1) Install programs for Windows-NT-server-based software which reboot the system at the end of the install without asking you first, hence terminating any important tasks you happened to have running at the time.

2) Operating systems which continually require you to reboot.

3) Running out of ammo. (Specifically, rockets, right when your opponent moves into your sights.)

4) Running out of Dr Pepper in the middle of a late night marathon coding session.

"You have moved the mouse, reboot to have changes take effect."

5) musical ring tones on phones

There is nothing musical about phone ring tones !

Support sites that take you around in circles, and publish information based on asinine model numbers/part numbers. So you are forced to search for your "other" part number, find your document, then download necessary drivers.

And you wonder why the 800 number is posted on every page!

7) Christmas Carolers and running out of the (darkened) house to avoid them.

It is great i have to guess what the girlfriend new ring tones are normally based on the charts which i don't listen to which makes it even more difficult, why can't people see the joy that is a vibrating mobile

8) People who drive in the left lane (right lane in the UK) keeping perfect formation with the car next to them, completely obf*ckingblivious to the traffic trapped behind them.

Do you think I can start a flame war by my obvious political incorrectness when I point out that at least 95% of these offenders are women?

tanstaafl.

6) Entering my account information on an automated call system only to be asked it again when a human finally picks up.

John

8) People who drive in the left lane

There is an old word to describe these people. "Magoo"

Any one here old enough to remember the Mister Magoo cartoons. The title animation is of the little guy beginning his day. Part of which is him driving to work. He's out in the center lane, traffic whizzing by on all sides, and he sits there, oblivious to his crime, shaking his fist in the air shouting "Road Hogs". Totally unable to comprehend that the problem is his.

Every time I here somebody talking about aggressive drivers, road hogs in the old vernacular, that picture pops into my visual cortex.

Glenn

6) Entering my account information on an automated call system only to be asked it again when a human finally picks up.

Being on the other side of this system, and hearing *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* due to one little macro screwup, and knowing those beeps represented the phone number needed to look up the info.

Speaking of which, here in the States (the Southern US, North Carolina to be specific), when this happens, I blink my lights, as a good driver should, to get the offending person to move. More often than not, this inspires outrage in said offending driver. Which brings me to my corollary pet peeve: people who do not know how to drive (and are driving), are inconsiderate drivers, or who are too busy doing other things (like gossiping on the phone to their girlfriends) to be bothered to drive.

Man, you guys hate a lot. :)

In my top-10 hated things: Manually "rolling" BEV. *

* BEV isn't a woman (that would have put it in my top-10 favourite things list).

Bruno

In reply to:

---

why can't people see the joy that is a vibrating mobile?

---

Because it's in your pocket, out of sight?

M$ Patches/S Packs/Whatever that require a reboot (PITA #1) and then assume you want to reboot immediately (PITA # 2) without giving you any further choice - as you say, usually when you have something else on the go (hey, we're multi-tasking, right?). So you leave the dialogue with the single button "Reboot" displayed on the desk and get a coffee while you wait for the other task to complete, and your helpful, well meaning colleague presses the button for you while you are at the machine (PITA #3)

The worst part about #3 is the fact that you are partly responsible, but it doesn't stop you feeling as if you want to flay your mate alive and nuke Redmond all the same

Oh yeah, I see your point. Fortunately, everyone around here knows better than to touch any of my systems, no matter what's on the screen. It could say "If you don't press OK in 30 seconds, the world will end", and they'd still take the time to come get me before pressing OK. I've got them trained well.

But the software I enconutered this weekend made me particularly angry because it didn't even have the OK button. It just rebooted the system after the percentage bar went to 100 percent.

The "helpful" colleagues around here tend to think twice - too many people running the "kernel panic" screensaver.

Hmm, have to warn the randoms about that when I install my home box...

get more memory and use better code

Leaf-blowers. Especially internal combustion powered leaf-blowers.

My wife's motherf*cking piece of sh*t cat.

The www.calvinandhobbes.com site doesn't have a search engine, so I can't dig up a link, but there was a great one where Calvin is listing things he hates.

"...Excessively negative people..." interposes Hobbes.

"Yeah! ... Hey, wait a minute..."

Peter

So you're saying you hate sites without search engines?

