My wife's Garmin nuvi 250w has been having a hell of a time acquiring satellites as of late. I'll have to see if this is a date-related bug too...

Paris, because I've been having a hell of a time acquiring her too.

They're not "sampling" the original song. Whatever happened to making a song that sounds similar to a popular song but is not quite the same? They do this all the time on commercials, and even in elevator music. Why should this be the same?

I heard that people are being sued for similar drum riffs to their own. C'mon. There are only a few ways to beat a drum in a specific tempo. Stop the madness.

I'm surprised at the lack of love for Aldus Photostyler. This was an excellent application that, at the time, was far better, faster, and easier-to-use than PhotoShop.

When Aldus was absorbed into Adobe, I felt a little piece of me die.

Happy Birthday anyway, Photoshop. Cheers!

The nerd factor in this thread is strong...

CHM (compiled help files) are a known vector for viruses. Get someone to open this help file (or put it in the RUN key or StartUp group) and that's it. Essentially, this is a trojan that is using a help file instead of the usual suspects (EXE, BAT, SCR, CMD, COM) to infect the system.

I did some computer repair work at an aluminum shop. Needless to say, PCs don't like having aluminum shavings thrust inside them.

By the way, how many syllables does "aluminum" have? Four? Five?

The Koala broke the video drivers. Even downloading and manually installing the correct drivers doesn't seem to work, even with a full uninstall of all the older ATI drivers.

I've noticed the same thing on my iPhone. I was wondering why my battery was draining like crazy. It ended up being my house's web cam webpage continually updating. Granted, it is MPEG-4 but it still kept a continuous connection.

I purchased my copy of Snow Leopard -- a family pack for my three real Macs and two hackintoshes.

With that logic, Windows sucks because Mac can run Windows applications AND Mac applications.

Personally, I find the smaller number of freeware/shareware Mac applications a boon rather than a bust. How many DVD ripping applications have I downloaded in the Windows world that don't work? A lot. There are thousands! How many did I download on the Mac? One -- and it worked perfectly, with only a handful to choose from.

Don't get me wrong -- choice is great! That's why I choose Mac. I have an application that I use to convert my movies to PS3 format and it runs on Windows only. That, and my 5-year-old GPS are my only reasons to even have Windows on my Mac. Everything else is Mac-only.

Oh, and I run two hackintoshes along with 3 real Macs at home.

...build one! I just finished building a Core i7-based hackintosh with (coincidentally) a 21.5" LCD. The entire kit cost around £450 by carefully selecting components and looking for sales.

Given, it was a pain in the arse to get set up, but it runs VERY fast (nearly as fast as a Mac Pro!) and was quite an interesting challenge, since few people have i7 hackintoshes yet.

"Make it yourself for half the price??"

That used to be true. Nowadays, you'll be fortunate to get more than 25% less than a retail PC. Oh, let me guess: You're also the person who argues that Macs are 2x more expensive than PCs too, right?

"...oi, el Reg, where's the twat icon?"

Look to the left...

The included software does not find LINKSYS products on the network, it finds BUFFALO products on the network!

I for one applaud The Reg for not jumping onto the "global warming will kill us all!" bandwagon. I'm really bloody tired of hearing it from every media outlet all the time.

sudo apt-get install eradicating-poverty

Sorry, it's CLI only. The GUI is far too opulent.

1080i was created as a higher-resolution standard that older CRT-based HDTVs could display over component video cables. (1080p's bandwidth is too high for component video.) Should this standard die? Yes and no. Like James said, 1080i takes 1/2 the bandwidth of 1080p. However, calling it 540p is inaccurate -- 540p is 960x540. Each FIELD of video in 1080i is 1920x540, or double horizontally what 540p is.

Why isn't there a 720i standard? Because it's not in the HDTV broadcast standard.

The raw .MTS files from your MemoryStick Micro/Pro can be copied directly to a DVD, renamed as .M2TS, and played at full resolution directly in your PS3, or if your PS3 has a memory card reader (or you connect one), the PS3 will play the video files directly from the card. There are also free/shareware programs to burn Blu-ray ready discs onto DVDs at full HD resolutions.

Apple seems to be the driving force behind many new technologies. As Robert (Roger?) Moore pointed out, before the original iMac, USB peripherals were few and far between. Now we can get USB handwarmers. We can thank Steve Jobs for that.

I thought Firewire would be a bigger player than it ended up being. USB2 really squelched a lot of Firewire's, er, fire. Even Steve himself defended the lack of Firewire ports on early MacBook Pros because a lot of new digital camcorders use USB now. (I thought that excuse was half-baked then, and the market agreed.)

I had to look that up in Wikipedia.

I mean, who hasn't?

Come back in about... erm... 9 years and that will be a reality.

/giggled at the error in the article

It shows how much forethought (and forward-planning) Apple does for its products. Apple's announcement of the 160GB iPod Classic is another illustration of this -- Toshiba didn't announce their new single-platter 1.8" 160GB hard drive until AFTER Apple announced the iPod Classic. That takes a lot of weight to boss Toshiba around like that!

Apparently you haven't run a version of Linux on a non-x86 architecture, have you? :)

Who was the tech-ignorant writer that posted that blather about clockspeed == performance? I want to write a note to that bloke.

In the Philippines, text-messaging is a national sport. You cannot go anywhere without seeing people hunkered over their phones, typing incomprehensible messages on their 12-key numeric pads. Cell phone calls are terribly expensive to make (though receiving them is free), so most Pinoy prefer to text.

