Mobile phones & tablets thread

Interestingly your name didn't crop up once in my post, Daniel, so I find it hard to understand how you feel that I would be accusing you of something specific.

On this thread, and on others to do with Apple/Microsoft I have been more than happy to declare that (these days) I primarily use Apple devices as they best suit my needs. I have also stated that if my needs change in the future I will happily move to another manufacturer. I have also stated that people seeking guidance on purchasing a device should try as many as possible and then make an informed decision, rather than pay heed to the subjective experiences and biased views of posters on this (and other) forum(s).

Fanboy-ism is a waste of time. Particularly for grown adults who should be able to see past the spin and make their own minds up about things.

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Originally Posted by Daniel

If you arrange a discount for Conti's then I'll get them to buy Conti's :p

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Those were the days... I just paid 850€ for my new set. And I got them >20% cheaper on the tinternet than though our very own outlet :crazy: :eek:

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

Is that a conscious thing on Apple's part, though? Even if it is, I really don't care. Apple products suit my needs down to the ground, but in no way is this the case because of any perceived image they have. They simply do.

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Which is the same in my case, at least with the desktops. I switched to Apple because they deliver exactly what I need.

Last week my 8 year old powermac died a death. I bought a new iMac, connected up the timemachine external drive and when I booted up the iMac for the first time I was asked if I wanted to restore my entire previous system. An hour of restoration after all my files, applications and preferences had been restored with only one click, no need to hunt around for disks and drivers. This kind of convenience is what makes Apples special.

I don't get this blanket "I don't see why people buy apple products" and the derision aimed at those who buy them. Nor do I understand judgmental posts like the one we saw from ioan on the previous page.

These are merely computers and phones. Different products are aimed at different parts of the market and fulfil different needs. So what? There are more interesting and exciting things in the world to get passionate about.

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Originally Posted by Malbec

Which is the same in my case, at least with the desktops. I switched to Apple because they deliver exactly what I need.

Last week my 8 year old powermac died a death. I bought a new iMac, connected up the timemachine external drive and when I booted up the iMac for the first time I was asked if I wanted to restore my entire previous system. An hour of restoration after all my files, applications and preferences had been restored with only one click, no need to hunt around for disks and drivers. This kind of convenience is what makes Apples special.

I don't get this blanket "I don't see why people buy apple products" and the derision aimed at those who buy them. Nor do I understand judgmental posts like the one we saw from ioan on the previous page.

These are merely computers and phones. Different products are aimed at different parts of the market and fulfil different needs. So what? There are more interesting and exciting things in the world to get passionate about.

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Thing is you can do this with a Windows PC. The problem is that Microsoft barely publicise a lot of the functionality that their products offer. When I talk about a Windows Home Server I imagine people visualise some really difficult to set up thing which they simply couldn't get their head around. In reality it's just a PC running some different software and I'll wager that just about anyone on this thread could set it up. My WHS actually offers a lot more functionality than a simple backup, I can access both of our PC's from anywhere in the world and I can also access my data as well. It's completely Microsoft's fault for not really advertising what their products do which leads people to believe sometimes that Apple is the only company who offers an easy and convenient (and very useful) product like Time Machine.

"There are more interesting and exciting things in the world to get passionate about."

I really strongly disagree with that. I enjoy technology, it's not merely a tool to do my job, it IS my job. My job is to keep a small college of 200 staff and students working and make them as productive as possible. I'm not really all that passionate about the healthcare system like you might be but I'm not going to say "Why anyone would be passionate about healthcare I'll never know!!!!!". Just because you're not passionate about something doesn't mean that someone else shouldn't be passionate about it. If people weren't passionate about IT, we'd probably still have sure dire OS's as Windows 98, Windows ME or XP or pre OSX Mac OS's which IMO were terrible. I for one am glad that people want to do better. Some people like to watch trains, some people like to climb different mountains and I like technology.

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Originally Posted by Daniel

Thing is you can do this with a Windows PC. The problem is that Microsoft barely publicise a lot of the functionality that their products offer. When I talk about a Windows Home Server I imagine people visualise some really difficult to set up thing which they simply couldn't get their head around. In reality it's just a PC running some different software and I'll wager that just about anyone on this thread could set it up. My WHS actually offers a lot more functionality than a simple backup, I can access both of our PC's from anywhere in the world and I can also access my data as well. It's completely Microsoft's fault for not really advertising what their products do which leads people to believe sometimes that Apple is the only company who offers an easy and convenient (and very useful) product like Time Machine.

