maps, WiFi, Windows Media Player 10 on it is very easy to use (the on screen buttons are big enough to be hit with your thumb and 90% can be done through the physical buttons) you can sync it a few ways although I prefer to use WMP11 for my own Wizard. At this point I think WMP11 is substanially better than Itunes But then again I've hated Itunes since Version 4. When you couple it with one of these:
http://www.expansys.com/p.aspx?i=127830
Your phone can suddenly store 600 tracks (I currently have 593 with 84MB to spare with them encoded to 128Kbps) oh did I mention its 3G and has a radio built into it? Sure thats not the iPhones 4GB or 8GB but its still pretty good. If you hate that what about:
http://shop.vodafone.co.uk/index.cfm?go=paymonthl
https://shop.o2.co.uk/phone/Nokia/N95
Anouther extremely nice phone, while not that cheap its a great phone and worth looking into, if you really can't find anything better you haven't been looking, I mean if high memory is what your after Nokia had relased the N90 which was designed to be a music player with a 8GB memory the carriers dropped it because no one bought it but I'm sure its on ebay.
Hours of fun per pound, I like to have fun most of my activities cost a fair bit by buying a PS3 I figure I'll get the same usage that I have out of my PS2. I can't go rock climbing, pitch 'n putt, Bowling, Cinema, riding, drinking every night of the week and so with my dead time I usually read, buy a DVD or buy some programming reference book to learn a language. My reading rate is extremely fast and a 1000 page book can't be expected to last me more than a couple of hours*, my DVD collection is vast but there are only some many times you can watch a film within a certain period of time.
Console games allow you to hang out with friends and provide fun. I was heavily thinking about a Xbox360 but the smaller DVD size (when compared to the original Xbox) and the requirement that games not be HD-DVD disc only or Hard drive only is something I think will hurt the Xbox360 in the long run and probably force anouther upgrade
Perhaps long-term investment isn't correct I'm not looking for finical return on my item I'm comparing hours of enjoyment against cost and how long I think the console is going to last before I have to fork out some cash again.
I beg slashdot can we stop with the rumour mongering, I've finally settled on getting a PS3 when its price drops to a decent level because I figure it will be a better long term investment I've come to terms with the fact I've decided on a console because "it will be a better long term investment". Can we please stop posting stupid rumours and getting my hopes up, honestly I don't see the PS3 price going down before GTAIV.
O2 were the first operator to release PPC/PDA phones in the UK (to my knowledge), in the two local stores, I have the employees know about the XDA's back to front. When I went looking for one they went through my wants and needs before narrowing down which XDA they would recommend. Places like Orange and TMobile don't make a deal about their PDA phones their usually mixed in with the more expensive phones, but O2 do. I'm curious why O2 would take on the iPhone, unlike orange their not losing customers in droves, 3 could do with it as they need market share. Unless the iPhone drops its price substantially I can see the people in the O2 shops recommending an XDA Orbit (thin, light) with a 2GB memory card over the iPhone.
I know your trying to say this is impractical, but I used to sync 1GB of music onto a Nokia 7610 over bluetooth using Windows Media Player 10, I could sync my XDA that way. Most people's music collections are on the PC they use the most, I tend to use a PC for an hour or two, Assuming your on your PC for two hours you could sync upto 1.8GB worth of music, Impractical to load up a device but very handy in shuffling tracks.
The downside is that bluetooth doesn't charge your phone unlike that handy USB cable, which is why I use a cable for my XDA, since a charge a day keeps the nasty "you've used to much Wifi indicator" away.
You are talking rubbish, lets go through some of the hardware I own which works on Vista Home Premimum x64 edition, here is a list of some of the things I have that work:
Canon i865 Driver - First supported in vista x64 but haven't been able to get to work in Xp x64
HP Deskjet 3320 Driver - Unoffically supported since XP x64, preinstalled drivers in Vista
"Smart" Scanner - 4 year old scanner Vista see's it as something else, XP x64 installs normal driver
Creative Audigy SE - all creative cards have atleast basic x64 support the latest revision isn't bad
Creative Vista IM Webcam - Just got support
Avermedia Hybrif DVB AR16 - Had Xp x64 support since it was released
Bluetooth USB Dongle - Sorry the labels been worn off cost £5 in Maplins x64 driver relased 2 months after xp x64
Nvidia/Ati Graphics cards - I do notice a perfomance FPS improvement in HL2 on XP x64 compared to XP on an Nvidia
Hercules Muse XP - Works with the XP driver
Hercules All In Wonder 7500 - Doesnt work in XP MCE but does in XP x64
Hrmmm I've run out of non-standard hardware what I have noticed thanks to Vista x64 is you can now generally expect a "vista compatible" sticker to mean it works with both 32bit and 64bit, before I agree you did have to check although since the end of last summer 64bit drivers existed for close to everything even if they wern't put on the installation disk.As for software? Excusing Doom 3 and Gametap both of which had installers which wouldn't let you install them on anything but XP Pro/Home, I never came accross a XP application which wouldn't install and work without issue on XP x64 from games to industry applications. Vista does suffer here it seems I've lost 16bit applications and my pre 2003 games.
