flyinghaggis

So........ I've got the 'upgrade prompt on my main PC. Trying to decide whether it's safe to press the big bad 'START THE UPGRADE' button........ How's everyone else finding it? Are Nvidia drivers still borked or has that been fixed now? I want rid of the abomination that is Windows 8 but not if it's going to break all the hardware/software I'm currently using!

The lack of functionality/features in the Edge browser is really disappointing. I know it's new but I can't believe MS released it in basically alpha form for the official Windows 10 launch. You can't even click on a bookmarked folder and open a bunch of tabs in it as far as I can see which is a feature I use all the time for reading through my favourite news sites? There are so basic many options like right-clicking on things you simply take for granted in IE/Chrome or any modern desktop browser that it really grates when you find they haven't been implemented!

I'm installing it on my older laptop to try it our tonight but will probably hold off on my main rig until I can confirm it wont cause any major issues. Any idea when Nvidia will be releasing an update to resolve the multi-monitor/GPU problems? I'd have thought given Windows 10 has been in beta for months that basic features like that would be working OK by now?

A few reviews are starting to appear now :- Windows 10 hands on review | TechRadar Windows 10 review | The Verge Most seem to be positive so far thankfully! Mind you, however 10 turned out it was always going to be an improvement over Windows 8.....

I suspect you've probably added more music that I have I went through my entire artist library in Spotify to check it on Apple Music and, as far as I could see, they have the exact same selection. I guess it'll depend on which artists you pick though. I tend to listen to albums (or artists top songs) rather than creating custom playlists which is maybe why it hasn't impacted me. Other than the infuriating DNS bug I haven't noticed any other issues so far. Yeah, shared playlists would be handy. I saw the share artist/album option and assumed it would also work with playlists. Seems like a pretty annoying omission if it doesn't but I'm sure it's something they'll add though.

Yeah, right now there isn't really a compelling reason to move away from Spotify if you're happy with it. Apple Music pretty much just offers exactly the same thing and with Spotify you avoid the hassle of having to deal with the monstrosity that is iTunes! However, the stereo in my car connects to my iPhone and, because Apple Music is basically an extension of the built in music app, I can control Apple music from my stereo so it displays track information/song selection/etc on screen whereas Spotify doesn't. For this reason I'd personally go with Apple Music but other than that I couldn't really pick one over the other.

Yeah, mobile contract prices these days with bundled handsets are ridiculous. A few years back they used to actually subsidise the handset when you took out a contract tied to a mobile provider. Now the mobile companies just use it as another way of gouging you for cash! Really, if you can just buy the phone outright and go for a £10-15 pcm SIM only contract depending on what you need data/minute-wise. Buying a contract with a phone just puts you in the into having to accept £30-40 pcm for the next 2 years. Unfortunately I'm still of the opinion that the iPhone 6 is the best mobile out there at the moment and IOS the best mobile platform Personally I'm on a iPhone 4S and also looking to upgrade soon but I'm holding off until the 6S is out in September/October before I change my phone to see how that looks. If you're after an android handset I'm sure someone else on here will be able to offer some suggestions though!

Right, found out how to fix it but I'm still not exactly sure what's causing the problem. Another user on the Apple support forums said they were using Google for their DNS and it worked after they switched to Norton's DNS (199.85.127.10,199.85.126.10). I'd left mine set to my Sky Broadband router address so I'm presumably getting whatever Sky's offering it's customers as default. Changing it to Norton's DNS servers fixed the problem though and it's now working as expected. Very odd? Still, hopefully this will help out anyone else with similar issues.

I subscribed to Apple Music today but I can't seem to get it to work? Either I'm doing something really stupid and I'm not understanding how it works or there's some weird setting on my account that's preventing it working correctly. I've signed up to it for the three month trial. If I try playing music using iTunes on my Windows computer it won't play anything other than local tracks I've copied off CD's or music videos? If I try to play any streaming music it just keeps flicking through tracks and nothing plays. It I try and add anything to my library then select to 'make available offline' the downloads fail with 'unknown error 400'? On my iPhone I can stream music OK but if I try downloading any using the 'make available offline' option once again the downloads fail and it doesn't allow me to save any music? It keeps retrying the downloads but can't connect? Anyone any ideas where I'm going wrong. Am I missing something totally obvious Edit: There seems to be quite a few posts on the Apple support forums with people complaining about similar issues. Most say they haven't changed/updated anything and the issue suddenly started happening so it's probably something wrong at Apple's end. Think I'll leave it for now and give it a try again next week. Most posts related to it seem to be from that last 48 hours so I possibly just picked a bad time to try installing it ! I didn't realise when Apple offered a 3 month free trial what they meant was a 90-day beta test

I use Spotify all the time but wondered whether anyone on here had tried out the free trial of Apple Music? How does it compare and is it worth switching to over Spotify?