People who insist on driving with their foglights on when it's not foggy. It seems to be the latest craze here. I don't know whether they think it looks good or whether they've genuinely left them on since the last foggy spell. Whatever the real reason they just look like they're missing a bit in the intelligence dept. and have left them on. Aside from the fact that they blind oncoming traffic it's also illegal here in England to have them on when it's not foggy.

Wrongly adjusted headlights.
Road planners who decide that 3 lanes this side of the traffic lights should suddenly become 2 lanes on the other side or that a lane should suddenly change it's meaning half way round a roundabout.
Lanes marked on the road surface and no other signs so that you can't see what lane you need to be in because the vehicles queued up in front of you are covering the markings.
Badly designed roads with adverse cambers on bends & roundabouts just to make it easy for Motorcyclists to fall off in the ice.
Speed limits.
Other people using MY road .
People who don't consider others.
MS Windows scrolling Start Menu. (I know this is easy to fix but it shouldn't be like it in the first place. it was fine the way it was).
Menus in MS apps that hide the things you haven't used recently. (Again menus were fine the way they were).
Apps that don't stick to the standard controls & interface conventions (like Ulead VideoStudio).
Miniscule (or complete lack of) paper manuals for software.
Middlemen making extortionate profit when the poor manufacturer is being screwed into the ground.
Noisy children.
Noisy neighbours.

That's about it for now. You probably think I'm some kind of psycho anyway by now. Now where did I put my Valiummmmmm?...

People who insist on driving with their foglights on when it's not foggy.

I've been making fun of these people since before I could drive. I friend of mine and I used to have this sort-of inside joke that they must be ``experienced European drivers''. It was funny at the time. On a related note, I hate the folks that drive around in the city with their brights on, which is also illegal.

Thing I hate, which kept me up until 06:30 AM this monday morning:

13) Backing up the bootdrive on a server using Drive Image Professional (my ass) 4.0, reporting that everyting was A-OK. Then reconfiguring the RAID to make it failure proof, and not failure prone, as the previous sysadmin had thought it best to (can you spell stripe set, see other thread). Finally restoring the system drive, and getting the error message "Corrupt Image file, aborted". Going to software manufacturers web site, to figure out what went wrong, only to find "THIS IS A KNOWN (F******) ERROR, UPGRADE TO A NEWER VERSION".

If it weren't for computers, We'd have no job and probably less frustrations. So who are we kiddin', really?

14) Microsoft ``Critical Update Notifications'' that just won't shut the hell up! I'm not ready to reboot yet! I just logged on!

How about when the little tray icon for Critical Updates blinks at me, I go to WindowsUpdate, and it says there aren't any critical updates. WHY WAS IT BLINKING THEN?!?!?

I don't even just get a simple blink. I get a big-ass word balloon. And even better is when you click on that and tell it to ``Remind me later'', it thinks that a good offset for later would be, like, ten minutes. Aarrgh!

Oh -- and the ever popular ``Update failed for no apparent reason. Go back and try another dozen times.''

Have I mentioned how much I hate Windows? (And don't start on all the ``Run something else, then'' rants. I have a nearly computer-illiterate wife who refuses to use any other computer than the one I have in my office. Don't ask why. I don't know. Maybe that should be another thing I hate.)

You know that you can disable the Critical Updates Notification, right? It's one of the first things I did when I reinstalled Windows.

I'm aware of that. In fact, on the computer in question, I actually deliberately installed the Critical Updates Notification feature because I actually wanted it. I do want to know if there's a new security update for this particular computer. I'm complaining not because of the feature's presence, but because the feature gives me false alarms.

Yeah, that's the whole reason I turned it off in the first place. This is just my home computer. Nothing real critical on it to worry about. So, I just check the windows updates when I remember to see if there are any critical updates.

Because these same 'oblivious' people are feelingless so the vibrations aren't felt.

People who insist on driving with their foglights on when it's not foggy. It seems to be the latest craze here.

Same here, the market isn't cornered in your woods, might as well be driving w/the brights on. Something worse is people who have headlights out but bought expensive ion bullet driving lights to make up for them.
OK I have to say that not using turn signals is my worse pet peeve of other drivers (excuse me non-drivers). The running joke here is turn signals must have been an option on that (offending vehicle) car.

