Earlier Hardware
Ten smartphones with tablet ambitions...
Product Round-up How we all laughed when Samsung launched the Galaxy Note toward the end of 2011. Who could possibly want a phone with a 5.3-inch screen? It turned out rather a lot of people did, and the unqualified success of the 4.8-inch Galaxy S III and 5.6-inch Galaxy Note 2 proved that what many punters want is a phone with a really, really …
Four firms pitch hi-def DRM for Flash cards
Panasonic, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba have begun licensing their new DRM technology for memory cards to anyone who feels the world needs yet another copy protection technology for HD content. They hope many content providers do indeed want a new DRM system, specifically one that secures content but doesn’t prevent content …
Review: Britain's 4G smartphones
Product Round-up It’s been a good few months since the first 4G LTE network fired up in the UK, and wiser men than I have already tossed their orbs about the what and the how of EE’s monopoly 4G network. Time then to consider the 4G handsets now available for use in Blighty, and in the process cast a beady eye on speeds and coverage outside the …
SimCity Classic
Antique Code Show Doughnuts. Doughnuts are what I think of when someone mentions SimCity in my vicinity. Not because I used to cram them into my face, Homer Simpson-style, while I played, but rather because, back in my childhood, I was obsessed with arranging my own ‘simmed’ city in perfect concentric 'doughnuts'.
Squares in three-by-three …
WTF is... Miracast?
Less than six months ago, there were just a handful of Miracast-certified products listed in the Wi-Fi Alliance’s kit database. Now there are nearly 150. A spectacular improvement for a little known technology. So what is it?
Miracast was formally launched in September 2012, but it was Google’s announcement a month and a half …
From stage to stream: The unseen tech at the BRIT Awards 2013
Feature If you think you know all about the O2 Arena having visited it when it was called the Millennium Dome, then think again.
When the site was sold to entertainment biz AEG in 2004, it was gutted and turned into a concert venue; all that remains of the original structure is the tent. Today, its owners claim it’s the busiest live …
WTF is... IEEE 1905.1?
Feature It sounds like a solution looking for a problem. A technology that allows networked devices in the home connected by different network media to operate as if they were connected across a single medium. Surely TCP/IP already allows you to do that, routing packets from, say, network attached storage linked to a router over an …
Tesla's Elon Musk v The New York Times, Round 2
There's no love lost between Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk and New York Times reporter John Broder this Valentine's Day, with the debate over the accuracy of Broder's recent review of the Tesla Model S having devolved into a bitter display of online "he said, she said."
The public spat first erupted on Monday, when the paper …
Tesla vs Media AGAIN as Model S craps out on journo - on the highway
Californian electric car maker Tesla Motors - well known for tangling repeatedly with the BBC (and the Register) over coverage of battery vehicles which it did not deem positive enough - is now in a row with the New York Times after one of the paper's journalists wrote a stinging review of its new Model S.
Tesla Model S sports …
Cache 'n' carry: What's the best config for your SSD?
Feature The idea of using a low-capacity SSD to store the most frequently accessed files or parts of files in order to access them more quickly than a mechanical hard drive can serve them up - a technique called SSD caching - has been around for some time, but it wasn’t until the arrival of Intel’s Smart Response Technology with the …
Socket to 'em: It's the HomeGrid vs HomePlug powerline prizefight
Feature “Two standards, both alike in dignity,
In fair Vegas, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.”
The backers of rival next-generation in-home mains power networking standards may not have come to physical blows in defence of their favoured technologies, but …
Reg Readers love their gadgets
2013 is only just beginning and already there's a ton of news surrounding the consumer tech markets.
Samsung is riding a wave of success with Android based Galaxy smartphones. Apple is starting to struggle to meet expectations while Nokia seems to be on the cusp of turning things around. Even Microsoft has taken a firm step …
The Oric-1 is 30
Feature The Oric-1, which was formally launched 30 years ago this week, was produced with one thing in mind: to take on Sir Clive Sinclair at his own game. “The Oric is a competitor for the Spectrum,” one of Oric developer Tangerine Computer Systems’ software team, Paul Kaufman, emphatically told members of the press. “We are convinced …
Happy birthday, Lisa: Apple's slow but heavy workhorse turns 30
Read a press release from Apple in the 1990s and it'll end with something along the lines of:
“Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh.”
All of which is true up to a point, but the statement does overlook the product that …
Ten stars of CES 2013: Who made the biggest splash?
CES 2013 As the 2013 Consumer Electronics Shows (CES) wraps up in Las Vegas, we’re left to ponder whether it as was a good show this time round. In 2012, IT vendors, buoyed by Intel encouragement and marketing money, were keen to show off their first Ultrabooks. A year on, and the chip giant’s skinny laptop brand has largely failed to …
Thunderbolt interface strikes YOUR PC: What's the damage?