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So if I attach a brand new unused machine to the Windows home server with one click it will install all the applications and preferences that were on the old pc? I'm genuinely curious.

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Originally Posted by Daniel

I really strongly disagree with that. I enjoy technology, it's not merely a tool to do my job, it IS my job. My job is to keep a small college of 200 staff and students working and make them as productive as possible. I'm not really all that passionate about the healthcare system like you might be but I'm not going to say "Why anyone would be passionate about healthcare I'll never know!!!!!". Just because you're not passionate about something doesn't mean that someone else shouldn't be passionate about it. If people weren't passionate about IT, we'd probably still have sure dire OS's as Windows 98, Windows ME or XP or pre OSX Mac OS's which IMO were terrible. I for one am glad that people want to do better. Some people like to watch trains, some people like to climb different mountains and I like technology.

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When people start deriding others who buy a particular product as being ignorant or unproductive then things have gone too far. Being interested in a subject is great. Being abusive or judgmental is not.

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

A few years ago, Private Eye ran a little item about how favourable press coverage of Apple products may have something to do with the fact that National Union of Journalists members receive a discount on items bought through the Apple store. Clearly I was meant to be disgusted by this conflict of interest, as I often am when reading reports in the Eye. However, up until then I was unaware of this offer, so, as an NUJ member, I immediately took advantage of it and bought a MacBook. Not the desired effect of the piece, granted, but I was most grateful for the tip.

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PML Benny boy :laugh: Come on over to the dark side :D

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Originally Posted by Malbec

So if I attach a brand new unused machine to the Windows home server with one click it will install all the applications and preferences that were on the old pc? I'm genuinely curious.

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I believe that is possible yes. Chuck a cd in the disc drive and boot up off that and go into the recovery console. You'll probably run into some driver issues but nothing that couldn't be sorted easily. Personally I see it being more use from the PoV that you hard drive has just died and you can just restore the PC back to how it was before the HDD died.

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Originally Posted by Daniel

I believe that is possible yes. Chuck a cd in the disc drive and boot up off that and go into the recovery console. You'll probably run into some driver issues but nothing that couldn't be sorted easily. Personally I see it being more use from the PoV that you hard drive has just died and you can just restore the PC back to how it was before the HDD died.

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This is the difference between MS and Apple for me.

If someone like you 'believes that is possible' then someone like me will have to spend a lot of time trawling around on the internet finding out how to do it.

To do this on the Mac all you have to do is attach an external hard drive and switch the Time Machine function on to backup the entire system.

To restore everything from an old Mac onto a brand new Mac all you have to do is plug in the external hard drive, say yes when you're asked if you want to restore an old system and select the drive you want to use. Then you go off and make some tea. Thats it.

This is all included on the basic OS and backup occurs regularly without prompting, though obviously this is the case for any backup system.

There is no need for bootup discs or driver issues. The only problem I had was with applications I had that were 32 bit specific, I had to download the 64 bit equivalents.

The ease with which this was all done is exactly why I use Macs.

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Originally Posted by Malbec

Which is the same in my case, at least with the desktops. I switched to Apple because they deliver exactly what I need.

Last week my 8 year old powermac died a death. I bought a new iMac, connected up the timemachine external drive and when I booted up the iMac for the first time I was asked if I wanted to restore my entire previous system. An hour of restoration after all my files, applications and preferences had been restored with only one click, no need to hunt around for disks and drivers. This kind of convenience is what makes Apples special.

I don't get this blanket "I don't see why people buy apple products" and the derision aimed at those who buy them. Nor do I understand judgmental posts like the one we saw from ioan on the previous page.

These are merely computers and phones. Different products are aimed at different parts of the market and fulfil different needs. So what? There are more interesting and exciting things in the world to get passionate about.

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I couldn't agree more with you, nor with Andrewmcm's last post. It amazes me that a discussion on what electrical goods we buy should be accompanied by such utter vitriol. Maybe I am naive.

I recently downgraded from Lion to Snow Leopard on my laptop as Lion is, shall we say, not the most optimised operating system at present. Boot into Recovery HD, select restore from Time Machine, pick a date from when I had Snow Leopard, and two hours later my laptop is exactly as it was in mid-July.

Related to that and more relevant to this thread is how iOS5 and Lion interact. I hope they retro-fit some features into Snow Leopard, as Snow Leopard isn't currently optimal for use on laptops that are not the current spec.