Driver support has improved your comment was true but not today
Am I the only person who buys anouther printer rather than catridges? We have two printers in my house a Canon i865 and whatever cheap printer I can get (usually a HP) The Canon cost something like £120 and refilling the catridges is around £6 a go. The sad thing is if we actually compare the total cost of the cannon over the last three years against my habit of buying a new £30 printer (with free ink catridges) The new printer every 12-15 months is still slightly ahead.
When you discover things like this you have to ask yourself why the printer companies haven't been taken to task and yes I'm aware the quality of the cheapy printers is less but then both are only really used to print off uni/school reports the reson why its stayed so close cost wise is because the HP catridges tend to last me around a year, where as each of the 4 Cannon's only last 3-4 months of usuage.
I just can't see this working any company that instigates these measures on catridges is just going to lose customers
I'd like to qualify the above "its too expensive statement" with O2 and Vodaphone every Windows Mobile phone is free on £30 a month contracts, Orange have lost competitivness but even they for a 3G WM device wouldn't charge that much. The Nokia N90 which is the current best symbian is free all networks on a £30 a month contract (18 months.) Which makes it roughly £250 more expensive than its rivals.
On top of that, the price difference between USA and UK gadgets is normally the converted rate plus £50 so we could be looking at a £300 device, while iPods can be pricey the iPod market in the UK is teens and UK and American teens are different in one important way. We drink, we go out into town and drink, many of us from the age of 16 (despite government crackdowns.) Most people aren't willing to take expensive equipment out on the town with them in case they lose it, the most common phones I see around town don't cost more than £100, even digital camera's end up being less than £100. Unless the iPhone sells for less than £100 I can't see your normal iPod owner buying it for this reason.
It might do well at enterprise levels but at the very least this thing won't sell to iPod owners until then, hell my free on contract phone is seen as flashy and I've been asked by friends why I would risk taking it out more than once.
Who modded you informative?
His question is a good one, ith every symbian, Windows Mobile and motorolla phone I've used (in the UK) you an set your ringtione to be one of the tracks on your moble phone, since the Nokia 7650 (five year old phone) I'v been able to have an MP3 as a ringtone. (Technically on the 7650 it was a wav file, but the model which came after could.) Ringtone companies haven't died a death in the UK, heck my little sisters Samsung (£90 on PayAsYouGo) can use MP3's as ringtones.
Apple are trying to force people to buy ringtone's through Itunes, thats a money gabbing move not something friendly for consumers.
Its like the FUD about America not being 3G ready so its pointless, 3G phones revert back to the 2.5G network when video service isn't available. 3G offers a quick service and it isn't as power hungry as people suggest, but it adds cost and the iPhone is already far more expensive when compared to other phones.
Finally I'd like to make a small prediction,this year the iPhone is coming to Europe, assuming a closest match deal in the UK (by this I mean a £250 phone with a 18 month contract on a £30 a month contract) it will fail here its too expensive and is behind the times.
C'mon this is slashdot not some message board filled with backwards ill-informed people who like to rant
I tried this after running Vista Home Premimum on my desktop I wanted my Laptop (running XP MCE 2005) looking similar. Graphical glitches were everywhere, the worst case was with the start button, occasionally the circle would place itself infront of everything, lose textures and sometimes would disapear. The vista Transformation Pack also had a huge drag effect on my laptop sure it didn't use more resources but the system response times went into the toilet. To cap it off I couldn't get the thing uninstalled (it does warn you about this) since the laptop became unusable I reformated it and picked up a free copy of Vista Business, which runs just as fast as XP does.
Its a great idea but I'd steer clear from this thing.
Output Firwall £20 (a year)
Directory Opus £35
Stardock £25
Total cost of Pimping your copy of XP to look like Vista £80, the look on your friends face as you tell them you bought Vista Home Basic for £56 Here
Priceless
In all seriousness why bother? The feature's discussed are all availiable in Home Basic and even if you compare this 'pimping' to the Home Premimum edition you can still get Vista cheaper (£70 at This site ) The only reason not to upgrade to Vista and doing this would be hardware incompatibility or your machine isn't capable of running it well (say you've only got 512mb of ram.)
