flyinghaggis

So potentially in around 18 months a Google Phone I've just bought right now for £600-800 wont be updated to the latest version of Android. Heck, if I buy one around 6 months from now it might not even get a years worth of OS version updates! Maybe it's just me? Does anyone else actually think 2 years from when the device was first on sale is an acceptable time-frame to guarantee support for such an expensive handset?

MAK keys aren't supposed to expire but I notice it mentions they require reactivation on hardware changes. So if you amended VM settings or upgraded to a newer version of VirtualBox both these things could potentially require re-activation?

So how many other folks have one on pre-order for March 3rd?

Nexus 6 and 9 won't be updated to Android 7.1.2 Nougat It's pretty disappointing to see Google dropping OS updates for its Nexus phones after only 2 years. I don't think Google understands how bad it looks when you sell a £600 handset then stop OS updates for it 2 years later. I can let it slide on a £250 Nexus phone but when they start charging double I expect to keep the device longer and no OS updates really irks me. This fact alone would stop me buying a pixel at their current prices TBH as they supposedly have the same 2 year OS update terms. I think I'll probably switch back to Apple after my Nexus 5x stops receiving updates unless this situation changes

We ended up just buying licences for a couple of technology labs plus our art department as the CC costs were deemed too high for a site wide rollout like the previous version of creative suite. Adobe need to realise that this is going to push us away from using their software for training pupils and will only result in us looking for cheaper or open source alternatives. Most schools we've been in touch with are now looking to move away from Adobe software due to the increased costs and the more restrictive licensing model of Creative Cloud.

I've put a link below to the latest updated game list taken from the /r/nintendoswitch reddit thread. Lots of titles on the way. So far I have Zelda:Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on pre-order plus I'll probably pick up Splatoon 2 and Mario Odyssey when they're out. Quite a few of the upcoming RPG's (Fire Emblem, Xenoblade Chronicles, Dragon Quest, Shin Megami Tensei and Octopath Traveller) also caught my eye though most aren't released until nearer to 2018 unfortunately. Some of the more retro/indie titles (Shovel Knight, Binding of Isaac, Streetfighter2, ) would probably be a good fit for the switch as well. I'm keen to see how the Virtual Console line-up pans out as well since we haven't really heard anything about that so far.

It's odd really as even though the number of system we have to support is ever increasing the amount of actual input and support we're given (as non-teaching IT staff within the school) seems to be diminishing as a direct result. As mentioned by others we're finding that more of the specialist services and installations appear to be getting outsourced but when the jobs done looking after always falls to us though very rarely is any consideration given to training on-site IT staff. Increasingly, I'm finding that SLT staff above me arrange the install of services without my knowledge or input and immediately drop support of it on the internal IT department which inevitably results in us ending up as middlemen being scapegoated by both management and the external company for any resulting issues. Likewise, it's now commonplace for staff to buy in hardware/software and adopt various cloud platforms without any input from ourselves yet there's immediately the expectation we'll provide support regardless of whether we have any experience. I've actually found a lot of staff are generally quite willing to adopt new technologies. The problem is they all want to adopt different technologies they're familiar with and have experience with rather than any kind of standard across the school. I don't know if my experiences are the norm but I'm feeling pretty negative about the future for on-site educational IT staff to be honest! A lot of other people I've spoken to are feeling the same way.

+1 Kim's retro computing videos are fantastic! Well worth a watch for anyone interested in 8-bit or 16-bit computer systems. I think I've watched pretty much all the videos on her channel

Apple’s UK App Store prices will rise 25 percent following Brexit currency fluctuations "Hard Brexit means paying £9.99, not £7.99, for Super Mario Run" Apple App Store prices rise in UK, India and Turkey "UK costs will numerically match those of the US, meaning that a program that costs $0.99 will now be 99p." Ouch...... it's not unexpected given the circumstances and the recent Apple hardware price rises I guess. 25% does seem generally higher than what other companies like Microsoft/etc have raised prices by though.

I'm generally OK with the price of the system as given the Nvidia Shield tablet retailed for around £200 by the time you factor in a a dock and the, fairly high tech, joy-con controllers the price seems about what to expect really. The price of the accessories and games is looking pretty fierce though. An extra dock is $90, the joycon controllers $80 plus a charging grip which you'll need ($30). Pro controller is $70. These dollar prices are likely to translate nearly directly into pounds the way the exchange rate is just now. The price of the controllers I get to a degree given the tech in them but the dock is literally a plastic stand with USB/HDMI passthrough and a fan to cool the switch. The games are just as bad with most of them listed at $60/£60. I can just about stomach that for a AAA Nintendo Exclusive like Zelda BOTW or Mario Odyssey but for I can't see me buying much else for it at those prices. If you look at the Amazon top sellers PS4/Xb1 games are generally ~ £40. PC games on steam even less than that if you shop around Cdkey sites. I don't think I've paid £60 for a game since I owned an Nintendo SNES/N64 and they charged more for some of the high capacity cartridges back in the day! I think the Launch 'Window' Line-up is generally OK but actual the 'Launch Day' one is pretty shocking. There are 5 games (Zelda, Just Dance, Skylanders, 1-2 switch[should be a pack in title, bomberman) and the only one of them really worth buying, especially when you think these are £60 games, IMO is Zelda. Bomberman sounds cool but let's be honest it's a £20 downloadable game really. There's no way they can justify charging £60 for Bomberman in 2017....can they? Likewise, some of the other games sound cool such as Streetfigher 2, Tetris/Puyo-Puyo and Sonic Mania but they need to be either some kind of budget range at around £20-30 or downloadable via the store for less. I'm pretty happy they've started charging for online subscriptions actually as if they use the money to provide free monthly games and improve the service this could be really good. Especially given the quality of Nintendo's back catalogue. Hopefully if they do release monthly retro games they'll add things like speed-run/high score challenges and implement some kind of online multiplayer for older titles. Hyped-up nostalgic Nintendo fan-boys like myself might be happy to shell out for the system but I'm not sure I see it having wide appeal unfortunately unless the online services like the store/subscription/social are markedly improved and they can get the game prices down to a competitive level. I'm gonna keep my pre-order and will probably hang onto the system so I can play Zelda, Mario, Mario Kart. Don't get me wrong though. I really like the concept/look of the system and I was never really interested in the Wii U or 3DS so it's not like I'd buy anything Nintendo release. I think combining home/mobile platforms is a genius idea and the Joy-Con controllers along with a with what they offer plus a high powered touchscreen tablet sounds fantastic. Also the games line-up overall throughout the next year sounds decent. I'm just a bit nervous about the future of the console based on the current game pricing though