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Originally Posted by Daniel

I believe that is possible yes. Chuck a cd in the disc drive and boot up off that and go into the recovery console. You'll probably run into some driver issues but nothing that couldn't be sorted easily. Personally I see it being more use from the PoV that you hard drive has just died and you can just restore the PC back to how it was before the HDD died.

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Not quite as straight forward as you think.

The way wintel machines work makes it a pain in the ass to configure en-mass different machines. Even if you load exactly the same applications in a different order can cause conflicts.

Believe me, configuration management on a wintel platform is not as straight forward as you assume.

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Originally Posted by Knock-on

Not quite as straight forward as you think.

The way wintel machines work makes it a pain in the ass to configure en-mass different machines. Even if you load exactly the same applications in a different order can cause conflicts.

Believe me, configuration management on a wintel platform is not as straight forward as you assume.

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I agree. You can't simply image en masse for a company and have all the apps there ready to go, some things like AV generally won't work. That's what the last two companies I've worked for have deployed applications out to PC's. But generally for a home machine you're fine restoring from an image.

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Originally Posted by Malbec

This is the difference between MS and Apple for me.

If someone like you 'believes that is possible' then someone like me will have to spend a lot of time trawling around on the internet finding out how to do it.

To do this on the Mac all you have to do is attach an external hard drive and switch the Time Machine function on to backup the entire system.

To restore everything from an old Mac onto a brand new Mac all you have to do is plug in the external hard drive, say yes when you're asked if you want to restore an old system and select the drive you want to use. Then you go off and make some tea. Thats it.

This is all included on the basic OS and backup occurs regularly without prompting, though obviously this is the case for any backup system.

There is no need for bootup discs or driver issues. The only problem I had was with applications I had that were 32 bit specific, I had to download the 64 bit equivalents.

The ease with which this was all done is exactly why I use Macs.

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The fact is that I've never had to use the system restore function of my Windows Home Server so without actually spending some time perusing the net and making sure, I couldn't honestly say "Yes it's 100% possible" to do exactly what you've said. I'm not the sort of person who goes out and says "yeah you can do it" if I'm not 100% sure.

We generally only know how to do what we've done before. Put me in front of a Mac and even though I'm fairly handy on a PC I'd find it hard to do things you would do without thinking. Doesn't mean that it's necessarily hard to do. Also, having to use a boot disc is hardly any more difficult than plugging an external drive in :mark:

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Originally Posted by Daniel

I agree. You can't simply image en masse for a company and have all the apps there ready to go, some things like AV generally won't work. That's what the last two companies I've worked for have deployed applications out to PC's. But generally for a home machine you're fine restoring from an image.

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I take it by deploying, you are talking about some sort of deployment technology such as Altiris or LANDesk rather than just Ghosting and deploying. All well and good although initially scripting and testing a build is rather tiresome. Then you need to deal with changes on each update or release followed by testing and deployment and....

Sod it, just trust me. Unless you have an up to date image on your home PC, you're better off building the system from scratch.

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Originally Posted by Knock-on

I take it by deploying, you are talking about some sort of deployment technology such as Altiris or LANDesk rather than just Ghosting and deploying. All well and good although initially scripting and testing a build is rather tiresome. Then you need to deal with changes on each update or release followed by testing and deployment and....

Sod it, just trust me. Unless you have an up to date image on your home PC, you're better off building the system from scratch.

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Oh I prefer to build my PC from scratch. If I needed to use my WHS to do a restore, I would just restore the data and install the OS from scratch. However WHS does do the same thing as OSX and you can do an incremental image based restore if you so wish.

What i was talking about was Novell Zenworks. Make a list of what the user needs by looking at their old PC or having a new software list, after the PC is imaged, zenworks installs, you log in as admin, click on what you want and it pulls the packages down off the network and installs it automatically. No need for lengthy testing or anything. Very very simple. Fantastic for use with really obscure stuff which you seldom have to work on, but when it needs to be worked on, needs to be working 100% as soon as possible.

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Originally Posted by Daniel

Oh I prefer to build my PC from scratch. If I needed to use my WHS to do a restore, I would just restore the data and install the OS from scratch. However WHS does do the same thing as OSX and you can do an incremental image based restore if you so wish.

