sonofsanta

Honestly, with laptops, you'll not get an SSD on any reasonably priced device. We buy separate SSDs as standard* and re-image; Samsung & Crucial SSDs both come with software to let you image the SSD, so long as you have a way of connecting it (e.g. USB <-> SATA dock/cable). You can normally get an i3, 4GB + 256GB SSD for about £400, so you'd likely get the i5/8GB for £500 if you buy a separate 250GB Samsung 840 EVO or 256GB Crucial MX100. *as in, anytime we recommend a laptop to someone, we tell them to do this and just quickly reimage it for them.

Signed up on the site. Added the phone & protector to my basket. Shuffled money between bank accounts. Not yet been brave enough to click buy because it's still nearly £300 and that's not an insignificant amount of money. Keep looking at my phone and thinking "you're so small, your battery is so ruined, you're starting to lag..." OnePlus Two: doesn't look to be a massive upgrade TBH. Don't want a 1440p screen (battery drain), don't want the Snapdragon 810 given all the overheating rumours, 4GB RAM isn't a significant upgrade over 3GB, and rumours are it'll cost more than the OnePlus One. I need to just man up and click this bloody button.

The problem with filling the full width is that it becomes harder to track between lines - i.e. you get to the end of one line, go back to the left and your eye can't pick the correct line, so you skip ahead too far or repeat a line. I think the sweet spot is between 70 - 120 characters or something. The real problem is that 16:9 monitors are rubbish and we should all be able to have 16:10 all the time always, but the market doesn't agree with me

I've a strong feeling my credit card will be taking a beating in the morning.

Hmmm... food for thought. The 4MP count never bothered me - my DSLR is only 6MP after all - and I agreed with HTC's logic that they were better chasing low light performance than numbers on the box. I like DOF effects as well (and am developing a bit of an addiction to prime lenses for my Nikon on that front) so the Duo stuff looked interesting. But if low light performance is poor and noise is high, then there's not much point... I did go up town at lunch though. And the Galaxy Note 4 (near as damn be the same size) does feel pretty big in hand... but not so big I wouldn't get used to it. And 5.5" is a nice size screen. And the HTC One M8 does feel lovely in hand... but not £100+ extra of lovely, I don't think. And I did manage to pay off my credit card in full today (pay day) without dipping into savings. I normally do, but last month was expensive, so I wasn't sure. But this means I do actually have the money to by an OPO. And I like the sound of "infinitely tweakable", because by god do I love to faff. GODDAMIT I DON'T NEED THIS CURSE MY WEAK WILL AND ALL THE SHINY TECH THINGS SENT TO TEMPT ME

I'd say an i3 (dual core with HyperThreading) will be much more capable (and quiet, and cool) than the AMD 6 core (that's only really 3 cores with hardware HyperThreading, but the IPC is worse). You can get an i3 for <£90, 8GB RAM for £50, and motherboards from £40 (I prefer Asus, GIgabyte are also solid). That's £180. If you want to push the boat, for £50 more you can either get an i5 (genuine quad core) or a pair of 8GB sticks - so at £230, either way you've got a much better proposition than the AMD + 8GB above. FWIW, I think more RAM would be more help with VMs.

DPM 2012 SP1, I Backup Using Saved State to the hard disk space on the DPM server, and every Thursday they go onto magnetic tape to go off-site. SQL servers have the agent installed on them and have their databases backed up separately. Pretty straightforward to recover using these backups. I also take a System State backup of the virtual DC, and once a term take that home with me on a penstick so I can rebuild the domain offsite in the event of disaster to enough of a level to rebuild the backup server, get access to the encryption certificates and begin the process of getting everything back off the encrypted tapes.

That glass protector has the most convoluted product name I've ever seen on Amazon Also now annoyed that the Ultra case doesn't come in blue Charcoal Grey it'd be, if the OPO it is...

I've not been able to find anything that says definitively, one way or another, if this affects the GBP though - only the Euro price. Still, this is why I'm going up to look at phones today, so I can buy one tomorrow if I like the look of it (plus the office is running low on biscuits - only one pack of cookies left )

God help me, I'm going to go up town later to check devices out. OPO or M8. OPO is £270, M8 would work out about £480 over the two years including the MicroSD card I'd need. I like the sound of being able to tweak every last thing - even what sits in the notifications up the top, I hate that getting cluttered - but the Anandtech review wasn't too optimistic about the camera UI, and I do like my photos, especially with two young kids running round. My phone is often the only camera I have on me, and you only get one chance to capture a moment, and you want to capture it as best you can, and the M8 has a really, really good camera... Of course, it may turn out that 5.5" feels ridiculously big in my hands as well, in which case M8. But I suspect it's the sort of thing you can get used to. How's the camera been for you OPO lovers? Is it fixable by just getting a better camera app from the Play Store?

Calling @LosOjos who loves this sort of thing

Weighed down is things like this, on the G2, where half the notifications tray is already filled up: I decided against the G3 in the end, as I think 1440p on a phone is overkill and destroys the battery life for very little gain. I might have to look at the OPO review on Anandtech again, if it's close to stock and gotten sturdy enough...