What makes my life better? Well my user experience has been improved this makes me slightly happy (well less irritated with the drudge of computer work) so what do I like?
....
Network Synching - This is available in the Business and Ultimate editions of Vista, while 3rd party solutions probably exist and XP may even have been capable of this the ability to plug my laptop into my home network and have it sync my university work folder with the folder on my PC (retaining newest copies) is something incredibly useful for me as a student in keeping work backed up. I had a system in place (which failed me once at an important moment) this is effortless and does the same job.
Games folder - I know this has now business purpose but being able to put all my games into one folder is helpful in getting at them. I'm well aware that in Xp you would only have to navigate a few folders but this takes that away gives me pretty pictures and also has the windows Index thing which is an interesting and something I can see as useful for the future.
Windows Index - I like the concept, the idea of seeing recommended 4.1 and minimum 3.6 on a box instead of reading the specifications is something I like. It simplifies things and creates a bit of fun normally for benchmarking I'd use 3d Mark xxxx however just being able to go I've got a score or 4.5 is easier. Its also useful for problem solving when a friend has been complaining about his slow laptop, you convince a reload might help since its showing other problems, you put Vista on and the indexing service shows everything on the system scoring a 5 except the ram which is a 2 you can suddenly see the issue, prove it and then help them speed the thing up.
Start Bar - This may be stolen the idea of hitting the windows key and typing a word quickly to open up a program is something I find useful and makes things that little easier. The down side of this is I loved the ability to hit the windows key then one of the shut down shortcuts, the removal of this is a negative for me.
Proper Drivers - Sounds stupid but I have benefited from this, I used to use XP x64 there was no cannon i865 driver for it so I was stuck driverless. My Creative Audigy also has driver issues, in XP Pro SP2 it can sometimes get stuck repeating sounds (after I close a game) in Xp x64 hiss was introduced on the inputs which rendered them useless. In Vista x64 I don't have the overly repeating sound issue and the hiss is a constant so programs like audacity can easily remove it without effecting my voice which is a huge plus. There is also a Canoni865 driver which has been a pain to setup for my networked i865 but I can print from my desktop again! The Audigy driver isn't perfect and doesn't support dolby yet (so WMP doesn't play sounds for DVD's, however powerDVD still works as normal.) I'd like to point out the Audigy SE driver in Ubuntu is finiky to setup and buggy so Vista really does have the best driver for it (atm)
Autosetup - Setting up Vista is like setting ubuntu (minus openoffice) up, everything auto installs from the initial installation. Its infinitely better than Xp's and makes things that little bit easier.
UAC - I like this, firstly I only see it when I authorise Fraps to run (or if I'm running VS2005) secondly I've been able to train my family (when they use my laptop or desktop) to read the messages and actually think before clicking. I'm aware that many dislike it, but
There's more but I have to dash off as I'm late for a meeting at the end of the day there isn't a compelling reason to upgrade. Most people won't notice the extra features and the only real time I would recommend upgrading is when you upgrade your PC. If you need to use hardware that isn't supported or software which doesn't function then use Xp or 98 if you must, don't complain because the new 'feature rich' OS wants more resources and supports DRM. Xp was a great step forward, vista's more like a baby step of improvements.
I'm curious are you spouting the usual slashdot group think opinion, what is actually getting in the way? My expearence has shown it to be XP with a few little extra features which make my life better. I'll admit for most people there isn't a great incentive to upgrade but if you have its worth using. I'm curious what's your answer going to be?
If you don't like it don't use it, just don't be a karma whore. Sure Vista can be slow but then running vista on 512mb of ram is like running XP on 128mb's, something you shouldn't do. Can we actually see a compelling reason rather than the usual rants?
Applications have ruined it, I used Facebook because it was simple and clean. The UI has been altered into some horrible javascript thing and my simple wall and profile have been replaced with slideshows, paid for sent images and a bunch of other rubbish.
Facebook is turning into Myspace, anyone know of online social networking thing thats like the facebook of two years ago?
Bad arguement
Itunes since version 4 has been a beast on windows, I had switched to it (from Winamp) because it honestly seemed the best music player, but its got bigger, slower and more encumbered since version 4 was released. I'm actually using windows media player 11 right now because it provides me with the features I want in a music player (sync music to phone), its quick and handles all media.
For a user who doesn't care about features IE7 (which is being pushed in the windows world) is a great browser (with minor tweaking) it opens web pages and is quite quick. Firefox is quite evilly installing itself on machines and it is great for power users (please note I feel Firefox is evil because of all the program installers which default its installation) then you have Opera which I hear does proper rendering.
