The iPhone is release here in the UK on Friday, and while it is incredibly tempting to get an iPhone, for a few simple reasons I wont be:
The storage space is to small. Now I know I still iPods that have a 20GB hard disk on occasion, if I'm going to take advantage of that big screen, I need more space than the iPhone offers.
That big screen is nice, but on a phone, it makes the unit huge, and I like something small enough that will fit in my pocket without feeling to uncomfortable when I sit down.
The camera on it is way to low quality. I never thought I'd say this (I avoided buying a camera phone until last year), but I love the 3.2 megapixel camera on my K800i, and I'm already considering upgrading to the K850i for the 5 Megapixel camera.
The iPhone is release here in the UK on Friday, and while it is incredibly tempting to get an iPhone, for a few simple reasons I won't be:
The storage space is too small. Now I know I still iPods that have a 20GB hard disk on occasion, if I'm going to take advantage of that big screen, I need more space than the iPhone offers.
That big screen is nice, but on a phone, it makes the unit huge, and I like something small enough that will fit in my pocket without feeling to uncomfortable when I sit down.
The camera on it is way to low quality. I never thought I'd say this (I avoided buying a camera phone until last year), but I love the 3.2 megapixel camera on my K800i, and I'm already considering upgrading to the K850i for the 5 Megapixel camera.
The call pricing plans are a joke. No, honest. They are terrible in the UK at the best of times, and while O2 have sensibly offered the same unlimited Internet access as available in the US, they are at a price which is still more than I'm prepared to pay when I can get a cheaper tariff, on a better phone, at a time when I spend most of my time in the home-office anyway.
I've been installing a lot of different operating systems recently for testing different things, and there's an interesting issue going on with the location of the 'traditional' terminal or command prompt.
I'll admit, I'm a command line junkie after years of first DOS and then Unix. Despite being a complete Mac zealot as well, the first application I start after a browser and email when OS X starts up is either the Terminal or Apple's X Windows System implementation.
But I'm noticing something odd. On Linux and Solaris the 'Terminal' application is often hidden away under the 'System Tools' or 'Administration Tools' part of the menu within whatever interface you choose. I suspect this is because these operating systems have been pushing for the 'standard' (read not power or developer user) who don't want to use a shell to use their OS.
I've been installing a lot of different operating systems recently for testing different things, and there's an interesting issue going on with the location of the 'traditional' terminal or command prompt.
I'll admit, I'm a command line junkie after years of first DOS and then Unix. Despite being a complete Mac zealot as well, the first application I start after a browser and email when OS X starts up is either the Terminal or Apple's X Windows System implementation.
But I'm noticing something odd. On Linux and Solaris the 'Terminal' application is often hidden away under the 'System Tools' or 'Administration Tools' part of the menu within whatever interface you choose. I suspect this is because these operating systems have been pushing for the 'standard' (read not power or developer user) who don't want to use a shell to use their OS.
The weekend is coming up, and, perfectly on time, my copy of the Half Life 2 Orange Box for Xbox 360 has arrived. The box combines the original Half Life 2, plus the followup Episode 1 and Episode 2, and the Portal and Team Fortress 2 -- all of which should easily help you unwind after a long week of IT troubles. The original Half Life 2 is largely unchanged, even though it's just 360 version of the Xbox original. Unless you've played it, it's difficult to describe just how good a combination of puzzle solving and first person shooter the game is. The game switches between the different elements at just about the right time, so you flip between full on gun fights and having to find your way around a dangerous environment without there being too much of either. It's also wrapped into a engrossing story that would be interesting to watch on the sidelines even without having to play the game in the middle. Normally I'd start playing again from the start, but I've only recently completely a run and while I'd happily go again, I've been itching to play Episode 1.
The weekend is coming up, and, perfectly on time, my copy of the Half Life 2 Orange Box for Xbox 360 has arrived. The box combines the original Half Life 2, plus the followup Episode 1 and Episode 2, and the Portal and Team Fortress 2 -- all of which should easily help you unwind after a long week of IT troubles. The original Half Life 2 is largely unchanged, even though it's just 360 version of the Xbox original. Unless you've played it, it's difficult to describe just how good a combination of puzzle solving and first person shooter the game is. The game switches between the different elements at just about the right time, so you flip between full on gun fights and having to find your way around a dangerous environment without there being too much of either. It's also wrapped into a engrossing story that would be interesting to watch on the sidelines even without having to play the game in the middle. Normally I'd start playing again from the start, but I've only recently completely a run and while I'd happily go again, I've been itching to play Episode 1.
I have four Skype accounts that I use regularly and I manage all of them through the Skype Control panel, all of them are configured to automatically have credit applied from the pool of credit.
But out of the accounts, only one of them auto-updates the credit. One of them is a SkypePro account, and I fully accept that there is an issue there. But the other three are standard accounts with nothing special on them, so why doesn't it work?
The fact that it doesn't auto update causes some problems. I've run out of credit a couple of times now, fortunately not mid-way through a call, but it kind of defeats the purpose of auto-credit.
I have four Skype accounts that I use regularly and I manage all of them through the Skype Control panel, all of them are configured to automatically have credit applied from the pool of credit.
But out of the accounts, only one of them auto-updates the credit. One of them is a SkypePro account, and I fully accept that there is an issue there. But the other three are standard accounts with nothing special on them, so why doesn't it work?
The fact that it doesn't auto update causes some problems. I've run out of credit a couple of times now, fortunately not mid-way through a call, but it kind of defeats the purpose of auto-credit.
I have four Skype accounts that I use regularly and I manage all of them through the Skype Control panel, all of them are configured to automatically have credit applied from the pool of credit.
But out of the accounts, only one of them auto-updates the credit. One of them is a SkypePro account, and I fully accept that there is an issue there. But the other three are standard accounts with nothing special on them, so why doesn't it work?
The fact that it doesn't auto update causes some problems. I've run out of credit a couple of times now, fortunately not mid-way through a call, but it kind of defeats the purpose of auto-credit.
There have been rumors that Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) would include support for ZFS and it appears, with the latest preview from Apple (see Ars Technica), that that rumor is reality.
This has caused an unsurprising fuss and state of excitement in developers and users. Everybody knows that HFS and HFS+ (the current filesystem choices) are really bad. They are comparatively very slow and inefficient and archaic from the perspective that they put some interesting restrictions on how files, file naming and individual partitions of a hard drive are used.