OK I have to say that not using turn signals is my worse pet peeve

Around where I live, there were a lot of "Visualize World Peace" bumper stickers for a while. Recently, I've been seeing ones that say "Forget world peace, visualize using your turn signal."

Around where I live, there were a lot of "Visualize World Peace" bumper stickers for a while

I always liked the "Visualize Whirled Peas" version better.

15) Police cars that drive (a) with their high beams on; (b) contrary to road rules; (c) thru red lights with their sirens on and turn them off on the other side; (d) that just drive.

They drive with their sirens on thru red lights because they actually have to be somewhere FAST, most likely in aid of somebody who needs it! The reason they turn them off again after they passed the lights is because they don't want to annoy the hell out of people with their siren OR because they don't want to alarm anybody who shouldn't know they are coming!
And, let's not forget : in doing so, (driving through red lights to come to somebody's aid) they risk their own lives.

I'm sorry if that annoys you.

The reason they turn them off again after they passed the lights is because they don't want to annoy the hell out of people with their siren OR because they don't want to alarm anybody who shouldn't know they are coming!

However, in most areas, it is the law that police officers must have their sirens on when travelling to a crime scene in an emergent fashion. In 99% of the cases where I've seen things similar to the earlier post, they are not moving any faster then the speed limit, indicating that they're not in the rush that running a red light would imply, they're usually doing it because the doughnut shop is about to close (at least in the cases where I've followed them, again, at normal speed). I, personally, haven't seen any of this since our government had video cameras installed in cop cars that turn on when the siren is turned on. You do the math. But if you live in an area where policemen are actually friendly and do their job without hassling people or abusing their power, then count yourself lucky. Those places are becoming harder and harder to find.

Or they're between 80 and death... Always complaining that the younger people are the ones creating all the car accidents. They're f***** half blind driving thru town on all the red lights they can find.

TommyE

16) Applications that run on multi-user operating systems but don't understand the difference between users and keep the same preferences for all of them.

I mean, why aren't you just saving preferences in a user-specific location to begin with, whether it be a home directory or a registry or whatever? If I'm logging in as a different user, chances are that I don't want the same preferences. And if I do, I'm probably smart enough (given that I'm one person using two different accounts), to copy the information over or whatever.

Note that none of this removes the possibility of one login user having multiple personalities, as they can still exist in that user's personal config location.

Why can software engineers not figure this out!?!

Hi,

They do not make multi-user configurable software, because their drag-and-drop comes default with HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE instead of HKEY_CURRENT_USER. :-)

The end of the Empeg car player, which desrved a better, more considerate parent than SB.

The ignominius, toss-the-stock discounting to shift boxes off the shelf only a day or two before Christmas - which marketing brain thought that gimmick up?

The cack-handed way that Rob has been dealt with by not being told of the discount to less than a quarter of original retail, and him having to scramble and grovel to match it and deal with the fall out on the European shop site. In his own time. On a Sunday. Two days before Christmas.

(RANT ON)
In spite of my long involvement with Empeg and the fact that I have been the personal beneficiary of much goodwill and generosity from SB via the Empeg team, I find it difficult to restrain my annoyance and growing dismay at SB's actions. This latest cheap shot has shocked me to the core. There may be a reason for it, but it hasn't been explained. In the absence of information, speculation begins.

If I feel angry about something that is for me, "just a hobby" (ha!), then I wonder just how humiliated and upset Rob, Hugo, Steve, Patrick, and Mike feel to see their hard work and brilliantly original design simply binned and tossed into the "Bargain Basement" corner, like damaged furniture kits with no screws at an IKEA store. This is dissing of the highest quality.

I am aware that they have moved on to new work, that they have just brought out a new, even more capable product the capabilities of which are quite astounding and far outstrip that of the car player. I am aware that the future is bright and there is likely to be a new car player, even if it is badge-engineered for some other major car audio manufacturer.

Doesn't stop me feeling DAMNED ANGRY, though.

Merry Christmas, Sonic Blue marketing and sales.

(RANT OFF)

Rob, thanks for being a voice of the raw, uncensored truth. We need posts like this to balance out what is sometimes an overly politically correct bunch. It's almost as if SonicBlue were TRYING to mess it up as much as possible. I mean you can't pull off this kind of idiocy by accident. It's just not possible.