Saw terminator genisys earlier today. Have to say I really enjoyed it despite the negative reviews by some critics! It's pretty dumb and you have to basically ignore the plot as the whole time travelling thing is bordering on the ridiculous along with some of Arnie's quips. In fact it has as much comedy as action and is chock full of in-jokes and spends plenty of time poking fun at the previous moves. Still, grab some popcorn, don't think too hard about it and I reckon you'll enjoy the ride if you're a fan of the franchise in fact if anything it possibly plays slightly too hard on the nostalgia card and anyone not familiar with the series will struggle to follow what's going on. Arnie's still awesome and it's not a terminator movie without him IMO. Emilia Clarke is also surprisingly good as Sarah Connor!

Watched Horns last night. Pretty average really. It's novel in parts but the plot is wafer thin and the ending was a bit predictable so wouldn't recommend it overall. Trying to decide whether to go and see Terminator Genisys tomorrow? Initial reviews look a bit mixed with some saying it's great and others the worst one yet....

True but IME "buy me a small light laptop like an iPad" is usually management speak for "buy me a MacBook" so anything you get them will immediately be compared to that!

IMO buy them 11" MacBook airs and install windows on them!

What you want is a called a pannier rack IIRC. Basically you buy a rack that bolts onto the rear of your bike and bags that then clip onto it either side. You need to make sure your bike has eyelets to attach the rack to the frame though. Most will but some bikes (typically drop bar or fixed speed)don't have these Some example pannier racks Front and Rear Carriers (Pannier Racks) and Spares Pannier bags themselves Pannier Bags In terms of other accessories I'd also suggest full length fitted mudguards for commuting. Bicycle Mudguards - Traditional & Spares The type of pannier rack and guards you'll need wlll vary depending on your tyre size and width so it may be worth checking with a local bike shop if you aren't familiar. Happy to offer any advice if you're unsure though. I've seen a couple of bike bags that have pannier fittings but they were quite expensive and I personally think it's probably easier to buy a regular pannier bag and just put a backpack inside it. The other problem is that if it rains whatever bag you have will get covered in spray, water and dirt off the road so you don't really want to be carrying that around as muck off it will rub onto your top/jacket if you use it as a combo backpack/bag aswell. Most pannier bags come with fittings so you can simply unclip them from the bike if required anyway. If you have a bag inside your pannier it keeps it dry and you can always zip tie or get a loop through bike lock to prevent anyone stealing the pannier if you leave it on the bike. This was probably the closest thing I found but it's too expensive IMO and I had doubts about whether a combo bag/pannier was ultimately a good idea. http://road.cc/content/review/117269-altura-meta-versa-messenger-bag-and-pannier

Definitely taking shape nicely but then they couldn't really make the UI any worse than Windows 8 Good to see they're offering the option to link into phones other than just Windows Mobile based models (which very few people actually use).

That was my understanding of the agreement but that side of it would have been left to our bursar so I'm not 100% on whose liability it ultimately is. We are a fee paying independent school so I don't think we're under that same obligations to provide equipment that state schools would have to abide by. I can imagine if you were a state school and you wanted to go 1:1 with a school provided device in that instance presumably the school would have to ensure devices were available to pupils and hence need to take on the liability.

I think the way to avoid financial liabilities for the school is to get a third party company to offer the finance/lease and get the parents to sign directly with them rather than through the school. That way they take on the risk. Either that or charge the parents directly through fees if that's an option for your school. Parents also had the option to purchase their iPad directly, or use one they already own, rather than leasing it though in that case we did recommend they take out insurance on the device to cover themselves. We haven't been directly in communication with parents as, since SMT made the call, they agreed to speak to any parents with issues rather than putting them in touch with us. SMT arranged a few parents evenings to discuss the iPad rollout with them since as you can imagine it's important to get people involved for such a large project. A few queried why we went with ipads rather than windows/android/etc but we took the approach that it was better to recommend a device rather than let individual pupils choose their own. That way it's easier to us to support as we know the platform/device works without issues(generally!) and teachers can choose IOS apps to use with the pupils safe in the knowledge their pupils will also be able to run them. I think it generally works better than way rather than going totally BYOD and letting people use whatever they want.

