Alistair Dabbs is a freelance technology tart, juggling IT journalism, editorial training and digital publishing.
Master Beats: Why doesn't audio quality matter these days?
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Hear, there and everywhere
Returning from a school trip to New York, my son handed back most of the $350 spending money we’d given him. Yes, I too thought it was a lot of dosh for a four-day tour but then I have no experience in the matter. When I was a kid, a school trip involved walking up to the pond to catch tadpoles for biology class, not …
British bookworms deem Amazon 'evil'
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Chuck away your e-reader - everyone else is
“My only real prediction is that it’s all changing.”
Well, ask a stupid question - in this case, about the future of book publishing. The lobotomy-inducingly obvious answer was provided by author Neil Gaiman. If I’d written this prediction here on El Reg, I would have been derided as a time-waster specialising in stating the …
Oh S**T, here comes a ROBOT to take my JOB
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Workers of the world, dump on your masters' doorsteps
The enormous lump of shit sat steaming directly outside the publisher’s door facing the first-floor landing, welcoming early morning office workers as they arrived with a cheeful “Hello! I’m a giant turd! And I smell really bad!”
Each member of staff who had chosen to begin work at 7.30am that day reacted the same way: wrinkled …
The healing hands of guru Dabbs
Something for the Weekend, Sir? I command you IT devil... get out!
A colleague strides purposefully across the open-plan office to the production desk. She has the wrinkled brow and wild eyes of someone who is simultaneously baffled and angry. She’s on deadline but her computer is “doing stupid things” and she doesn’t understand what or why or how to stop it.
Oh no, I'll have to ask Dabbsy "Oh …
I am NOT a PC repair man. I will NOT get your iPad working
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Everybody needs good technology loving neighbours
“My nephew bought me one of those iPad things for my birthday.”
My heart sinks – I can already tell where this is going.
I’m at a neighbour’s house party, the time is last summer, and one of the older partygoers is about to tell me that some new-fangled technology is too much for him to cope with now that he has reached the age …
Oi, Microsoft, where's my effin' toolbar gone?
Something for the Weekend, Sir? How the browser buggered up application UIs
Half-life Wife is angry. She has begun swearing loudly through gritted teeth and is shaking her fist in a threatening manner.
This, believe it or not, is a relief. Mrs D tends to not so much experience emotions as perform them, so the shaking fist is less a warning of intention, more the art of expression. And while I probably …
Touch screens and greasy mitts: All you need is glove
Something for the weekend, sir? Giving Will.I.Am the finger
Currently, my most generous client has conspired to have me surrounded by shiny glass and plastic rectangles between the hours of 6pm and 6am. Working night shifts always seems a little exotic at first for namby-pampy light-lubbers like myself but the novelty eventually wears off as vitamin D levels decline.
iMac monolith …
Chaos Theory causes password entry pandemonium
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Justin Bieber’s balls are the key to login loghorrea
There are things in this tiny microcosm of the universe that I will never comprehend. For example, why do so many humans require the assistance of spectacles? How does the phase of the moon affect emotional behaviour? And what is it about the otherwise harmless, uncontroversial and inoffensive Justin Bieber that makes me want to …
Keyboard, you're not my type
Something for the Weekend, Sir? How we tap in text stubbornly resists improvement... still
When I chose to wave goodbye to wage slavery by turning freelance some (cough) 19 years ago, it was during an era in which the principal means of electronic communication between IT journalists was called Cix. Computers were powered by coke burners and required a team of navvies to work the bellows; monetary currency comprised …
Official: Cloud computing invented by two technophobic old geezers
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Blue sky thinking by mistake
Not a day goes by without a dozen press releases on the topic of cloud computing thrusting their way into my inbox (ooh, matron). I think I’ve made my opinions of the cloud con clear enough in previous columns but for the benefit of newer readers, let’s just say that I think it’s cock.
Well, that is, cloud computing itself isn’t …
Any storm in a port
Something for the Weekend, Sir? I keep on pushing but it won’t go in
Consider this column to be a virtual pub. I raise my glass to all time-wasters out there.
It’s customary for this column to ignore the big news items of the week and instead focus on things that don’t really matter. So permit me to avoid wasting your Friday afternoon fruitlessly on conjecture about the inexplicably popular topic …
Review: HP Spectre XT TouchSmart
The Ultrabook that reckons it's meant for bigger things
El Reg looked at HP's 13in Spectre XT Ultrabook in October last year and liked it a lot. What you're looking at here, then, is a meatier version with a bigger display, touchscreen support, more ports and the inevitable Windows 8. I like it a lot.
