Motorola pays Lucas for its Droid

Friday, November 6th, 2009

Google’s Android operating system seems to be gathering pace, with more and more phones emerging that run the Open Source mobile OS – in the past few months we’ve reviewed the Samsung i7500 Galaxy, HTC Hero and HTC Magic.

One phone that’s gathering momentum across the pond is the Motorola Droid and, from early previews, it’s easy to see why: as well as offering the numerous benefits of Android, it also has a sliding Qwerty keyboard, 3.7in capacitive touchscreen, 5mp camera, GPS and Wi-Fi. It’s also the first phone to ship with Google Maps Navigation installed.

In short, it sounds superb – but that’s not the most interesting thing about one of the most-hyped smartphones of the past several months.

The most interesting thing about Motorola’s new phone can actually be found on the Droid homepage. Look past the flashy graphics towards the copyright notices at the bottom of the screen – you know, the part that everyone usually ignores – and read the bottom line, which says:

“DROID is a trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd. and its related companies. Used under license.”

So it appears that Motorola can’t call its new Android phone the Droid unless they pay a certain Mr. Lucas a hefty wodge of cash to stop him turning up at the Chicago firm’s HQ with a battery of lawyers.

Who knew that R2D2 could prove so profitable?

Thanks to Brian Sharp at WikiTravel for the R2D2 image.

Will you hit the Orange iPhone “unlimited” cap?

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Orange’s big unveiling of its iPhone tariffs has caused a bit of a kerfuffle, not least because its prices are almost identical to those of O2. A lot of people are up in arms about the promise of “unlimited browsing”, which in fact comes with a fair-use limit of 750MB.

But, ignoring the terrible decision to put an “unlimited” label on a very clearly capped tariff, is that amount of monthly data actually “fair-use”?

As discussed in this week’s podcast, there’s a very easy way for existing iPhone owners to find out if that data cap would prove troublesome. Just go to Settings -> General -> Usage, and take a look at your Cellular Network Data. I did just that, believing this cap would be encroaching at least a little on my roaming lifestyle, but I was in for a surprise. (more…)

How Dixons is (under)selling Windows 7

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

If you’ve been into a Dixons Group shop lately (i.e. PC World or Currys Digital), you’ll have seen the place festooned with posters and displays declaring that the arrival of Windows 7 means it’s “time for a new PC”.

From a marketing point of view, it’s an obvious message for Dixons to be pushing. But in reality, as we all know, one of the great merits of Windows 7 is that most of us don’t need a new PC to run it. I use it happily on an old Advent laptop with 1GB of RAM and a Pentium Dual-Core processor; David Bayon runs it on his Atom-powered Samsung NC10 netbook. If there was ever an edition of Windows that didn’t mean “time for a new PC”, this is it.

With Microsoft getting so much right in Windows 7, it’s a disappointment to see it permitting (perhaps even supporting) such a misleading marketing slogan. And I think it’s a mistake. In the coming years Windows is going to be increasingly threatened from multiple directions — by a buoyant Apple, by emergent operating systems such as Chrome OS and by cloud-based mobile computing. Surely as the battle grows Microsoft will want its best foot forward, in the shape of a satisfied user base. The last thing it will want is to be weighed down by still-lingering resentments over Vista.

Yet this slogan seems designed to deliver precisely that outcome. Dissatisfied customers won’t appreciate being told they must write off their old PC to escape their unsatisfactory OS. Many who can’t afford a new PC will stick with Vista and remain disgruntled with it. And those who know the truth – that any machine that runs Vista will run Windows 7 better – will resent Microsoft’s apparent collusion in an attempt to get them to waste money on an unnecessary new PC.

Who’s viewing PCPro.co.uk on an Amiga?

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Yesterday’s story on how more than 10% of PCPro.co.uk readers were already running Windows 7 caused something of a kerfuffle. However, it wasn’t the swift uptake of Microsoft’s newborn operating system that yanked people’s chains; it was the fact that 6.8% of our visitors were still running Windows 95 that sparked mild hysteria.

“Call me a doubting Thomas but I just don’t believe the Windows 95 figure,” said rjp2000, commenting on the story. “I haven’t seen a Win 95 PC in the wild for years. Has anybody else seen one recently?”

Well, rjp, I promise you that it’s true. In fact, Windows 95 looks positively bleeding edge compared to some of the operating systems that darken our door.

(more…)

Microsoft and me: my Windows 7 launch party

Monday, October 26th, 2009

On Saturday my girlfriend and I hosted an official Windows 7 Launch Party. This might sound like an inappropriate way for an independent journalist to spend an evening; but, as I’ve noted before, the party agreement left hosts free to praise, deride or ignore the OS as they saw fit. So, just as a bit of fun, I thought: why not? (more…)

Top 10 business technologies of 2010 – really?

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

Analysts at Gartner yesterday attempted to look into the future to guess what would be making the biggest impacts on businesses in 2010, as it revealed the top 10 strategic technologies for 2010.

Technologies to make the top ten include Client Computing (think virtualisation, again), Social Computing (personal and work time will mix, darn it) and, rather less exotically, Flash Memory.

Meanwhile, Gartner also points to the rise in mobile apps, stating that despite the plethora of applications for platforms such as the iPhone, it predicts a newer version with identical operating system interface and processor architecture.

But can we trust Gartner to predict the future? (more…)

Help me choose my next PC case

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

I know there’s a while to go yet, but I’m beginning to think about Christmas – and, specifically, what I’m going to do about my ailing PC over the holiday period.

It’s in bad shape. The chassis is an decrepit Cooler Master model that has no screws holding the sides on and, since I rescued it from the PC Pro Labs, not all of the components inside are actually secured properly: the two hard disks lie uncomfortably in their drive bays, and the optical drive isn’t attached to the 5.25in bay, either; instead, it merely balances between the bay and the front of the chassis and  has to be physically pulled towards the front of the system to be used.

Obviously, this brings numerous disadvantages, with the rattling and reverberating of the hard disks and optical drive meaning that my system isn’t exactly quiet. The lack of cable-tidying means that it’s an ugly PC to look at and difficult to work inside, too, which has made life tricky when I’ve upgraded components in the past.

(more…)

Stephen Gately, tube workers and the power of Twitter

Monday, October 19th, 2009

This weekend saw a fascinating display of the influence of social networking, and how it harnessed its power to unify – and arguably lead – people to rally together against wrongdoing.

Events kicked off on Friday morning when the Daily Mail published an article by one of its columnists, Jan Moir, on the death of Boyzone’s Stephen Gately last weekend, in which she claims there was “nothing natural”  about the circumstances of the gay singer’s demise, and that Gately’s death struck a blow to the “happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships.”

(more…)

My favourite Android apps

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

The mystery of Vodafone’s mobile broadband filtering

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

Whatever your views on porn, I’m sure you will agree with me when I say that content filtering just seems like such a good idea. How nice to be able to decide what you see, especially when it seems that makers of adult materials go through occasional phases of trying their utmost to stick something in front of you when you’re looking for something else.

When that happens, I’d like my content filtering services not so much as a way of protecting my innocence, but more so I can just do my stuff without interruption. So I am having serious trouble understanding exactly what is driving the content filter on Vodafone’s 3G dongle service.

Some days, whole swathes of the net are invisible – not because they are known to be rude, but because Vodafone claims it can’t even decide whether they are rude, or not. Vodafone’s content filter is offline, so to be on the safe side it just bars all accesses to marked sites.

(more…)