Interesting: The Dell Buyout: Storm Warning for the Tech Industry

The Dell Buyout: Storm Warning for the Tech Industry

What it means to the rest of us

I think the Dell deal is just the beginning of the Windows 8 fallout. There are several other, bigger, shoes waiting to drop.

What will the other major PC licensees do? If you’re working at a company like HP or Acer, everything about this situation feels ugly. Your faith in Windows has been broken, you’re losing share to Lenovo, and now Microsoft is subsidizing one of your biggest competitors. I’d be tempted to fly out to Redmond and demand my own handout. And I’d also be willing to look at more radical options. There are several possibilities:

MOZILLA Y U HATE RSS?!?

The day they killed RSS (Livemarks) on Firefox

Yeah that about sums up my feelings on the matter :-|

Mozilla and Firefox had a great idea with their original implementation of RSS, “Livemarks” but they didn’t build on that success or promote it to users, instead they tried to hide it, and now the latest blow… the emasculation of Livemarks.

Bug 613588 – (livemarksIO) Replace livemarks with asynchronous load-on-demand livemarks

Three major changes in Firefox: 1) Live Bookmarks are loaded “on demand,” instead of Firefox checking for new items in the background; 2) Live Bookmarks are handled asynchronously, which prevents Firefox from locking up whenever feed items are stored or accessed; and 3) Live Bookmark items are no longer considered “bookmarks,” speeding up the display of and searches for actual bookmarks. The basic rationale for these changes is presented here by the developer who eventually coded them. The reasons all make perfect sense

[here].

So… do the dev’s really hate RSS and are they trying to kill it off completely in the coming Firefox versions?

Well the signs don’t look great…

This Bug was posted on the 20th of June 2012 and still no sign of a fix…

It affects 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18.

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So is even this watered down version of RSS going to wither on the vine?

Time will tell but things are not looking good for the future of RSS on Firefox, not good at all :-(

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Note: A possible ray of hope:

Marco Bonardo [:mak] 2012-02-27 05:28:13 PST

(In reply to Girish Sharma from comment #105)
> Is there a way to disable this feature?, so as to load the livemarks
> automatically, without the need of going to each livemarks and waiting for
> it to load ?

Until bug 725964 is at least made better, updating livemarks is expensive. We don’t want our users to pay that cost they may not need (thus why the livemark load on access). That said, I’m evaluating making a really simple restartless add-on for users willing to pay that price.

The Lumia 900 – A really Ugly, under spec’d, Low Res., Square phone, For too much money …

The Nokia Lumia 900 review

Its really weird, most of the reviews seem to be in the line of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.

I cant work out if this is just the result of “Group Think”, or if the reviewers are aware that outright criticism of MS/Nokia is not allowed and dance around giving the reader hints instead.

Also this review is interesting because after reading it my takeaway was:

A really Ugly, under spec’d, Low Res., Square phone, For too much money …

Now the ugly is personal preference, but something I would stand by, this thing is ugly.

Now the under spec’d, Low Res is born out if you research the phone and I think the reviewer does touch on this but again this odd reticence to take MS/Nokia to task for it.

Notes:

It feels bigger in hand than you might expect.

“Due to the screen margins and casing overhang it feels bigger in hand than
you might expect of a 4.3-inch-screened phone. “

Its Fat.

“The Lumia 900 is not pushing the limits of thinness at 11.5
millimeters”

The Galaxy Note is 9.7 mm and the iPhone 9.3 mm

It can be hard to hear.

“The Lumia 900′s single speaker is pretty quiet, even at the loudest volume
setting. [...] but it can be hard to hear without the volume turned all the way
up. “

As for storage, [...]16GB—unexpandable.

As for storage, the Lumia 900 comes with a flat 16GB—unexpandable,
unupgradeable.

The Lumia 900′s screen is 800×480 pixels.

In 2012???

Really?

What is this the Windows95 Phone?

It gets Dirty real fast.

“the Lumia 900′s screen holds onto grease and fingerprints like
crazy.”

“Fingerprint grease slicks can accumulate to the point that light coming
from the screen underneath strobes. The grease buildup gets so rich and
plentiful, you could identify a murder suspect from these fingerprint
impressions”

Landscape orientation sometimes seems half-baked.