A while back it was said that SonicBlue purchased the Empeg team, not the Empeg product. That says a lot about the foresight of those who work at SB. It was strictly a human resources move to get talented programmers, "and oh, by the way, they have this product we need to do something about."

Their latest maneuvers constitute the electronic equivalent of black coal. And I thought I was nice this year, not naughty...

Anyway, in all seriousness, happy holidays to everyone, and let's look forward to great innovations in user development on the Empeg. SonicBlue can't take that away from us.

You know, I've been having this feeling of déja vù. You see, I used to own an Amiga 1000. Of course, Commodore's mismanagement of that one pretty much killed the whole company...

Of course, the best ever bumper sticker has to be:

NUKE THE UNBORN CHRISTIAN GAY WHALES

tanstaafl.

schofiel, thanks for saying this. I feel the same way, but wouldn't say it becuase of my low status on this BBS (although I have been lurking since the beginning). The brilliant Empeg is being tossed aside like SB's garbage! It is an unfortunate admission of defeat for a product that could sell for years to come in it's current state.

There is one major problem with the car player that meant it wouldn't takeover the market the empeg guys designed something at least 4 to 5 years ahead of it's time.

Car audio is very conservative it would take years before something like the empeg would become common.

it is like the jump from in car transistor radio to a cd multi changer in one step.

Just be thankyou you have one (or two)

it is like the jump from in car transistor radio to a cd multi changer in one step.

This is true. However, I recently was at an import car show (basically all souped-up Civics) and saw no Empegs. There is no reason the SB marketing machine could not have penetrated at least this niche group of people.

My opinion is this... If you are going to spend thousands of dollars on a sound system, there better be an Empeg in there. And, if there isn't, you had better have a damn good reason.

This is true. However, I recently was at an import car show (basically all souped-up Civics) and saw no Empegs. There is no reason the SB marketing machine could not have penetrated at least this niche group of people.

Actually, there are several reasons.

While generalizations are risky, I think this one holds true: That particular niche group is into COOL first, CARS second, and maybe, just maybe STEREO as a distant third -- and when they think stereo, they mean how many 12" speakers, how many kilowatts of amplifier can they cram into a Civic and how many decibels of bass can they produce. For that, they most assuredly do *not* need a $1000 audiophile-quality head unit. They don't even need a $199 audiophile-quality head unit that requires them to take their mega-bass CD home, load it into a computer, convert it into an MP3 file, and download it into their player before they can play it. All this after getting a computer, getting the ripping/encoding software, going through the learning curve of how to use it, installing and learning how to use the emplode and player software, learning how to do software upgrades... guys, that is one HELL of a lot of time and effort to go through just so you can play music in your car.

Unless someone is pretty seriously into music, and at the same time pretty seriously into computers, he is never going to "get it" as regards the empeg. The huge majority of car owners not only do not (and never will) understand the empeg, they don't need it and they wouldn't want it if you gave it to them for free! I mean, who would be foolish eough to want a player in his car that won't even play CDs, that you have to take into your house and hook up to a computer (a COMPUTER, for God's sake!) before you can even use it, that is so complicated to operate that even people who have used it for a year don't know how to do half the things it can do?

Well, at last count there were 1320 of us on this bbs who are "foolish" enough to want such a thing. I cannot imagine ever going back to the pre-empeg state of being. But if you think that the import car show you went to was a niche market... the niche that we bbs'ers are in is sub-microscopic. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that our sub-microscopic niche comprises a pretty large percentage of the total world-wide market for these highly specialized, highly sophisticated and difficult to use players. Think about it -- they had to reduce the price to about 1/4 of what it cost them to build them before even WE would buy out the remaining stock.

It is unfortunate that being the best does not necessarily imply commercial viability. I am not convinced that even an all-out marketing effort on the part of Sonic Blue could have given enough mass-market appeal to the empeg to sell them in quanitity at a price high enough to be profitable.

tanstaafl.

good reply. I still feel the Empeg was short-changed though.

Hi,

I must agree with you. If Apple had designed their Newton PDA from scratch using today's technology, they'd be capable of owning the PDA market.

Same way, if the EmpegCar (it's not a RioCar i my book anyway) was to be redesigned in five years time, when the mass consumer market was ready for it, it would be a true success.

But it seems that true genious only gets appreciated years after the invention or inventor has died. The "cult" status the product has here only proves that.