What i was talking about was Novell Zenworks. Make a list of what the user needs by looking at their old PC or having a new software list, after the PC is imaged, zenworks installs, you log in as admin, click on what you want and it pulls the packages down off the network and installs it automatically. No need for lengthy testing or anything. Very very simple. Fantastic for use with really obscure stuff which you seldom have to work on, but when it needs to be worked on, needs to be working 100% as soon as possible.

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Windows Home Server needs to be bought separately though doesn't it? It isn't an integral part of Windows 7 right?

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Originally Posted by Malbec

Windows Home Server needs to be bought separately though doesn't it? It isn't an integral part of Windows 7 right?

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Yup. But lets be honest £40 is hardly going to break the bank, plus rather than having to buy an external hard drive, you reuse your old PC.

£40 that most people wouldn't realise that they may need to spend in the first place perhaps.

System backups are much more useful in the era of mass storage. Back in the days when all we had were 40MB hard drives, a few floppy disks would store most of our files. Now we have several hundred GBs of files on our drives, and if they are lost it's a hell of a job to replace them.

I also like the phone backup system that manufacturers use in their computer software. If your phone is lost or stolen, you can sync the replacement to the old files and start from where you left off. Marvellous.

True. It'll be even better with cloud storage backed up daily. Your phone is then just a handset totally interchangeable.

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Originally Posted by Andrewmcm

I also like the phone backup system that manufacturers use in their computer software. If your phone is lost or stolen, you can sync the replacement to the old files and start from where you left off. Marvellous.

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Love that function from the numerous occassions that I've had to rebuild my phone due to stupid TomTom updates. :up:

http://www.damnlol.com/watermarked/3...7aef9046d6.jpg

:laugh:

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Originally Posted by Daniel

So I'm being subjective when I point out that WP7 is missing some crucial things which iOS and Android have had for a while, whilst pointing out that it's also got some things which iOS doesn't have which WP7 has had since launch.

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Not at all. Where you're being subjective is when you claim some feature is "crucial" or "vital" (as you did when you spoke of the original iPhone not having "vital" 3G capabilities). My current phone is not 3G capable. But it works perfectly fine. So how is not having 3G "vital"? Even worse was when Ioan claimed that the other gentleman was doing no productive work whatsoever if he was using an iPad instead of some Windows based device. My girl's school system uses iPads for special needs children. As I've mentioned before, some of the kids have issues with human interaction (autism and emotional problems). For whatever reason, the iPad (I suppose any tablet with the proper apps) makes these children VERY productive, relative to how they were when using Windows (or even Apple) based desktop/laptop systems.

Banks, brokerages, sales organizations, airlines, medical care facilities, manufacturing companies and all manner of businesses are adopting tablets for reasons of productivity improvement. I make my living by offering what knowledge I have of productivity and efficiency improvements to companies. But unlike certain people here, I do not (or try not to) let myself be handcuffed by prejudices or personal biases. The basic motto of my kind is to allow the data to guide decisions.

Stating various facts and features is fine. It's when people go off on hyperbolic benders, and use those facts and features to try to reach conclusions that may or may not be valid, that some disagree with.

So what does everyonethink of Amazon's move into the tablet market with the Amazon Fire? I have slowly been coming round to the idea of tablets and this looks to be a tablet that wont break the bank. I also have to say that I really do love my Kindle. The idea gets a :up: from me so far but we will know more when its released. :)

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Originally Posted by GridGirl

So what does everyonethink of Amazon's move into the tablet market with the Amazon Fire? I have slowly been coming round to the idea of tablets and this looks to be a tablet that wont break the bank. I also have to say that I really do love my Kindle. The idea gets a :up: from me so far but we will know more when its released. :)

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Originally Posted by henners88

The Kindle Fire looks good and if its only then I think it'll be a winner. If there is one company that can rival Apples benchmark App Store it could be Amazon IMO.

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I agree with you both. From what I've read of it, the new Kindle looks like a winner. Amazon is willing to accept lower margins than most other tech/consumer companies, plus they have the vast Amazon market place. I think the first product that effectively dies with this introduction is the Nook. I don't think this version of the Kindle Fire competes directly with the iPad, just based on features... or lack thereof (no camera, mic, etc.). But there are apparently next gen. Kindles already in the works that surely will. As a low cost media consumption device, I like it - especially at that price. And isn't that where so many of the other tablets failed? They were trying to price their Hondas at the same level as the Mercedes = guaranteed failure. I can't say that the Fire is something I would buy for myself, but I can appreciate the concept. Looks good!