Elegent software which has easy to find secuirty problems, huge differences in rendering, buggy as hell, I always though IE7 and Firefox were simple to use and their default setup makes them user friendly. I can't get this bera to even install, Apple made a huge fanfare about this product and I'm finding yet anouther reason not to switch.
Really?
b ile/
http://www.xda-developers.com/
http://my-symbian.com/main/index.php
http://www.myphonegames.co.uk/
http://www.handango.com/home.jsp?siteId=1
http://www.skype.com/intl/en-gb/download/skype/mo
http://messenger.yahoo.com/mobile.php
http://www.agilemobile.com/download.html
http://www.pdamill.com/
http://www.adobe.com/mobile/
While I appreciate most of the applications you can get for a mobile phone are Java games, the market is heading towards smartphones using a version of symbian. The iPhone is really aimed at two parts of the mobile phone market, the first is the current PDA market (so blackberry's in the USA and Windows Mobile phones in the UK), the geek/hobbyist which would be the highend Nokia Symbian & Windows Mobile users, its price tag would young teen market (atleast in the UK) as most young teens (I am one and know many others) could afford one (sadly most have iPods) but own small cheap phones because they don't like taking expensive phones out and around with them. I don't understand that thinking myself but then again my last two phones have been free on contract.
I'm aware the American market does have carrier's which lock down phones but most of the rest of the world doesn't suffer this. About the most invasive I've seen is this annoying sidebar Orange stick on all their mobile phones, then again Orange is currently losing customers in droves (least in my home city) because of their new rigid pricing policy. By limiting themselves the way apple have to web 2.0 they've taken the java route on other lowend phones, sure Java can do all sorts of things but the only things that are prevelent for java phones are games. When you compare Doom and Snails (both of which are availiable for Symbian and Windows Mobile) the game selection for Java phones is not as good.
I have no idea how well this would do in American but if the pricing plan were to stay the same in the UK it would tank as its far too expensive for example, I believe the Samsung E900 or Sony Erricson W800i are the current trendy phone's for iPod owners both of which are £80-100 on pay as you go, for the more serious phone owner you have the Nokia N90, Blackberry and Windows Mobile selection all of which are free on 18 month plans, the iPhone is slated to be £200 on a 24 month plan (converting from american dollars.) Symbian and Windows Mobile 5 both have very good User Interfaces, I've yet to meet a person who could tolerate a non symbian phone once they had owned one and to this day every single person who has seen my Windows Mobile phone has been able to get to solitare in seconds (without assistance.)
Without a decent SDK I see the iPhone heading down the Java capable phone route, you'll get hundreds of cheap rubbish games oh and an expensive version of Pacman and Space Invaders.
Who modded you intersting? "Corrupt Windows Parition" so the idea of reinstalling windows from the system restore disk deleting the 'corrupt' partition then creating anouther one wasn't obvious? I've used very worn out drives and rescued them for windows, pre-XP I had a floppy disk which would delete a partition, create a new one and quick format it. That dos disk allowed me to put Windows 98 on a machine which had a bad boot sector. XP's installation gives you the option of quick format which generally overcomes most bad sectors. I'm all for praising Ubuntu (I'm a fan of Feisty Fawn) but can we do it about something which windows hasn't been able to do for years (Linux may also have been able to.) I agree setting up XP can take an hour or two (vista for me is closer to an hour) and yes Linux is faster at installation, but thats not news.
I have no idea if this particular phone is good or not that review was quite pants. For starters yes its larger and heavier than most smartphones most Windows Mobile phones are, is it substantially heavier than those? Mentioning outlook synching and the fact location appears with the appointment makes me question if they even used a Windows Mobile 5 phone (hint a WM5 does just that.) What is a 'heavy' document and how does WM6 compare to WM5? I want to know if the word functionality is better I already know trying to open a 2MB document in Word Mobile takes ages (10 seconds or so.)
That review was awfull to read, they didn't compare it with other offerings or even talk about its features my computer iliterate sister could have done a better job.
I owned a Hercules All in Wonder 7500, if I wanted to play games I had to use the Ati 7500 driver (for lord of the rings I had to use the 8500 driver or suffer strange texture effects) for the tv turner I would then have to switch the All in Wonder 7500 driver. If the driver had been consistant I wouldn't have minded for example Uru: Ages Beyond Myst didn't require me to switch driver, Republic and Sims required the 7500 driver and the previously mentioned Lord of the Rings wanted the 8500 driver. Sims 2 ran using the All in Wonder driver, Sims 2 university would crash frequently complaining about the driver.
I've only owned the one ATi card but it was enough to put me off them.