I just ordered a spare unit after the relentless price-drop the day before christmas, and tried to explain it to my wife, who has previously been understanding with my, eh .. cough, cough, investments, but to no avail.

It's my guess that it will be a long time before something this unique will surface again.

As good a reply as it was, let me pose the following:

- same code base as empeg car
- more features
- more expensive

What's all this then? Why, it's the new HSX-109, of course. I want it to succeed, and it deserves to, as well - but if we use Doug's argument, then how can it?

It's being sold into a different market, and a much larger one at that. It is more expensive though, so the same effect as the car player - sticker shock - may still yet come into play. Time will tell.

My own opinion is that if the car player had not existed in the first place, then neither would the HSX. If the HSX does succeed, it will be riding on the shoulders of the deceased car player. The one really good effect it may have is that it may pave the way for a similar, car-type product in the future. This will however be a while off yet, though, so don't hold your breath: it won't be an SB, or Empeg badged product anyway.

Going back to the pitch of my original post - I am more annoyed about the lack of straightforward professional courtesy shown by SB to the Empeg lads than the loss of the car player (not wholly true, though ). The lack of "Moral Fibre" shown by SB when times started to get tough was appalling, and I still fail to see how they can justify (other than high production costs and relatively low sales due to an absence of any market presence) cutting the player after they had just spent a bundle re-engineering the damn thing ready for another production batch! You can't tell me that just the cost of re-tooling the panel tool caused them to loose their nerve!!!

No, I am more and more convinced, as others have been stating for a while here, that this was not anything to do with product acquisition or market positioning, it was purely to obtain the knowledge and manpower of the Empeg development team. If so, then how else can you view their following actions as anything other than Machiavellian in nature - which immediately implies there was a long-term strategy in mind at the time of the takeover.

A lot of the people involved in the takeover on SB's side (including Tim E, the tech liason who was the prime mover) have since been canned or have resigned. This implies a schism between factions in SB management between the penny-pinchers (the winners) and the engineers (the loosers, as usual). As soon as the red ink started to appear, weak management allowed the cost cutting faction to come to the fore, showing that short-termism was the primary focus of the management team all along.

To their credit (and I suspect mainly due to Empeg's influence) the car player concept has not simply been binned, since a badge-engineering approach has been taken to try and find an established partner in the marketplace. But this is a strategy that feeds out expertise to other companies, and is again short term in nature. It means that after the OEMs who license now have learned how to do it, generation 2 of OEM products wil essentially be in-house engineered by their own teams, they will be low-proce and mass-market, they will finally build the taste for the product in the market place some 5-8 years down the road, and then Where the hell will SB be? Down the tubes, baby, down the tubes.

SB is selling the talent of the Empeg team cheaply, and they should be ashamed. No doubt I am shooting in the dark in the absence of fact (hey, this is a non-corporate forum after all!) and I suspect statements herein will ruffle some feathers - unfortunately within Empeg itself. So allow me to issue the standard disclaimer in this case: All these statements made herein are my own opinion, based on many years of similar experience in software and engineering. The reason I make them is because I have high personal regard for all of the team at Cambridge (primarily due to their sense of integrity) and I do not wish them sold down the river by short-sighted management with no nerve or concept of forward planning. Forgive me, lads - my mouth runs away sometimes, as well you know.

The trouble with SB's (in my opinion, young, inexperienced and nerveless) management was that they wanted it all, and not tomorrow, NOW. Sorry chums, it just doesn't happen that way - the old adage about oak trees and acorns comes to mind here. In watching Hugo, Rob, Mike and Patrick's initially slow but steady attempts at growth I am inclined to believe that they would have suceeded on their own, but in the much longer term. It would have been many years, and they would have needed more products, but I am confident they would have suceeded. We'll never know.

Put it this way - if I was aware that Hugo was considering a further, independent commercial venture in the technolgy market, then I suspect I may well be knocking on his door with cash to invest

Pity we couldn't buy the empeg design off them and put into production when the world is ready for the leap

Why, it's the new HSX-109, of course. I want it to succeed, and it deserves to, as well - but if we use Doug's argument, then how can it?


