As far as I'm aware, the only thing is lacks is any sort of aperture control. That's because it's fixed at, from memory, F2.2.

Does that mean it's not the same as a DSLR? Yes, that's exactly what it means.

Does it mean it's much better than anything else you can get in a phone (and most things you get in point-and-shoot)? Yes, it does.

But the killer app here is the 41mp. Each photo sensor is awful - look at 1:1 zoom and you'll see so much noise it'll give you headaches. But that's not the point. The point is that you can scale that down to 21mp and there's be much less noise. Put it through noise ninja and there'll be less again. Bring it down to 5mp and it'll, in some circumstances - common circumstances - be up there with the Micro 4/3rds cameras.

I'll be buying one, and I'll be buying the camera grip with the extended battery built in. When I'm out as a tourist or a proud dad, I'll carry them both. From day-to-day, I'll just carry the phone and be ready to take far better photos than almost everyone else.

I just don't get how it's actually supposed to do it.

One of the independent coding initiatives (in fact, most of them) in the UK had a bunch donated to them by Google. My club of 15 kids got three and I'm supposed to give them out to the kids. I'm almost 100% certain they will sit in a cupboard and never get used - I mean, what's the point? 99% of families have a laptop - that includes a keyboard and a screen, without that - for most people - a computer is useless.

Decisions on equipment like this are usually made at school level (by the head and by the board of governors). I don't recall any mandate to buy interactive whiteboards.

That said - I can't see why you use that example - they are amongst the most engaging pieces of equipment in the classroom and allow the teachers to "buy in" materials to really add interest to their lesson plans.

The sad thing is how the schools are ripped off by vendors, in fact LEAs pretty much mandate that schools should be ripped off by forcing them to use specific vendors. Something rotten in the state of Denmark...

I've taught 9-11 year-olds programming and about 80% of the class is capable of learning enough to solve simple problems given to them. Frankly, the 20% are unable to concentrate on anything other than video games or TV - they're the ones that would be staring into space or playing football every waking hour 20-30 years ago.

20-30% can excel and really grasp some or all of the basic concepts in such a way that they can solve significant novel problems and even set those problems for themselves.

...but the government isn't one of them.

We now have Code Club, Coder Dojo, Coding in Schools and half a dozen more individuals and groups working towards roughly the same goals. Each one of these groups is effectively cannibalising each other's target audience. All these people at the helm of each of these groups needs to be congratulated and then locked in a room with all of the others until they can agree a single national plan.

Personally I've gone with Code Club and teach a weekly hour class in my kids' primary school (kindergarten). I've brought one set of kids through the first of three "terms" of coding, been given 3x RPi to give out to semi randomly selected members of the club and plan to do a better job next year. The weekly tasks do a pretty good job of introducing practice in the basic concepts of programming (variables, variable scope, loops, conditions etc..) but weren't explicit enough to allow the kids to use them outside the context in which they were taught. To be honest, I think much of it was done by mimicry rather than understanding.

Chances are that no-one else has and doing so will help you understand it as well as producing some useful output to get the project going again.

I read about this on the BBC news website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20972027), missing the first line of the article that said it was US only, I logged into the service to see what I'd bought that was going to show up. Immediately, Beautiful South, Gaze popped up. Strange, I didn't actually remember buying it but it's possible. Then that was it. So I go through my purchases and, like others, there were heaps of popular CDs that I'd bought as gifts.

Apart from the obvious problem, I put a message in to Amazon wondering why Gaze was the only track I got. About an hour later I got a call (during the work day, to my mobile from a hidden number!) from a confused CS rep. Eventually established that it was US only and that Gaze was some weird quirk and I shouldn't have received it.

Somehow, this seems a bit of an ill conceived dodgily implemented service. I bet it sinks without a trace. I assume Amazon are having to pay for all these tracks (at some massively discounted rate) and are doing it to try to convince people to use their service. That's some financial commitment - wonder if the physical CD prices are about to be hiked...?

Still "pending" - you never know. Google should really scare us at this point - actively seeking new monopolies when you're whole business is based on a cash cow monopoly (adwords) - it's not called "anti trust" for nothing.

Has anyone who's posted so far actually ever been in a union? They don't just try to protect incompetence or continually raise pay rates (though, yes, they do tend traditionally tend to try to do that as well). They also enforce worker protection laws. They provide legal protection and legal insurance. They provide workplace representation, worker representation.

Seems like a bunch of turkeys voting for [Thanksgiving|Christmas]...

Totally agree - VS is a great IDE and one that really helps with code navigation, standards compliance and more. Gotta think the GP has no idea how to effectively use all of the features even the worst of modern IDEs bring. I suppose, if Eclipse is the best you've had, notepad++ looks promising but if you've used VS - there's no reason to use anything else.

What is such a pity about this is that it really doesn't matter how good this is, how bad the iPad is, how boring the Android is, or any combination of those 3 features and platforms. Apple will either continue to convince the world that the Emperor is fully dressed, Android will convince the world that cheap is good or MS will convince the world that, well, they shouldn't change horses mid-stream.

The three platforms all work just fine. I happen to think and hope that the Surface Pro will show the world that both bulky laptops and tablets in general are technology of the past, but for the majority of consumers the difference is moot. The real challenge here is ridding the world of java applets and flash videos and getting moved on to decent, compliant, reliable web standards... Then who cares what the medium is...?

Just thought I'd pop back... Stock price "plummeted" from 2.80 to 2.40 - it's now back up to 2.79 - as I said, easy 10% on your money...

Stock market swings are not a reflection of the consumer market, it's a reflection of how bankrupt that whole industry is...

Just sayin'

Buy a (relatively cheap) Lumia and you can use the industry standard for wireless charging and also NFC + open data transfer standards (bluetooth to the speaker systems for instance). Buy a (relatively expensive) iPhone and you'll be stuck with even more expensive accessories, with god knows what means of communicating with them.

I think some were still expecting a 20MP sensor and a tablet device.

I'd advise that the drop is entirely temporary and you can make yourself an easy 10% in less than a month by buying today.