HP Spectre XT TouchSmart 15-4000ea Ultrabook It looks absolutely nothing like an …
Paper computers: Not mere pulp fiction
Something for the Weekend, Sir? That’s torn it
I love it when I read or hear the phrase “Print is dead”. Idiocy is so enthralling. I am fascinated by people who can shamelessly proclaim their own ignorance in public with such determination.
Tomorrows World Elliot light pen 1967 Future tech: Elliot light pen shown on Tomorrow's World in 1967
How many trees could you grow in …
Google's Glasses: The tech with specs appeal?
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Don’t push that into my face...
I don't like wearing a wristwatch because it's uncomfortable. As the prime minister always says when being evasive or unintelligible, let’s be clear about this: I wear a wristwatch on most days but I find that doing so is uncomfortable. I would never wear a watch at home. I strap it on when I set off to a customer site and take …
Shiny, shiny! The window's behind me...
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Has the matte-screen lobby finally given up?
For reasons too mundane to express, the location at which I have been currently working comprises two adjacent but separate open-plan areas conjoined by a small office occupied by the departmental boss.
The easiest and quickest way to get from one open-plan area to the other is to pass through the little office. In fact, it’s a …
What’s a computer? Eat yourself fitter!
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Best tech of the year is forking crap
Despite the saturation of oh-so-hilarious pre-Christmas comedy TV shows summing up the year before it has actually finished, January strikes me as the more logical time to do like Antony Worrall Thompson: have a good look around, take stock and move on. In December, we wallowed in the Olympics and something to do with Sgt Pepper …
Review: HP ENVY x2 Windows 8 convertible
Display unclips to work as a tablet
The flourishing market for tablet computers has left people wanting more. Those using tablets at work invariably end up buying a keyboard and regularly curse the limitations of a mobile operating system. Those using a Windows laptop at work often wish they could occasionally dispense with the keyboard for convenient touchscreen …
Windows 8: At least it's better than ‘not very good’
Something for the Weekend, Sir? A night on the tiles
By the pricking of my thumbs, and by the noisy crowd booking out half the pub, the wickedness of office party season has kicked in big time. Certainly, 'tis the season to be jolly and to suffer the indignities of itinerant workers debasing themselves in order to get invited.
Another year at the Cheshire Cheese The importance of …
Take it or break it: the return of the drop test
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Smashing technology
In flagrant negation of the forces of nature, I seem to be growing less clumsy as I get older. That is, I break fewer things and do it less often.
This is partly the result of a series of conscious decisions to be more careful. One such was choosing to don my spectacles before making breakfast rather than after, thus cutting …
Smear campaign
Something for the Weekend, Sir? I don’t know where your fingers have been
Men as a gender can be a smelly lot. There are cultural reasons underlying some of our questionable standards of personal hygiene but we are also victims of our own DNA. Like stature, baldness and the length of our ah… noses, there are many challenging aspects of our bodily functions that we simply inherited.
For example, I have …
Assault on battery
Something for the Weekend, Sir? What do you mean, it’s run out?
When working on-site, I like go into the office early on Thursdays because I have to leave by 5pm. It’s simply essential that I get away in good time on Thursdays. And on Wednesdays. Oh, and Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
Weekends are completely off-limits, by the way.
Empty phone battery
'Heylp! Heylp!'
Source: Pratheek …
Power to the people - if you can find a spare socket
Something for the weekend, Sir? Where would you like me to insert this?
Changing family circumstances have resulted in my need to use long-distance trains more frequently. They used to call them "InterCity" services back in "the age of the train" but the less said about that the better.
InterCity trains when I was a child were horrible: dirty, uncomfortable and stinking of piss, an odour that could …
ViewSonic VSD220 22in Android mega tablet
The display with ideas above its workstation
Depending on how you might want to look at it, the ViewSonic VSD220 is either an expensive 22in monitor or an inexpensive tethered Android tablet. But then you'd be missing the point: it's actually both and neither. It's an unusual mashup for which ViewSonic deserves credit simply by giving it a go.
ViewSonic VSD220 Android AIO …
A bitter spill to swallow, or 'how to smeg up your keyboard'
Something for the Weekend, Sir? And passwords? Arse-words more like...
Trouble at mill. Someone’s password isn’t working.
It’s day two for one of the casuals and he’s forgotten what the temporary password is. It’s been an entire 24 hours and his natural creativity doesn’t extend to remembering how to type ‘Passw0rd’. Brilliant.
Confused computer keyboard
I remind him of his password and he gets …
Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7in Android tablet review
Perfect bind?