By omiting the PC from the picture - 'average' upper-tier consumers are supposed to use CD drive to 'store' their music without even knowing what terms like 'ripping', 'encoding' and 'psychoacustical model' mean. The most advanced thing they are expected to do is connecting a RioReceiver or two via phone wires and perhaps adding a keyboard. Meanwhile, crazies like ourselves still get their emplode, Ethernet (if only via external adapter), console display on the unit itself, CD-RW drive for backups etc. This concept just might work.

Otherwise, I agree with every word of your post.

Hi.

Pity we couldn't buy the empeg design off them and put into production when the world is ready for the leap

Why not? I know for a fact that SonicBlue would sell the empeg design at a certain price (that I don't know yet, I backed of beforehand). Sure, we probably couldn't use it for further development, but what improvement would it need?
However, we would still need to source the necessary parts, find the appropriate production lines etc. But I'm sure someone at empeg would be willing to help us finding all that.
So: Who has the money (or is able to get it) to do so? I would certainly chime in with some more money and some hard work. Gee, I was already thinking about doing all that with just one friend helping me with the financial stuff like balancing etc.

cu,
sven

I must agree with you. If Apple had designed their Newton PDA from scratch using today's technology, they'd be capable of owning the PDA market.

It's not that simple. PocketPC has been superior to Palm devices in every respect since their launch. Palm still owns the hand-held market.

Not all palm-top devices have yet approached the Newton's "old" technology, let alone if they were to redesign with today's. I had a MessagePad 2000 and I loved it. The only problem really was its size.

I suspect you'll start to see these devices continue to push into the multimedia arena until they become completely portable PC's. The market for such devices is still in its infancy however. Most people are still satisfied with a small addressbook and contact manager that needs to be synced with a main PC.

The latest batch of PocketPC 2002 machines are getting there. I want to see mass-storage in this form factor though. Using internal PC-card drives for example. Again, this type of thing will take off in the next few years given the technology announcements we've had over the past 18 months from companies like IBM, etc.

Bruno

PocketPC has been superior to Palm devices in every respect since their launch.

Whoa, there! Did you use WinCE 1.0? Let's just say that it was appropriately named -- ``wince''. In the other hand, WinCE has improved dramatically since that point while PalmOS has done little more than add color support, as far as I can see.

I suspect you'll start to see these devices continue to push into the multimedia arena until they become completely portable PC's.

I think that was exactly Palm's advantage: it did not try to be a very small PC, but very practical, extendable organizer (as opposed to all those Casio and whatever organizers with tiny keypads on one extremity, and PocketPC on other).

I still use my original 2MB PalmPilot Pro (top of the line when I bought it) and for me the competition does not come from WinCE based things, but the likes of my new Ericsson R380, which has almost all organizer functionality (including superior, much more natural character recognition and smaller, but higher resolution screen) packaged into not too large GSM cellular phone.

It's not that simple. PocketPC has been superior to Palm devices in every respect since their launch. Palm still owns the hand-held market.

Well, ever since the Pocket PC was released, Palm was loosing a considerable market share to Compaq with the iPaq. Devices before Pocket PC (WinCE 3) were crap though. Bad color screens, bad battery life (the rechargability helped this a bit), and bulky. The OS was still very Windows centric (works well with a keyboard and mouse, and badly with a stylus and small screen), and was also slow on the devices it was sold on.

There will always be a market for a Palm based PDA though. My mother for example. I bought her a Handspring Visor last Christmas because it was all she needed. Basic address book and scheduling capabilities. My iPaq was just too complex for what she needed.

PocketPC didn't run WinCE 1.0 :)

Bruno

I think that was exactly Palm's advantage: it did not try to be a very small PC, but very practical, extendable organizer

Palm m505 costs $399 and iPAQ 3765 is $499. The iPAQ is infinitely better (I own both an m505 and iPAQ 3670).

For $100 difference, there is no question which is the better buy. Palm's problem is they think they can command a lot of money for such a limited platform.

Pity we couldn't buy the empeg design off them and put into production when the world is ready for the leap

This was mentioned already in another thread. It seems that very thought has crossed the mind of at least a couple people in Cambridge. If you think you have access to the resources to do this, you might want to contact them. Be warned, though, that it wasn't easy for Empeg to do it, even when it was their full time job. And I don't know if they were seriously considering releasing the hardware design or not, it was just an off-handed comment in the other thread.