“with buttons that stay portrait-oriented next to the horizontal keyboard.
The phone is also a bit finicky about scrolling. “

Ouch – I mean that is pretty basic!

Windows Phone notifications are poor.

The reviewer dances around this but does say:

“the OS needs to play catchup in other notification measures.”

The browser is, unfortunately, one of the phone’s weaker points.

Yes if you look at the screen shots its pretty nasty.

And slow:

“over three times slower than the iPhone 4S and Galaxy Nexus”

Too much swiping – too little info per page.

“Often apps split too much between too many menus, requiring several swipes
to access all of the options. In other cases, the large fonts that characterize
the OS take up too much valuable screen real estate.”

This is a conscious design decision and a bad one.

No replaceable Battery & recharge takes approx 4 hours.

This is a deal breaker for me what use is a phone that I cant use?

Samsung Galaxy Note – The Best Phone I Have Owned – Really

Yes it fits in your pocket, yes your jeans pocket. The key here is how thin and light it is.

Yes the battery is very good, it lasts at least a day and a half maybe 2 days with out charging.

Yes I use the phone bare – no case – no screen protectors. (I have a plan :-) ).

Yes the screen is as beautiful as the reviews indicate.

Yes you do use the stylus. I use it for scribbling notes which are show on screen as post-its.

Recommended accessories (to save you having to search).

SAMSUNG GALAXY NOTE PREMIUM PU LEATHER FLIP CASE / COVER / POUCH / HOLSTER – BLACK PART OF THE QUBITS ACCESSORIES RANGE

Price: £3.99

Samsung Battery Charger Stand for Galaxy Note

Price: £8.51

Samsung Battery for Galaxy Note GT-I9220

Price: £14.39

Mobilizers: 2 in 1 In Car Windscreen Suction Mount Holder Cradle With 360 Degree Rotation + Car Charger Kit For For All New Models

Sale: £7.99

The Backup Phone Plan.

As I am not prepared to compromise the user experience by using a cover/case/protector I needed to address what to do in case of breakage.

I an converting my previous HTC Desire into a backup phone, that is converting it to a pay as you go sim.

So in the event of an accident I will have the Note repaired on my insurance and swap the sim into the Desire until I get the Note back.

Of course if I am careful this should never be needed ;-)

Bought the Samsung Galaxy Note – The deal was too good to pass up

I have been watching the price on the Note and saw a special offer for £20.50

Too good a deal to pass up :-D

Deal:

100 cross-network mins + Unlimited texts + 500MB Anytime Mobile Internet Browsing + FREE BT Openzone WiFi + One FREE Swapables • 24 months

• Magic Numbers • Orange Wednesdays

Well its all over bar the shouting ;-)

Deliver due this Saturday, and we will see if it is >Too BIG< or rather >Just Big Enough<

Also will need to pay £58 for terminating early and all that… messy messy messy.

Details: £492.00 total cost. Nearest offer is £624.00 and £684.00.
The Official Orange deal was miles out.

So I get a premium new phone for a pound or two more than my current deal YEAH!

When I first looked at pricing this phone was £46!!!

I also get to stay on the Orange network which is great, and one swappable… hmm Times Or Deezer… decisions decisions.

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Previous Post

An update on my smartphone research:

I dropped in at a couple of Phone shops yesterday and here are my thoughts.

Not too impressed by the Samsung Galaxy SII (but it had been “got at” by some kids so not a fair test).

Hugely impressed with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, I had written this one off but its definitely a contender once you go hands on.

The Samsung Galaxy Note is a fantastic phone and as expected actually a mini-tablet.

So it looks to be a contest between the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and the Samsung Galaxy Note ATM.

Notes:

At present I use a HTC Desire which is the best phone I have ever owned.
The research I put into the decision to go with the HTC Desire paid off handsomely, as its still a better phone than most even after 2 years.

Factors to consider:

A bigger HD screen is a must, as I have found that carrying two devices is a pain.

e.g A Kindle Fire and my HTC Desire.

So the idea is to get the biggest practical device that will fit in my pocket.

The Note looks like a shoo in but the Nexus is a beautiful device with great build quality.

Also the Nexus has the guarantee of constant OS upgrades direct from Google, unfortunately the camera supplied looks poor compared to the latest in the Note.