I've pre-ordered a switch and a copy of Zelda but I'm hoping the price for Zelda is a place holder as currently it's £60! I'll stick with the order for now but if the retail price of other games appears at £60 I might end up cancelling as that's kind of ridiculous.

It's about £50 more than I thought it would be. Good to see Zelda is a launch title

I'm not quite that dedicated but I'll probably watch it on the way to work tomorrow morning Not long now...... all aboard the hype train..... I notice there's also a 'Treehouse'? presentation tomorrow afternoon so we might not have all the details about launch games/etc until after that. HOW TO WATCH NINTENDO SWITCH PRESENTATION 2017 - JANUARY 12TH, 2017 Starting time: London: 4AM (Jan 13th) Live stream: Nintendo’s live stream is available online. http://www.nintendo.com/switch/ NINTENDO TREEHOUSE LIVE WITH NINTENDO SWITCH - JANUARY 13TH, 2017 Starting time: London: 2:30PM Live stream: Nintendo's live stream is available online. http://www.nintendo.com/switch/nintendo-treehouse/ I wonder when UK pre-orders with the actual spec/prices/bundles will go live?

Actually, regarding that $250 estimate if that's the US pre tax price by the time you add VAT and take into account how low the pound is just now we're probably looking at a £225-250 price tag if I'm being realistic

If it's £200 I'll definitely be pre-ordering one providing it launches with either Zelda or Mario I'm curious to know what the launch lineup will be all so hopefully we'll find that out come the 12th.

I've actually been moderately well behaved this time and only bought Rocket League (which I've been meaning to buy on sale for ages after I played it during the free weekend). This has more to do with the fact that I've got so many games to catch up on like Xcom2/Fallout 4 than there not being any games I wanted. Plus I also got Titanfall2 and Warhammer:Total War for Xmas so don't really have time for anything else right now!

Battlefield One and Titanfall 2 are both £25 on EA/Origin at the moment. Pretty cheap given that both games were released less than 2 months ago

Lock up your wallets/purses. It's back on Thursday....... http://www.polygon.com/2016/12/20/14022878/steam-winter-sale-date Time to add some more games to my never played list in steam

I think my recommendation for a gaming system would have been to buy a Geforce GTX 1060 for £200 and build the rest of the system around it according to your budget. The above will be fine but as others have said you'll probably need to replace that Geforce 950 a year or so down the line. It's all stuff that can be easily upgraded in future anyway and I'm sure he'll be overjoyed at being given a new PC from santa

Super Mario Run has failed to win over gamers or investors, wiping $3 billion off Nintendo's market cap since its launch ? Quartz Ouch, I didn't think Mario run was all that bad to be honest! The only issue I had with it was that touch control made me want to go and play a 'real' Mario game using a controller! Also, some more spec leaks rumouring that the switch is going to be based on the older 20nm Maxwell technology rather than the new Pascal architecture. Plus the clock speeds are looking a lot slower than anticipated with some suggesting it could actually be less powerful than the Nvidia Shield TV especially when running on battery power. Nintendo Switch CPU and GPU clock speeds revealed • Eurogamer.net Still, that would at least make it more powerful than the Wii U and we all knew it was never going to worry the current crop of home consoles. Personally if it's little more power-wise than a portable Wii U I'd still be happy with that overall for a handheld device! It's all pure speculation for now though....

Yeah, I can't see any rational reason why you could discount Jediism whilst allowing something like scientology! Surely religion by it's definition is something you have to believe based on pure faith in an idea, deity or concept that can't be proven. Else it would be called science! Anyway....

Jedi is not a religion, Charity Commission rules - BBC News Jediism, the worship of the mythology of Star Wars, is not a religion, the Charity Commission has ruled. The commission rejected an application to grant charitable status to The Temple of the Jedi Order. It said Jediism did not "promote moral or ethical improvement" for charity law purposes in England and Wales. In the 2011 census, 177,000 people declared themselves Jedi under the religion section, making it the seventh most popular religion.

There are limitations as to what we can realistically force and do when it comes to staff personal devices. I don't think there are any technical solutions to the issue so it's basically a case of creating a policy and asking staff to follow it. It's back to SLT really to make the call as to whether they're comfortable with that or want us to restrict offline files!

Yeah, I'd be OK with it if the devices were encrypted but the problem is they'll often be staff's own personal devices so we have no way to confirm they've actually encrypted them before offlining files! Plus Bitlocker is only available on Pro versions of Windows so most people's laptops and computers won't even give them the option.

I did suggest this but the feedback from SLT was they didn't feel it was appropriate for the school to manage staff personal devices like phones. At the moment we're allowing both offline files and staff to sync data to personal devices without any form of control which I feel leaves the school over-exposed. I'll put it to SLT again and see what their thoughts are given this potentially leaves any sync'd school data readily accessible in the event personal devices are lost or stolen.