flyinghaggis

This is currently available to pre-order on PS4 for £35 which seems like quite a good deal. The Last of Us - Remastered PS4 @ Zavvi for £35.07 - Hot UK Deals Couldn't resist it for the opportunity to play the multiplayer in 1080p with upgraded graphics The last of it: Naughty Dog on bringing The Last Of Us to PS4 | Features | Edge Online

Yeah, I think that selling a kinectless console without a game for £325-ish (assuming usual exchange rate) is a stupid strategy IMO when it robs the XB1 of it's USP and means software devs (MS included) can no longer assume everyone has a Kinect. Sony had the power advantage but MS had the Kinect. Now all MS has is an inferior console and a £25 price advantage which isn't going to convince anyone to pick their platform over Sony's They really needed to cut the price to the same as the PS4 and keep the Kinect. Or even better do that and bundle a free game if their margins would allow it. At least that would give punters a compelling reason to choose it over the PS4.

If it was me personally I'd take the risk and not bother but I'm primarily asking the question as my girlfriend has a new iPhone and she's terrified of the thought of anything happening to it. Her phone company wanted £13 a month which seemed extortionate as it's more than half the cost of a new phone over 2 years!

What's everyone's thoughts on the best way to insure your mobile phones?

I can see the appeal of the MacBook Pro in terms of build, portability and battery life but video card wise it only has Geforce 750M which has since been superceded by the 800-series and is a very mid-low end GPU for a £2200 laptop.

I personally like the look of the new MSI GS60 15" and GS70 17" gaming laptops. They're reasonably powerful without being too heavy/bulky to carry about when required. MSI Ships GS70 Stealth Pro, GS60 Ghost Pro 3K Notebooks MSI GS60 2PC Ghost 15.6" Gaming Laptop Core i7-4700HQ 8GB 128GB SSD+1TB GTX860 2GB WIN 8.1 - GS60 2PC-005UK - Scan.co.uk

I think the US retail price is $1000 and overclockers currently have it on pre-order for £800 so whilst it's very far from being cheap given the size and currently somewhat non-standard resolution it's not crazy over the top IMO. I nearly spent close to £500 for a 27" 1440p monitor not that long ago and I reckon this would be worth the extra outlay.

I'm giving serious consideration to replacing my multi monitor setup with one of these when they're out next month! Sounds awesome for productivity and even with apps/games that don't support 21:9 it still gives you the same screen estate as a 27" 1440p monitor with none of the Windows UI/font scaling issues of 4k monitors. I need that on my desk now.....

We've installed pre-release firmware from HP as a test to resolve it. The ports are now reporting the correct power usage and it worked to begin with for a while but the switch threw a PoE error, and stopped powering the APs, after running for a couple of hours so there's still some kind of issue there. Back to HP/Meru tech support to see if they can advise I guess.

Yes, the switches should work ok with both Poe levels! We've updated them to the latest version of the firmware but it hasn't made any difference unfortunately.

We're recently purchased a Meru Wi-Fi system and are experiencing PoE issues when trying to connect them to our network switches (HP 2920's). For some reason the switches seem to be allocating the PoE wattage to a single port rather than displaying it across all the switch ports. For example if we plug in 3-4 APs (which use about 7 watts each) the switch will fail with a PoE error after connecting the fourth one due to, what it thinks, is a lack of available power. I believe this happens as each individual port can only provide up to 25w IIRC. The switch itself should be good for up to 370w of PoE juice though? We've tried connecting other PoE devices (HP mini-switches, Ruckus APs) and they've all worked as expected. This problem only occurs with our Meru 832 AP's. The only unusual thing is that we haven't received the controller yet so I don't know if that being online would prevent the issue occurring? Has anyone else experienced the same issue or similar issues?

Likewise, haven't really played it for a couple of weeks but found the combat kinda dull and the game's still somewhat buggy. I'll probably resub again at some point though.

Thanks for the heads up! There's always plenty of bargains to be had when Lidl do their cycling sales.

That's a good point but I'm sure the keys and spacing are regular full size on the K65. It's just the keypad that's missing. Having said that I've been burned by that before by that issue when I bought a Microsoft Sidewinder X4 keyboard and found that the keys were slightly smaller than a regular keyboard. Net result being I couldn't actually type on it at all!

Thanks for the feedback. I prefer compact keyboards (without the numpad) as I find them a lot more comfortable so I was thinking of going for a Corsair K65. The other thing confusing me is the talk of all these different coloured (blue, red, etc.) switch types? I think the ones in the Corsair are cherry MX red. Which type of keyboard are you using if you don't mind me asking?

Since getting a new mouse I've contemplated whether I should upgrade my standard keyboard to something a bit nicer given how much use it gets. I'm tempted to try out a mechanical keyboard as a lot of people swear by them but they're a bit pricey! What's the general opinion of people on here regarding them. Are they a noticeable improvement over standard membrane keyboards or a waste of money? Does anyone use one on a daily basis?

