No, but their laptops do my head in -- their ThinkPad branded ones at least. The hardware is actually very nice, apart from one key component, the track-pad.

A couple of years ago they went from a usable regular track-pad with two physical mouse buttons, to a mutant Macbook ripoff that has the buttons a part of the touch sensitive surface. This makes using two fingers -- one to swipe the other to click -- an exercise in frustration as your clicking finger also registers as movement and the cursor jumps about.

I also had a lot of trouble right clicking, i don't remember why but i had pretty much given up at that point and plugged in a USB mouse. I guess this could be fixed with some decent touchpad software/drivers, but out of the box is is a nightmare.

Also they load epic amounts of Lenovo (and other) branded crapware. I'm pretty sure as you go up their price range this increases, as it adds an extra feature bullet point on the spec sheet. 90% gets immediately uninstalled if i am anywhere near it. They also don't ship any recovery discs (i guess this it not too unusual now) and force you to burn your own if you want something else other than the recovery partition. Due to the amount of extra software this took 40 mins and 3 DVDs!

Finally there is no means to create a vanilla Windows restore disc, so you have waste more time adding the correct SLIC cert files to a custom DVD image to get it to activate a vanilla Windows install, if you want to purge all trace of pre-installed software.

The only good thing is i learnt this without me or my family having bought one, they were all company purchases.

I remember a story about a security company that did this for banks and fortune 500 companies, off the back of reports that "hackers" were using typos in email addresses to get all sorts of lovely information about the IT systems of these companies

I don't remember whether it was criminalized, but it's certainly a good example of why you shouldn't be sending sensitive information in plain text emails...

I can see it now. "Method for connecting to a Wi-Fi network from a mobile device... IN SPACE".

Thanks, i had no idea, very interesting.

Indeed, the Sandbox mode in Adobe Reader X is a PITA. It plays havoc with anti-virus and i have seen workstations with no anti-virus installed refuse to open .pdf docs until it is disabled.

I still leave it on by default here, but thats the first thing to check when anyone complains their pdf file wont open.

Excellent video of his "Difference Engine" working http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlbQsKpq3Ak. Seeing the Analytical Engine working also would be amazing. It's mentioned here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlbQsKpq3Ak&feature=player_detailpage#t=471s in the video.

Well if its not as good as Source then i guess i will spend more time looking at a loading screen than playing the game. Portal 2 worked out about 50/50 from what i remember... ^^

Oh i noticed this on a couple of albums and wasnt sure why, thanks for mentioning that. Its definitely worth the subscription still, even with the missing content from stupid labels. If they push it much further or tried a price hike i would have to seriously think about cancelling. It has stopped me pirating for the last year or so, and i have even purchased tracks i really like because i found them on through Spotify. But its not like its hard for me to start again if they try anything.

I like 7digital.com a lot. They have a pretty damn good library (in the UK at least) and have had a "Digital Locker" since sometime near the end of 2010 i think. You can stream your purchases online through a decent HTML5 player, and download as many times as you like.

Also some selected albums (eg. lastest Radiohead) have FLAC downloads for a couple of quid extra. Better than those £12.99 WAV/FLAC download prices you see everywhere else. Hopefully they start encoding more FLAC.

I think games are in a unique position compared to movies or music. They hold a much greater potential to engaging for long periods of time. There are full price games ive played for 80hrs and indie games half or a quater of the price ive played for the same amount of time.

Developers need to work on making it possible for players to pay for the experience after the inital purchase. Not necessarily a subscription but the oppertunity for real fans to give them more money if they want. And to lower the barrier to entry for those who are not sure if they want to make a $60 commitment.

DLC and horse armor done well. I dont think anyone has really done this yet. And remeber that more and more adults will be their target audience, with real money. Not teenagers on torrent sites.

Indeed, i honestly thought this was going to be a comparison between Thunderbird 3 and a Nazi V2 rocket.

Disappointed.

It's an interesting move for sure, and may well make sense for Mechwarrior. But i think the amount of people that have bought classics like Doom or Fallout on Steam -- for example -- are enough to show publishers they can make some money off old games.

I hear Nintendo sell quite a lot of old games on the Wii Virtual Console too.

Once you release something as freeware its going to be tough selling it again, when that cult following finally builds up.

What's even more strange, is that Google sent their Street View truck out there. They must have gone though during the meteorite off season, 'cause I sure can't see anything interesting.

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=h&layer=c&cbll=37.577077,-101.661371&panoid=7wISFAVsiS8aFtIM6Xi6fA&cbp=12,6.42,,0,10.21&ll=37.572338,-101.766357&spn=0,359.360046&z=11

I think we all know the answer to that.

Its all about maximum profit in the shortest amount of time. If you can make 500 million running a game into the ground the publisher doest care, they made 500 million pumping out a generic video game by riding on the success and innovation of someone else. Its pure profit. Sure you need something new to run into the ground after 3-5 years, but by that time all the execs got their bonuses and everyone* is happy.

*everyone making money

..finger.

I was beginning to think that the IW owners and developers had sold out completely, and if MW2 was any sign of things to come in the COD franchise, it would be hard to argue otherwise.
But at least this shows that some of them aren't willing to be completely screwed over, and restores some of my faith in the core IW guys.