Carl Jung once wrote that a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment. And so it is with Amazon's long awaited (it's been a year) British release of its Kindle Fire 7in tablets. Having pre-ordered the top-end 32GB Fire HD model, I was thrilled when I found it waiting for me at home and excited as I tore open the box, but grew …
Apple iPad Mini 8in tablet review
The tablet even Apple haters won't be able to leave alone
Hitting the Apple Store shelves a whole week after Amazon's new Kindle Fire HD tablets began arriving in the post, and two months after Google launched the Asus-made Nexus 7, the iPad Mini deserves to suffer in comparison. Even Google managed to slip a new 32GB version of its Nexus 7 under the radar at the beginning of the week …
We don’t talk any more... on the commute
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Do gadgets really make us antisocial?
“Is this the train to Faversham?” asks a woman as she boards.
A regular commuter returning to the southeast London suburbs, I always get off at the first stop and have no idea where the trains eventually end up two hours later. “I’m afraid I don’t know,” I reply.
“What?” she cries incredulously. “Don’t you know what train you’ …
Kick your computer... before it kicks you
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Spleen to vent? Take it out on your tech
My in-laws are a boisterous clan, or so it seems to a reserved half-Scot like myself. You see, they are French... well, more of a volatile Spanish-Italian-Latin mix with an explosive temper born from a Mediterranean climate, macho upbringing and unspeakable experiences in revolutionary Algeria.
Meals are embellished with …
The hoarder's dilemma, or 'Why can't I throw anything away?'
Something for the Weekend, Sir? The dangers of hanging on to very old kit
I like my house zen. Unfortunately, I am a hoarder, so it’s not. My half-life wife has been trying to educate me by making me watch TV programmes with titles like Extreme Hoarders, I Can’t Stop Hoarding and Smelly Old Fat Bastards Who Don’t Wash And Won’t Throw Anything Away.
To some extent, this does the trick. After each …
Why is solid-state storage so flimsy?
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Flash, ooh-err
No matter how much storage space you get, and no matter how much you free up later on, it always gets stuffed to the gills.
I am, of course, talking about my attic... and the garage, and indeed the garden shed. Many reasons for this have been mooted, including the need to do something with my kids' childish belongings as they …
Sony Vaio T13 Ultrabook review
Sony making ultrabooks more affordable? Remarkable!
It’s only natural that manufacturers want to show off their biggest (or in this case, smallest) and best but Sony has spotted the flaw in this plan. By thrusting their fabulously lean but powerful sexy bits in your face all the time, Ultrabooks have gained a reputation for being the Page 3 girls of computing: naughty, vigorous …
Will you soon be fingering your seven-incher?
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Tablets set for shrinkage
The mill that grinds out iPad Mini launch rumours was hit by a hurricane this week, its normally creaking sails thrashing like helicopter blades.
I’d love to say that I’m bored by the whole thing but unfortunately it’s going to affect everyone at work. You spend six months preparing for the Kindle Fire UK launch – a “game- …
iPhone 5: the fab slab to grab
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Nurse, the (taller) screens
I have decided that the iPhone 5 is fantastic. Not that I own one, mind you. It’s just that the commentators slagging it off probably don’t own one either, so my ignorant opinion is just as valid as theirs.
It is, of course, the tallest iPhone ever:
OK, a bit of realism first: you can take hyperbole er… too far. A couple of …
Hapless Kate topless, toothless law useless
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Once it's digital, it's out of your hands
I rush back from town mid-afternoon in order to participate in an online conference, or what they prefer me to call a "webinar". At home, I discover that my son is sitting at his computer. It’s a school day.
This might not be such a bad thing: since his school doesn’t teach about computers any more - see 'Emotional Baggage' - it …
I spy: Drug drops and foxy couples
Something for the Weekend, Sir? The joys of snooping with digital binoculars
When I was a child, mid-September was the time when the holiday photos turned up in the post from the developer. It seems I cannot shake this photographic jetlag in adulthood, as I have only just this week removed the SD card from my camera to look at what I shot in the south of France last month.
I’m not very skilled in …
Emotional baggage
Something for the Weekend, Sir? There's nothing quite like a well-packed lunch
Two days before my teenage son was due to begin Sixth Form this week, the school phoned up to say that he's not allowed to study ICT at A-level.
This came as a bit of a shock since computing was going to be one of his principal subjects. He might not be one of those 'A-star' students that you read about on results day - jumping …
Safer conjugal rights via electronic skin
Something for the Weekend, Sir? I just want to touch
My wife is radioactive.
I'm terribly excited about this, to be honest. It's like living with a superhero or a 1950s B-movie starlet just before she grows to 50ft. And while the house may be host to the occasional randy spider on the lash at night, my wife was not bitten by some escaped bug from a science exhibit.