On a side note, there is a rumor going around that RIM is considering killing the struggling PlayBook already.

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Originally Posted by henners88

Well its just been mentioned on the BBC that Google have accused Microsoft of using the same ruthless tactics as Apple concerning patents.. it seems Apple are no longer perceived as the sole evil do-ers in the patent war. ;)

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Microsoft is, and has been, and will remain to be the dirtiest player in the game.

They essentially make as much money from Android as Google.

What's the opinion on the new £89 Kindle?

Bit much for a chocolate egg. Must have a hell of a toy for that money ;)

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Originally Posted by Daniel

Laptops shouldn't take that long to boot up. If they are taking a laughable amount of time to boot up then your IT people need a good hiding.

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Boot speed will be limited to hardware capability. A netbook with solid state 'disks' will boot much quicker that a traditional hard drive.

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Originally Posted by Daniel

There's a big difference between allowing someone to log in @ home to a citrix session and allowing that person to bring that laptop into work and have it on the corporate domain.

Personally I wouldn't take my machine into work and plug it in and put it on the domain, I just wouldn't even though I'm 99.999999999999999% sure there are no viruses or malware on there.

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Provide a seperate subnet then, with a clear route out through the firewall, and they can access Citrix while in the office with their personal device. Why add it to the domain??????

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Originally Posted by Mark

What's the opinion on the new £89 Kindle?

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Like it. Never did like the keyboard that came with the version I bought. It's a digital book reader, that's all I want it to do :)

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Originally Posted by Mark

What's the opinion on the new £89 Kindle?

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It looks to me just to be a smaller version and without a keyboard. I've only had my kindle a couple of months but have rarely used the keyboard. I've tended to buy all my book and format thr groupings of books etc. on my PC rather than on the kindle itself. With the amount of books already on my kindle I think it would be a rare occurrence when I'd actually need the keyboard anyway. :)

iPhone 5 has been announced

Key points:
It's called the iPhone 4S!
Dual core processor from the iPad 2
8MP camera
1gb RAM up from 512mb
And that's about it: the case looks identical, so since my iPhone 4 will have the same OS there's no overwhelming reason to upgrade.

And, apparently, according to the BBC, this is the third most important news story in the world today.

Eh? It's 11th on the BBC News page.

I do wonder if Apple had been working on the '5' but for whatever reason it wasn't ready in time - hence the October instead of the usual June release, but instead decided to put out an updated version of the iPhone 4.

I wouldn't be surprised to see an iPhone 5 or 6 in June next year.

Not sure if this will hurt Apple basically not having anything particularly new on the table until well into 2012 at the earliest.

Well they've missed out on Xmas at least. This is the problem with only having one product available in their smartphone range whereas new Android phones of various flavours come out every month.

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Originally Posted by Mark

Eh? It's 11th on the BBC News page.

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Not on the international version it wasn't!

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Originally Posted by SGWilko

Provide a seperate subnet then, with a clear route out through the firewall, and they can access Citrix while in the office with their personal device. Why add it to the domain??????

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There are a number of ways you can do it and the policy is widespread SGWilko.

Last year, according to Gartner (who are a bit more conservative than others on this), in a survey of companies with more than 500 employees, 43% have policies for people to use their personal devices in the workplace with 48% of companies prohibiting them.

It seems that you're a bit behind the times on this Dan so here's some easy to understand info that sets out some background for you. I don't endorse any of it BTW as it's just Janet and John stuff. If you want professional advice then it costs a bit more. I don't generally work for nothing ;)

http://www.ciosummits.com/media/pdf/...al-devices.PDF

Securing personal-liable mobile devices on the corporate network - SC Magazine US

So, you can bring your 99.999999999% safe machine (which you download strange files to :rolleyes: ) in to work quite safely.

I will be getting the new iPhone.

I skipped version 4 so I'm happy that I will be getting a new juiced up version compared to my current G3 that has served me so well.

:s mokin:

It certainly seems to be the case that the integer iPhone increments come with significant exterior design changes (i.e. iPhone 3G to iPhone 4), and suffix letter increments come with significant internal changes but little external change (iPhone 3G to 3GS, iPhone 4 to iPhone 4S).

I guess it comes to a point where you have to wonder how any phone manufacturer can change the externals significantly to improve upon the design? I suppose the key thing is to have the 'buzz' around your new item in order to make people want to buy it. Apple have done this well in the past, but can they sustain it?