Thunderbolt has been available on Intel-based motherboards for around six months and although Apple has featured it on its computers since 2011, peripherals with this interface have appeared at a glacial pace. But the ice appears to be melting now. Besides a range of hubs and adapters that take advantage of Thunderbolt's …
The amazing magical LED: Has it really been fifty years already?
Next time I hear Coldplay festively crooning "May all your troubles soon be gone, Oh Christmas Lights keep shinin' on," I'd like to think that far from lamenting some lost love, they're paying solemn tribute to the humble but illuminating LED.
The Light Emitting Diode celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. It's easy to …
The LINUX TABLET IS THE FUTURE - and it always will be
The year of the Linux tablet is, like the year of the Linux desktop, destined never to arrive.
That doesn't mean we won't see Linux on a tablet, but you'll see Linux on a tablet the way you see it on the desktop - clinging to a tiny percentage of the market.
There is of course Android, which does use a Linux kernel somewhere …
Ten… top tech cock-ups of 2012
The past year provided us with some wonderful tales of innovation and expertise, but we all like to see a car crash as much as success story, right? So here's a roundup of the most colossal cock-ups of the last 12 months, including face-plants by Google, Facebook, Apple, and others who succumbed to that most universal of human …
Red-faced, sweating and still in your chair: Welcome to eSports
Video games are believed by many to be a waste of time - but this is something consistently being challenged by the people who love them. And despite the fact that video games just can't seem shrug off the label of "just for kids", new research (PDF) would suggest that you're never too old for them.
And as the debate over the …
Happy birthday, Transistor
The transistor, the ubiquitous building block of all electronic circuits, will be 65 years old on Sunday. The device is jointly credited to William Shockley (1910-1989), John Bardeen (1908-1991) and Walter Brattain (1902-1987), and it was Bardeen and Brattain who operated the first working point-contact transistor during an …
The 30-year-old prank that became the first computer virus
To the author of Elk Cloner, the first computer virus to be released outside of the lab, it’s sad that, 30 years after the self-replicating code's appearance, the industry has yet to come up with a secure operating system.
When Rich Skrenta, created Elk Cloner as a prank in February 1982, he was a 15-year-old high school …
Bash Street bytes: Do UK schools really need the Raspberry Pi?
Feature There’s been a right fracas in education this year, with the government proclaiming that ICT (Information and Communication Technology) teaching is dull and demotivating, and that kids need to be be taught more programming, and less use of applications.
Into the fray like a white knight comes the Raspberry Pi, a tool designed to …
Want to run your own Apple shop? Start with £70k of German chairs
Marvel at the lavish Corian countertops and the shimmering metallic shelving forming a temple of Jobsian worship. Be still and know that you are in the hands of one of Apple's premium resellers.
Around you are hushed voices discussing iPads and iMacs, and the occasional ripple of excitement from a fanbois. But there may be …
Author of '80s classic The Hobbit didn't know game was a hit
Every few days, Veronika Megler gets email from a stranger.
Some thank her for teaching them English. Others acknowledge her role as an influence in their decision to pursue a career in computing.
Megler was never a teacher, nor a mentor, to those who send the messages.
But her correspondents remember her fondly as one of the …
What are quantum computers good for?
The problem with trying to explain quantum computing to the public is that you end up either simplifying the story so far as to make it wrong, or running down so many metaphorical rabbit-burrows that you end up wrong.
So The Register is going to try and invert the usual approach, and try to describe quantum computing at a more …
UK digital terrestrial TV turns 14 today
Archaeologic is an occasional column focus on retro tech and digital archaeology. Today, a look back at the events that went into motion 14 years ago and led to the foundation of the bedrock of UK TV, Freeview.
Freeview, Britain’s free-to-air terrestrial digital TV brand, is ten years old. It formally launched at the end of October 2002, so …
Slideshow: A History of Intel x86 in 20 CPUs
Would there have been a PC revolution had Intel decided in the late 1960s to stick to making memory chips and turn its back on microprocessors? Almost certainly, but the company did get into CPUs and IBM chose its 8088 chip to build into its first Personal Computer, the 5150.
The 8088 and its sibling, the 8086, evolved from the …
In the loop: how Halo defined a new decade of first-person shooters
Feature The glint of alien sunlight on green body armour; the spark of purple crystal shards arcing their way across the battlefield; the roar of a Warthog’s engine as it bounces across uneven terrain; and the dull thud as the butt of Master Chief’s gun impacts Covenant skull… familiar enough occurrences these days given the impact Halo …
Slideshow: A History of First-person Shooters in 20 Games
The long-anticipated release of Halo 4 and the latest Call of Duty, November is shaping up to be a great month for first-person shooters.