We are primarily still a Windows(7) based school. There's a Windows PC connected to the teachers computer in every classroom and all our labs are Windows PC's/laptops. There aren't any plans so far to reduce the number of Windows computers in the school or directly replace any with iPads. We're still dependent on a lot of Windows based apps and peripherals like Smartboards so I suspect the Windows PCs will be here for at least another 5-10 years but I imagine at some point in the near future most staff and pupils will likely find they no longer need a desktop/laptop for their day to day work.

We're in the process of going iPad 1:1 throughout our secondary school. Currently all our 3rd year (14/15 y/o) pupils have them. We partnered with a company who have a portal where the parents buy them and on day one of attending we get the pupils to sign up to the schools MDM system to deploy school apps/wifi and security settings to them. We've gone down the Google Apps route so there's a decent selection of apps available for IOS and most work fairly well. IOS/Google certainly aren't as mature as Microsoft's offering and don't have the configurability/control offered by Windows but everything's working OK from a technical viewpoint. Pupils in the main like using them and most teaching staff find them helpful primarily because of the amount of teaching apps available in IOS. Most of the concerns I have regarding iPads are around the lack of control over devices for monitoring pupils (transparent proxy/lack of monitoring software for IOS) and the personal/consumer model Apple tends to lean towards for it's devices. Such as forcing people to use their own personal AppleID accounts which tends to result in school data being synced to people's own personal accounts if users don't change default settings.

Presumably this will also make ripping DVD's, which someone commented had been legalised in another thread, illegal again? It does seem pretty unreasonable charging people twice for the same content they've already paid for even if it will make money because a percentage of owners will go out and buy it again. If you genuinely have no ownership or rights for media you buy then it pretty much forces everyone towards the subscription models for digital content. I've given up on buying physical media now anyway having witnessed the moves from cassette to CD and VHS to DVD to Blu-Ray. No doubt when 4k becomes a standard we'll have another batch of special media for it that requires new player's/etc. Even in gaming I have lots of old games and when the consoles that run them eventually break then I'll have no way to access that media. These days I generally buy most games on Steam as it's the best chance to ensure that you can still play a game you buy years down the line. I suspect even Steam will likely introduce some kind of subscription service in the near future. Even 'buying' specific games/music/movies on services like steam and iTunes is a but sketchy as ultimately what happens if the company running the service goes out of business? Does that leave you without access to the paid for digital content you own and without right to transfer it to an alternative service? Providing you have a fast enough internet connection it's time to give up on purchasing physical (or even digital media ultimately) and get on the subscription bandwagon as it's clear the media industry will never give you any rights over media you 'own' anyway

I dunno, I quite enjoyed the combat in FFXII! I thought it was cool how you could basically 'program' the characters to perform certain actions like heal when low on health, auto-buff themselves and attack. Removed a whole layer of tedious micromanagement and made the combat more entertaining to watch IMO. I'd be quite happy if they brought that back for the FF7 remake.

Not quite sure how I feel about remaking Final Fantasy 7. I have fond memories of playing 7,8 and 9 on the PlayStation1 and enjoyed 12 on the Playstation2 but in general I've found the last few felt kind of dull. I'm starting to feel the Final Fantasy formula is getting a bit stale. I really want to see square changing things up a gear and bringing Final Fantasy into the modern age. I'm struggling to feel excited as I don't feel remaking 7 will deliver anything we haven't already seen. Hopefully with remaking 7 they'll get back to creating an open world you can explore as for me that was one of the main draws of FF7. With all the latest ones they've felt so linear and 'on-ralis' that I've struggled to enjoy them.

I had a play with the new MacBook when I was in town the other day. The design of the thing is stunning and the screen is probably the best I've ever seen on a laptop. The new force touch trackpad works really well too. However, that much acclaimed 'butterfly' keyboard they've added really annoyed me as there's virtually no travel or feedback on the keys and they felt really stiff and horrible to type on. Initial impressions were that it's one of the worst keyboards I've ever used. Anyone else tried it? Am I being unduly harsh and does it improve the more you use it?

Missed the deal on this war of mine though I think I'll pick it up next time round as they usually re-run the offers . Haven't bought anything yet amazingly which is unusual for me when it comes to steam sales!