I'm sure you'll be thanking me in the long run My only concern with the One+ One is that it will involve a certain amount of "oh it's just like that" and "if you do it this way..." and all sorts of little nerdy compromises. I spend all day dealing with that professionally, so I've got no patience for it when it comes to my phone - it's why I've never rooted or modded in any way, because I can't be doing with the grief in my free time as well. Right, back to reading reviews of the One M8 and arguing with myself over it. I definitely don't want the M9 - the reports of battery life and heat are horrific, and Samsung deliberately chose not to use the Snapdragon 810 because of heat issues, so I'm mightily suspicious of the processor. The M8 is more than good enough, I reckons. As is my Nexus 4... it is... I don't need a new one, honest...

I think this is part of why I'm itching for a new phone... my wife has the very lovely Lumia 930, my daughter has the new Moto G which is at least as good as my Nexus 4 and with a better screen... I need to retake my seat as King of the Tech Castle! - - - Updated - - - Also, if she's gotten through that many phones, aren't the Sony's waterproofed? Might help a bit. I don't know how far down the range the protection goes though, 'cos the Z3 ain't cheap...

Such a gentleman, I can see why she said yes

Bah, blooming attachments. Try again:

Exclusive image from our lander on the surface of Diskworld: [ATTACH=CONFIG]29780[/ATTACH]

Yeah, that's what I meant - that's the way my N4 works with Lollipop, and I really like it. Looking at YouTube videos of the M8 with Lollipop, though, it looks like they've kept it fairly vanilla and not gone the LG route of filling it full of rubbish (the G2 was particularly bad for it, I gather). Converting to the GPE is an intruiging idea, mind you... although I think that'd strip out all the interesting camera stuff. What I really shouldn't do now is go up town and look at these devices in the o2 shop because then I will crack and buy one.

Microsoft: if you have to offer training courses on how people should go about giving you money in exchange for your products, You're Doing It Wrong.

I think more than a few of uth might be good Igorth ath well. We prefer the darkneth and tholitude of the bathement, are often judged unfairly by our unique appearantheth, but give uth an hour, a box of wireth, a dead frog and a lightning conductor, and we can fixth jutht about anything...

I sometimes feel like Foul Ole Ron, sat in the corner of the staff room muttering to myself where no-one will listen to me. I vote for @ICTDirect_Dave to be CMOT Dibbler, because not a gaming PC thread goes by without him popping up to offer one of his workstations

Don't worry Al @VeryPC, you were on my list to talk to next month anyway. I had high hopes I might get to buy from you this year as well, as you only lost out by the cost of the TAP licence last year... I suppose that still holds true now, in that everyone has to charge me for the OEM again. Grrr. Spec-wise was only Pentium, 4GB, 128GB SSD, but we always buy with a 5 year warranty, which I suspect the Acer wouldn't have @Boredguy. Oh, and KB+M; the PCs we're replacing have PS2 peripherals, and any new PC will have a single PS2 port at most. Plus they could do with being new and less full of crumbs. My problem is that my budget allocation is based on what I ask for, and I base what I'm asking for on what I expect the cost to be with some small wiggle room. "Small wiggle room" can't cope with +20%, though.

So running the numbers, based on what I paid for PCs last year and what I was planning spec-wise this year, I was hoping to get machines for around £275 each this year. The £57 cost of an OEM sticker puts this up by over 20%. Which means - given that the amount of money I asked for a year ago to fund this summer's purchases is fixed - that I have to get 16% fewer machines. Which is 26 fewer computers than I had planned/needed to get, because I now need to spend an unexpected £7k+ on OEM stickers at zero notice. If they'd made this announcement six weeks later, I'd have had this summer's purchases sewn up already. The timing of the announcement seems carefully designed to mean no-one has gone through the tender process for summer yet. I mean, seriously, how much money were they losing from this, there can't be that many UK schools purcashing PCs in the scheme of things. Surely the small financial loss was worth the good will it gained them. I cannot fathom why they've done this. GRAAAAAAAARRGGHH BRING ME YOUR MICROSOFT REPS, THAT I MAY DESTROY THEM WITH MY RIGHTEOUS ANGER LET THEM FEEL THE AGONY OF TEN THOUSAND CAT5 PATCH CABLES PIERCING THEIR BLOATED FLESH AND ENTANGLING THEM IN MY SERVER CORE LET THEM BE WITNESS UNTO MY FURY AS I DETAIL PRECISELY HOW SMALL MY FUNDS ARE IN COMPARISON TO THEIRS, YET HOW MAGNIFICENT MY RAGE IS IN COMPARISON TO THEIR PETTY VILLAINY LET THEM NEVER DARE CROSS US AGAIN! [/angry]* *not really. I've not stopped complaining to everyone I've seen all morning.

YOLO, but YKSNTEAHAROTH (Your Kids Still Need To Eat And Have A Roof Over Their Heads) I'd need to go and hold a Nexus 6 first, I'm a one-handed sort of chap when it comes to my phone. Got to leave the other hand free, y'know... cups of tea and all that. I need to do the same with a HTC anyway tbh, don't know anyone with the M8 though :/ Nexus 5 isn't enough of an upgrade to be worth it, and Google have stopped selling it now anyway. I dunno. I should just save my money. My N4 is still fine, it just niggles at me that I could have a Shiny New Toy if I wanted

Is there a built in flashlight app? All the ones on the Play Store are loaded down with ads and malware and 'orrible permissions that's why I love the built in one in the notifications tray.