Because of the fact that EVERYONE texts each other, expect that same level of opposition to any hints of taxing text messages. Sales tax, already included in the cost of the "load", is 12%. How much more do they expect to squeeze the people that use text-messaging as their primary means of communication?

My wife and I brought out the old Sega Dreamcast and played some games on it two days ago. It still works like a, erm, dream after all these years. Not bad for a game system that's celebrating its 10th birthday on 9/9/2009.

I own a PS3 as well and have no problems with it at all. It is my media computer for about 50% of the time and my game system for the other 50%, so it sees a lot of usage.

C'mon, really. I can send an e-mail with photo attached for free, or I can pay $0.30 each to send an MMS. This is a no-brainer.

...DOES work with The Reg.

Add "ooVoo" to your list of broken applications. It uses a Java backend that uses a newly-deprecated call, causing the application to crash at launch. My e-mail for update information has not yet been returned.

I cannot count how many times I've seen Windows computers reporting a false virus alert on a file without a virus. I think this is Apple's answer to that: We warned you about this being a trojan, but if you still want to open the file, we'll let you do just that.

Then why did you read this article? Are you a closeted Mac lover? They're the ones who are most angry about running Mac OS X on a PC...

Yeah, of course I want to disassemble my machine on an airplane because they don't have airplane power adapters for the Air... (hint: they do)

FWIW: I use a Dell Mini 9 running Mac OS X and I love it.

Even Apple enables VT on their computers. Interesting that a Mac will run Windows 7 in XP mode when a Vaio can't...

...and failed.

In Northpark Mall, Dallas, Texas, a Dell store opened across the hall from the Apple store. Several times, I walked by the Dell store (never in!) and the number of salespeople always outnumbered the customers.

The Dell store is long gone now. Now it seems that Microsoft is trying the same thing. The Gateway store in Dallas is long gone too.

Who are these lubed-up Microsoft whores that think a proprietary standard that only runs on Microsoft web servers is better than an open standard that (now) supports ActiveDirectory and eDirectory authentication? Good God, people! Do you enjoy being lashed to Steve Ballmer's rump, forced to eat the pus from his back for nutrients?

You would think The Reg readers would appreciate OS X. Unix underpinnings with a pretty UI? So it costs more -- people still keep buying them, so why would it matter to Apple?

You can violate nearly ANY device if you have physical access to it. The fact that he had to install a shell application onto the phone completely violates any forensic policies I've ever heard.

This guy is a media whore, plain and simple.

What I don't understand about this marketing campaign is... if Microsoft is footing the bill, why not get the more expensive computer? It's not your money!

It's VERY difficult comparing Macs and PCs. Yes, you can compare the processors now that Apple is using Intel processors, but things like the quality of the LCDs used in the computers is something that is not rated.

At my desk here at work, I have a 17" Dell LCD monitor with 90 degree swivel capability to use it in portrait aspect mode. Unfortunately, the quality of the LCD is so poor that, when you swivel the monitor, the picture is nearly unusable. You have to precisely angle the monitor to see an image with decent contrast. The colors on this monitor are incredibly muted as well. Fortunately, I'm just using this system as a document creation system, not a graphic design computer.

When I take a photograph and display it on my 24" iMac at home, the colors are clear and crisp. I don't have to worry about angling my iMac so accurately to eliminate brightness drop-off.

It's the same with laptops. My friend purchased a 17" HP laptop. The picture quality was HORRIBLE. I brought in my MacBook Pro the following day and he was amazed at how much better the picture was.

Apple cuts fewer corners with their computers, which is why they're more expensive. It also tends to even the cost when you figure in yearly anti-virus updates and software that approximates the iLife suite of programs. (Yes, they're really quite good!)

Could Apple make a cheap, shitty machine with no extra software? Of course. They choose not to.

Are "legitimate" companies, such as Sony, using rootkits? Will this affect anyone outside of downloaders of illegal software?

Paris, because she wants to know her MacBook is safe...

...have NO idea what an operating system really does, let alone what Linux is. Some of the coverage of this Google love-in is sickening.

I have a Dell Mini 9 netbook running Ubuntu 9.04 UNR, and it's great, doing what this new Google OS promises and more. The computer takes less than 10 seconds to boot from Grub to Done, and has the Google Chrome (okay, Chromium) browser AND Firefox.

My netbook is great for trips where I don't need the full power of my MacBook Pro.

/been Microsoft-free for years!

This is one firmware upgrade I'll take a pass on. I have a Panasonic TZ3 camera AND I have a 3rd-party battery. I would understand more if Panasonic made this change for models that aren't already in customer's hands, but those of us who have 3rd-party batteries, this is a total pisser.

I'm not sure why that would be funny. Psystar is taking advantage of the open-source community that developed the hacks to make OS X run on commodity PCs. They are NOT the good guys here.

Hackintoshes should remain exactly what they are: Machines for hackers to play around with, not a difficult-to-update, unstable, less-expensive Macintosh for users who have trouble understanding the difference between hard drive space and RAM.

That being said, Apple should read the writing on the wall and make a less-powerful, less-expensive mini-tower Mac with expansion slots. The iMac is great, but what if you don't need a monitor? The Mac Pro is great, but is overkill for most users. The Mac Mini is good, but not expandable internally.

The troll is strong in this one...

Which division of Microsoft do you work for again?