One thing that irritates me about the HSX-109 is the lack of ethernet. SonicBlue makes a VCR with ethernet (ReplayTV 4000) but not a $1499 MP3 player?!?!?! Bah!

I admit that the lack of Ethernet surprised me, too. If it's any consolation, I know that the Cambridge team fought for it. I don't know why the final decision was made to axe it, perhaps Hugo can shed some light on that.

In any case, a $30.00 adapter solved the ethernet problem for me. I know, I know, why spend over a grand on something just so you can go out and spend another $30.00 on a stinking adapter... I don't have an answer for that one. All I know is that it works for me.

I argued for it as strongly as I could while I was there, but as I recall it came down to a cost issue (BOM and schedule hit as it was a now-you-see-it-now-you-don't type feature). Since there were alternatives to access connectivity it became one of those battles that was just not worth fighting.

And then for a device that is positioned in the home audio market (think jacked up CD changer) those type of connections don't make as much sense. But then there is the hacker angle to all this...

I can second this, when I saw my first WinCE machine the interface was awful, with permanent menus taking up large parts of the screen. They had tried to cram the normal Windows interface onto a PDA, which was a bad idea. Compared to the Psion and Palm interfaces at that time the interface was practically unusable (especially as the interface was too much for the hardware it was running on).

When I used a PocketPC device for a few days the other week I had a real shock, the interface is now vastly more usable, mainly thanks to the fact that it no longer tries slavishly copy the Windows interface.

It is true that the Palm interface has changed little in the last few years, but that is because they got it just about right at the outset, so didn't need to fix it. They could do with adding a few more advanced features to some of the apps though.

My favourite PDA interface is still the Psion 3, which is why I have been buying up spare Psion 3c machines now that Psion have stopped making them. I am still waiting for a better PDA than the Psion 3c to come along...

(I can't even buy up Psion 3mx machines, as the added back light layer makes the screen unreadable without the backlight in most indoor situations)

Oops. I thought that PocketPC was their platform name for WinCE-running devices. I stand corrected.

Pocket PC debuted with a new version of CE which dropped the CE name (can't remember which version, but it might have been the Rapier codename). The new moniker came around the begining of 2000 - right when I registered the "mypocket.com" domain name :).

WinCE 1.0 was on HPC (Handheld PCs) - the ones with the keyboard that sucked. At that time I was using a Newton MP2000 which was far and away better than everything else (except for its larger size). Come on, no one that values the excess of the empeg can sit here and tell me they find anything admirable about PALM?

The first hand-held WinCE machines were Palm PC for a brief time - until 3COM said something about the name - at the time, PALM machines were still PALM PILOT - the company was 3COM/PALM, the product was the PILOT. Then the name was changed to Palmtop PC I believe. PPC for short. Does the Philips Nino ring a bell? The Everex Freestyle? I think these ran CE2. Then the first colour units came - I still remember breaking the story on the Compaq Aero for CNet and a well-known PDA site (months before it was released :) These may have been the first with CE3.

Anyway, now I'm dragging it on a bit. I've always disliked Palm's text input plus its wasteful use of screen space (the whole input area toward the bottom). Being used to a Newton, the newer CE machines were starting to "get-it"

And now, like the Newton, all PocketPC machines are using StrongARM. (thought I'd wrap it up on an empeg-esque note :)

Bruno

I know this one's been done to death, but I've got a new twist.

17) Web sites that require that you run a particular set of browsers, despite the fact that other browsers would work fine, and despite the fact that their suggested browsers don't work.

Yep, one time I was just driving along my merry way on a country road, doing nothing wrong, and a police car came up behind me and started tail gating. After some time, the ambient light went down so that you had to turn on your lights, well, this particular police car put his brights on me for a half mile. It made making me extremely paranoid (!) and uncomfortable.

Calvin

I would have lit up my brake lights for him. Just the lights. If he didn't get the drift, then I'd slow down to about 5 mph.

YES, even knowing it was a cop I'd do this. If he pulled me over I'd ask him to radio for another cruiser to come and give him a ticket for following too close.

Keep in mind, I know where I live and I know how the police are around here. I wouldn't try this trick if I was traveling in some parts of the US. Too much chance of getting pulled out of the car and getting pistol-whipped in some places. :)

Bruno

...not to mention the fact that the new versions of PocketPC actually use a licensed version of the same handwriting recognition engine used on the Newton (I used to use a 120 myself, and also tried one of the first CE 1.0 devices -- the Compaq C140, which was a rebadged Casseopeia A11).