+1 on going for a 256Gb SSD drive. It's worth the small extra outlay for future proofing if nothing else. You'd be amazed how much disk space is used by simply installing Windows 8. I've got an 80Gb SSD and it's been sitting with only 10GB free for the last couple of years. There are loads of programs (windows updates, iTunes, etc) that don't play nice with trying to redirect files off the system drive. I manage to work around it using junctions but honestly I'm at the point where if I want to upgrade my PC in future to another version of Windows I'm going to have to buy a larger SSD. Don't get less than 256Gb unless you enjoy making junctions, redirecting every install and stressing over whether there's adequate space left every time you install a service pack!

If I build another gaming PC from scratch I'm gonna go Small-ish Form Factor. Probably something like the following setups :- "Proton Proceed" Intel Core i5 4670 @ 3.8GHz Turbo Nvidia GeForce Mini ITX LAN Gaming PC [FS-013-OG] "Photon Envy" Intel Core i7 4770K @ 3.9GHz Turbo Nvidia GeForce Quad Core LAN Gaming PC [FS-007-OG] Spec-wise in your position I'd for something like:- Intel i5/i7 16Gb DDR3 Nvidia Geforce 770/780 512 SSD + 3-4tb HDD

From what I saw of the MacBook 'retina' (2880x1800) in the Apple store it does run at the native resolution so text is the regular size but much sharper? I think all they're doing is running the screen at what would be the same font size/etc as if it were 1440x900. That way any app/icons/etc that don't have 4k/retina/QHD support simply appear as if they were running on a 1440x900 sized display. It's kind of cheating but it's a good way to support legacy apps without resorting to font/image scaling which would probably break half of them.

I know what you mean. I can't believe that they don't have Windowing options for Metro apps by now. THere's still no way of combining desktop apps and Windows apps on split screen either. I notice that opening up a link in mail causes the screen to split and open the link in IE which is OK but most web pages don't really fit in a 960 pixel wide windows. Also, if you drag the IE split to full screen then drag it back to half screen it 'forgets' that the Mail was the last app you had open and displays half the screen blank. It was more effective when it opened the link full screen TBH. I sometimes wonder if MS actually used Windows 8 themselves before they released it!

They're well made and beautifully finished products at relatively decent price points. However I wouldn't actually call either a good overall product at this point in time. The Surface RT is rendered useless thanks to the limited software available for WindowsRT. I thought the Surface Pro would be the ultimate tablet PC until I used it and realised that to make it's 10" 1080p display usable they'd set the default font scaling to 150% which would 'break' half of the desktop apps I need to use. It's Windows 8 that let's the side down TBH as with the Surface tablets Microsoft's had hardware that was on a par with Apple IMO. Ironic really given that Microsoft's main focus should be software! I've just installed Windows 8.1 upgrade one and it's filled me with disappointment at how little has changed I guess we'll have to hold out for Windows 9 until Microsoft get round to fixing the issues introduced by Windows8.

The trackpad functionality and gestures is something Apple definitely deserve credit for. It makes what's normally a very frustrating experience much slicker. To be fair the functionality is similar on Windows laptops but it doesn't seem to work as well. I notice there's talk of Apple removing the 'click' on the trackpad altogether in future versions of their laptops. Probably makes sense as that was once aspect of the trackpad I found very awkward and poorly implemented IMO. Much easier using tap to click. Speaking of trackpads I wonder if we'll see touch-screen functionality at some point in future on Mac laptops?

Just installed this today. Doesn't really fix anyone's complaints about the pointlessness of the start screen on a non-touch device and how poorly the metro/modern UI apps work without a touchscreen. They still haven't even gotten round to introducing windowed versions of the Metro apps so I can actually use them effectively. And when I'm using it on a touchscreen it still defaults back to the desktop control panel apps way to often when changing settings/etc. Surely by now they should have replicated nearly all the desktop functionality in the Modern UI? If this is the best a global company with the resources of Microsoft can accomplish in 2 years after the release of Windows 8 they really are in trouble! It's like they're not even trying. I think they should just admit defeat in trying to build a combined UI for both touch and mouse/keyboard and offer up separate UI's for each or else they're in danger of losing both markets. It seemed like a good idea when they launched Windows 8 but it's clearly not working IMO.

@LosOjos I did read the post and appreciate it's difficult to get an equivalent given the premium Apple tend to charge. I'll admit I've not seen any recent examples but from experience of Dell's Alienware and XPS ranges in the past I've come away really disappointed at how poorly put together and finished they are for £1000+ computers/laptops. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt as quite a few on here have posted saying how good they are now though. That carbon X1 looks nice but it's even more expensive than a MacBook Air!

For the sake of argument what would you say were better equivalents to the following in terms of better build quality and finish compared to the :- a) MacBook Pro 15" b) MacBook Air 13" I think we can all agree that you can buy better specced kit for less than what Apple charge but are there genuinely laptops out there that are better in terms of overall build and finish? I'm not approaching the question from a pro or anti Apple viewpoint BTW! Just opening it up for discussion as it would be nice to have some examples