PlayStation 3 delay confirmed

Oh dear, oh dear. This could potentially cost Sony an aaawful lot of money. Oh, and another post from Digg - getting bored yet?

Edit - Let's add a little more meat to this post shall we?

What does this mean for Sony? Quite a lot, I would think. Europe won't see the machine until well into 2007, Christmas 2006 will see a newly launched PS3 up against an established Xbox 360 with all the trials and tribulations that a new hardware launch brings (limited stock, incomplete line-up of games, potential bugs and hardware problems). Not to mention the fact that the launch price is extremely likely to be far higher than the 360's price point at that time.

And none of this takes Nintendo into account. Sony better have a pretty stellar launch line-up, and a price point that can't be refused…

Update - As Joystiq have said, the article doesn't say much. I stand by what I said though, and still predict a late 2006 launch for PS3.

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Apple does it again

Apple really do have a talent for kicking up a frenzy of internet activity when they decide to make an announcement. Inevitably (and this has been the case for the last three events Apple have staged) this leads to disappointment. I've read several posts bemoaning the lack of a real video ipod at last night's event. There are also people moaning about the lack of Apple's new tablet-style device. Once again, large numbers of people were taken in by the rumour-mongering, the photoshopping, and the speculating. Have we reached a point where Apple cannot possibly announce something that's as significant as the internet expects it to be? Have they become the ultimate victim of their own success?

What's my take on last night's products? The iPod Boombox is, as many other people have said, overpriced, unimaginative, and a blatant attempt by Apple at carving off their own slice of the iPod peripheral market. The iPod leather case is, as many other people have said, overpriced, unimaginative and a blatant attempt by… It's true though, these two products really aren't anything special, and it's obvious that Apple has finally realised that it doesn't like other companies making lots of money out of its products. Now the Mac Mini, on the other hand, is something I could open my wallet for. I always fancied having the diminutive slice of Apple in my life, and the Intel Core Duo version just makes me want it that much harder. I really miss using an Apple machine as my desktop for the tasks that I currently do on my Dell. Web browsing, email, downloading, music, etc all have that extra soupcon of serenity inside Apple's OS. I know there are perfectly serviceable video editing packages for Windows, but I like iMovie; it makes me happy. It gives me that warm and cuddly feeling. It's a bit like Horlicks (or Ovaltine ; name your poison) in that respect. All of which just strengthens my desire for a Mac Mini. If it wasn't for the fact that I do, on the odd occasion, play games on my PC, I'd have already ordered one…

Don’t fear Sky?

I'm not afraid of Sky, I just really don't like them very much.

Ashleigh brought to my attention an article on The Register called Don't be scared of Sky. It's an interesting read, and contains these gems:

"Churn (cancellation) levels are higher than ever, and the cynical majority in the industry reportedly believe the new portfolio of services is a cunning ruse to improve its subscriber statistics as it seems to have reached a difficult commercial plateau in customer acquisition. When you phone Sky to announce your intention to leave, the company's desperate customer support staff will do virtually anything to keep you (word to the wise: if you want a few months subscription free, or to bump up your package, call them up and tell them you're getting Freeview or NTL instead). The UK isn't quite the same dynamic as the US, with its hundreds of millions of households. The reasons for the slow down are simple - it costs too much, the content is getting worse by the day, and you can get better elsewhere."

"What do I want to watch? Probably less than 10 per cent of what Sky's dismal, failing waste of a platform has to offer."

It would appear that I'm really not the only one getting rid of Sky, as I suspected (and hoped, to be honest). I've heard tales of digital aerial installers being busier than ever as more and more people decide that chucking £45 away on a raft of channels you're never going to watch is pretty dumb. The one thing Sky have got that makes their position particularly potent at the present time is Sky+; It's just so damned convenient. "Punters" love it. It's really, really easy to use (even my 9 month old son has inadvertently recorded TV programs before), and you don't even need video cassettes!!!

Media Center: Moving forward

So the aerial install is done and my Media PC has existed quite nicely for the last week, recording random crap whenever I asked it to. I had one tense moment when the machine rebooted itself overnight, but a quick check of the event log showed that this was "intended functionality" - thanks Windows Update! (Which makes me wonder, if I've got something scheduled to record at 3am, and Windows decides to reboot, will it? Or will it wait?)

I bought a nice, capacious 300gb Seagate drive, and have transferred the contents of my 120gb IDE drive across (currently my Dell has a 160gb SATA and 120gb IDE drive in it) with the intention of harvesting the IDE drive for my Media PC. While 120gb isn't ideal (a recording of Freebie and the Bean the other night takes up 4.2gb) it'll do. If all else fails, I'll stick a USB2.0 card in the Media PC and hang an external drive off the back. My newly installed piece of Ethernet cable lets me do two things: copy content from the Media PC to the Dell in less than a day, and frees up the slot my wireless card was in for the aforementioned USB2.0 card.

I've also taken the opportunity to back my iTunes music folder off onto another drive (a 120gb drive I've got in a USB2 caddy) which will now be placed in a drawer and never used again.

So what's next? Stick the 120gb drive in the Media PC, move it back downstairs, and show the wife how to use it, that's what. I need to start using this thing to replace my SKY+ box now that the aerial work is done. I may well pick up another card for the Dell too.

Oh, and if anyone knows of a decent tool to convert dvr-ms files into something more agreeable, let me know

Do androids dream?

This is very, very cool. An MMOS - massively multiplayer online screensaver!

MDA Vario tweaks

I'd been somewhat plagued by slow performance on my Vario over the last few days. The thing started taking forever to respond to key presses, which got very tedious, very quickly. Launching the inbox to send a message locked the device for a few seconds while it caught up with itself.

I'd read a while back that there was a way of stopping Activesync from randomly launching itself, but hadn't really paid it much attention; Activesync wasn't hurting me, so why should I get all medieval on it? With this in mind, when my Vario started to come over all sluggish, I'd try killing Activesync and see if that helped performance. Funnily enough, it did.

Next step, find the solution I'd come across before, and make it so. The process is basically: Go into Activesync on the Vario, create an exchange sync with a dummy server (so 127.0.0.1 then) and once that's done set both options to "manual" in the schedule dialog. In order to be able to access schedule, you need to have an exchange server configured - once you've set the two options to manual, you can remove the exchange server again. I did this about a week ago and so far haven't had anything like the slowdown I had before. Which, in my book, is a good thing.

Activesync still launches when I connect the phone to my PC, although it does hang around again afterwards, which is quite annoying. I've installed the very handy vBar so I can kill it swiftly and with minimum effort, which I highly recommend (vBar, not killing things swiftly and with minimum effort).