Radioactive …
Mr Bank Manager, help yourself to my smartphone contents
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Bend over for a thorough digital rogering
Hacking through the 1,100 press releases waiting for me upon my return from vacation has been a daunting task and has, as yet, revealed few surprises. Once I disposed of the misdirected (“I thought you might be interested in a case study from Golfbreaks.com...”) and semi-literate (“Hi hope your well?”) missives, most of the …
The problem with wireless: all those effin' wires
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Recharge of the light brigade
Those of you who choose to pursue the itinerant professional life will be familiar with the need to carry one's tools of the trade everywhere, usually in a heavy bag slung over one shoulder. Like me, you may have found that the number of devices you have to carry around has increased, for a variety of reasons that I have moaned …
Not a Cloud in my holiday sky
Something for the Weekend, Sir? So how am I supposed to work without t'internet?
As I type this, the cloudless sky is a deep azure, while the bright green, sprinkler-assisted lawn offsets the ochre of the sunburnt wild grass beyond the untidy hedge of rhododendrons.
Our man on his mission Dabbsy spies out his nearest Wi-Fi hotspot
Evidently, Toto, I am not in Britain any more. I am on vacation. The bottom …
Tablet tech is really a Psion of the times
Something for the Weekend, Sir And now, the world's most expensive netbook
Excitedly but carefully, I tore open the tough cardboard packing and slid out my latest purchase: an iPad keyboard.
Not an Apple wireless keyboard, mind. That would be silly. That would be like buying a bicycle pump bigger than my bike. Instead, I purchased a keyboard the same size as the iPad, with the ability to click onto it …
IT support bod? Whatever you earn, it's not enough
Something for the weekend, Sir? Betwixt chair and keyboard sits the problem of which you speak
It might amuse you to read that one of the senior IT support managers at one of my client workplaces confessed this week that his experience of IT support 'from the other side' was disappointing. By 'from the other side', of course, I mean as a user: my colleague is not a spectral secret shopper from beyond the grave.
Laurel …
Darth Vader is a pansy
Something for the weekend, Sir? Wearing black doesn't make you cool
American country music doesn't appeal to me, but Johnny Cash atoned for its worst sins. Whitney Houston’s foghorn cover of Dolly Parton’s funeral-favourite I will always love you could finally be forgiven when Cash returned the favour with his version of Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus.
But if you had turned up at the wrong …
Tablets, copycats and Weird Al Yankovic
Something for the weekend, Sir? Samsung does a Ratner by proxy
"They are not as cool." With these five words, Judge Colin Birss became Samsung's friend and tormentor in one. He had just found in the company's favour in its defence against Apple but ruined the moment for Samsung by hinting that the Galaxy Tab was, well, a bit crap compared to an iPad.
Apple iPad Cool tablet
Birss …
Ghost In the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Solid State Society on Blu-ray
Review Section 9 regroups for one more case
First released in its native Japan in 2006, GITS:SAC:Solid State Society (to contract its convoluted full title) was not created for cinemas but as a feature-length original video animation (OVA) destined for TV broadcast and DVD sales.
Ghost In the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Solid State Society GITS:SAC:Solid State Society …
Door creaks and girl farts: computing in the real world
Something for the weekend, Sir? Stop designing for spaceships
A few weeks ago I dissed the expensive new Apple MacBook Pro for trading a downgraded component spec in return for a pretty display and solid-state memory. In passing, I gave an example of this downgrade: the lack of a CD drive.
Several readers helpfully commented that they hadn’t used CD media in ages and wouldn’t miss an …
Dimming the lights on smart(arse) TV
Something for the weekend, Sir? When consumer devices go bzzzt
"The TV has stopped working."
This is the kind of announcement that I both dread and am accustomed to in the Dabbs household. A bit like the bath-fitter who is expected to know how to fix blocked sewers, as a computer journalist I am held personally to account upon the failure at home of anything electronic... or indeed …
Why I love Microsoft’s vapourware tablet
Something for the weekend, Sir? Probe beneath the Surface
When I first got into this journalism lark in the late 1980s, the exploding nature of the personal computer market would force the hand of IT companies to reveal products far in advance of their intended launch date.
Such was the race to give the appearance of being cutting-edge, they sometimes found themselves announcing …
Retina Display detachment
Something for the Weekend, Sir? It's not what Apple adds, it's what it cuts, stupid
Those Cupertino Infinite Looping gits have done it again. I don't mean this in an upbeat, admiring, I-can't-believe-it's-not-butter kind of way. I mean it more in a they're-selling-us-less-for-more-cash, not to mention a downbeat now-everyone-else-will-do-the-same, kind of way.
As regular readers are aware of me mentioning at …
Focus groups are for mugs
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Unfortunately your product doesn’t work
Journalists can be a contrary lot and IT journalists are no exception. Whatever we get asked to test and review, we’re never really happy with it. But that’s OK because the manufacturers and their PR companies, and often the readers too, are never happy with what we write either.
While the risks that IT journalists run tend to …