And now, not only are they all moving to StrongARM architectures, but they're showing up more and more running some flavor of Linux (e.g., the familiar distro that is Debian-based, which I run on one of my iPaqs, or the QTe/Embedix version that ships on the upcoming Sharp Zaurus SL5500, which has a built-in keyboard and a palm formfactor (I have the developer's version now -- the SL5000D).

What are your impressions on Zaurus - on paper (i.e. Web site) looks quite impressive...

I love it. At conferences last year, I was using my iPaq 3650 running familiar linux, bash, and ssh, a Stowaway keyboard, and a Lucent WaveLAN Gold card with a slim 802.11b external antenna as a replacement for my 8lb notebook. The added mobility was wonderful, and it was a real eye-catcher for folks.

The drawback is that it's very kludgy and carrying it still requires large pockets or a small bag. Setting it up is a bit like assembling a free-standing work of art on-the-fly.


The Zaurus is a streamlined, integrated version of all of this for me. The keyboard mechanism is beautifully-engineered, and strongly resembles the keyboard on the larger BlackBerry (a device I used for about a year, and came to love the keyboard on). I can type very quickly using just my two thumbs, and it feels very natural. When not in use, the sliding mechanism hides it perfectly, and the entire mechanism feels very solid and professional.

The CF and SD slots mean I can use a CF formfactor 802.11b card (I've got a Socket CF card right now, but I'm still working on getting an LKM to support it. They're using a MAC chip that I can't get data on, so I can't finish hacking the spectrum24t KLM to work with it), and use the SD slot for storage expansion.

It comes with bash and vi, which makes me happy. I've got ssh running on it, and Opera's built in. QTe seems very professional, and the licensing doesn't bother me as much as it does some purists I know. As such, it's perfectly suited to this type of device.

The screen is exactly the same as the one used in the iPaq, and is correctly sealed, eliminating the iPaq problem with dust under the screen layers. This makes for a beautiful display.

The only real complaint I could muster right now is the lack of anything beyong simple chirps and beeps for sound reproduction. However, it does have a headphone jack and can feed full sound through those, so it's really not an issue for me. Besides, I use a dedicated portable MP3 player for music (Rio 800 Extreme).

The only functional difference for the way I'm using the devices between this and the iPaq for me is the lack of a PCMCIA slot on the Zaurus (I use a 2GB PCMCIA hard drive on the iPaq for various things, using the dual PCMCIA sleeve so I can also use an 802.11b card). However, the Zaurus more than makes up for it in elegance and functionality.

Now, if I could just find a CF 802.11b card with a jack for an external antenna, I'd be in heaven. I may have to hack one into an existing card, tho.

If you've got to have one now, you won't be disappointed. However, the final consumer release (sometime in April, I believe) will have 64MB RAM; the currently available developer's model only has 32MB RAM.

Wow! Thanks.

18) People on online message boards (not this one!) who (a) post answers to questions that are identical to previous answers, and not just because they were posting at the same time, but, rather, days later, or (b) answer question giving erroneous and possibly dangerous information, without waiting for someone more knowlegable to answer first or even noting that they might be wrong, since they're just guessing, or (c) posting the same question to all of the categories without regard to the subject matter.

...finding out your RC helicopter has a clutch that won't engage AND crashing your new RC plane on the first day you fly it

so it sounds like if we got rid of cars and computers, then the world would be a better place....

I'm not sure which version I had been using, but about 5-6 years ago I had a Compaq Companion (I htink that was the model name) that ran WinCE. I kinda liked it. The only thing that annoyed me was the B&W screen, but there wasn't much you could do about that at the time. The keyboard and touchscreen were pretty easy to use, too, and the screen was a lot bigger than most at the time.

Then about 2 years ago I upgraded to an HP Jornada 820. While it ran on an ARM processor and had a nice color 640X480 screen (and could run DOOM), the interface wasn't really much improved, and the storage space was about the same. I think I sold that last year.

Now I've got a nice REX 6000, which in some ways is inferior to the Compaq I had 5 years ago But it's small and I love it. I don't like palm devices, but more importantly I wouldn't have much use for them.