Halo 4
We've decided to look back at the great FPS games of the past, so here are what we think to be the 20 most notable titles from the last 30 years.
During that time, there have been …
Microsoft building its own Phone hardware: Not 'If', but 'When'
Analysis Rumours refuse to die about a Surface-like smartphone coming from Microsoft.
The Wall St Journal cites unnamed sources as (this time) saying Microsoft is working with component suppliers in Asia to test its own smartphone design.
The paper reports Microsoft "is testing a smartphone design but isn't sure if a product will go …
A history of personal computing in 20 objects part 2
Feature Personal computing may have originally been more ‘computing’ than ‘personal, but that changed in the late 1970s in the US and, in the UK, during the early 1980s.
In the first part of ‘A History of Personal Computing on 20 Objects’, we saw how computing went from maths gadgets to first mechanical, then electromechanical and …
Slideshow: A History of Horror in 20 Scary Games
Complimented on the cobwebs, skeletal remains and general stench of death in my flat the other day, I suddenly remembered it was Halloween this week, so here's another nostalgic slideshow to celebrate.
This time it's a collection of 20 pant-cacking games, titles that raised the hair on the back of our necks or at least raised …
Surface RT: Freedom luvin' app-huggers beware
Review “It’s the ultimate expression of a Windows PC,” says Windows chief Steven Sinofsky... or “a compromised, confusing product”, according to Apple’s Tim Cook, who has not used one. This is Surface RT, Microsoft’s first own-brand tablet, which went on sale today.
Along with the fact that it runs Windows 8, there are two notable …
Microsoft: Welcome back to PCs, ARM. Sorry about the 1990s
Analysis More than two decades after the alliance of Intel and Microsoft drove ARM from the battleground of personal computing, Microsoft is warmly embracing the low-power processor designer for Windows 8.
ARM was squeezed out of the then emerging and subsequently dominant platform of the time, the desktop PC, as computer makers …
Slideshow: A History of James Bond in 20 Games
As the latest James Bond game - 007 Legends - shoots its way to shop shelves this week ahead of Skyfall's release on 26 October, we decided jump aboard the nostalgia train with a look back at Bond-theme games from yesteryear.
007 Legends Get bent!
Since the very first virtual 007 adventure - the Parker Brother's James Bond …
Microsoft Surface: Designed to win, priced to fail
Analysis Microsoft has at last released some more details on its Surface tablet – including pricing – but based on what we've seen so far, Apple and Android-tablet makers don't have much to worry about.
First the good stuff: Microsoft appears to have created a system that, on the face of it, could give Apple a run for its money – at …
Quite contrary Somerville: Behind the Ada Lovelace legend
Lovelace Day Ada Lovelace is a compellingly romantic figure, irresistible in today’s age of equal geeky opportunities.
The daughter of "mad, bad and dangerous to know" Lord Byron, her mathematics-loving mother Annabella Milibanke purportedly beat the poet out of her with relentless studies in science, maths and logic.
A beauty enthralled by …
Target Silicon Valley: Why A View to a Kill actually made sense
Bond on Film A View to a Kill is generally regarded as one of the least successful Bond movies. Yet it stands out for two things: a suave villain who is deranged in an entirely believable way, and a villainous plot that appeared both logical and plausible.
While its box office performance was passable at $152m, on a budget of $30m, even …
Happy 20th Birthday, IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad
The ThinkPad is 20 today. Sort of. Launched by IBM and now made by Lenovo, the familiar black-clad, red-nippled laptop family quickly established itself as an icon, in many ways re-establishing Big Blue's reputation as a PC maker after years in the shadow of the clone manufacturers.
The first three clamshell-styled ThinkPads, …
Deep, deep dive inside Intel's next-generation processor
At Intel's developer shindig last week, chippery engineers spent a goodly amount of time conducting tech sessions that detailed the company's upcoming 4th-generation Core microprocessor architecture, code-named "Haswell."
We thought that you, inordinately intelligent and tech-savvy Reg reader, might enjoy a deep dive into their …
All you need to know about nano SIMs - before they are EXTERMINATED
Apple's iPhone 5 uses a nano SIM, the smallest SIM ever designed and, quite possibly, the last SIM we'll see in any mobile telephone.
The nano SIM used in the new smartphone is tiny and its pattern of electrical contacts are about two thirds the size of the original SIM. It's almost too small to hold and certainly small enough …
