Adobe charges Europeans double US prices

Subject: Sony digital camera pricing

Having just looked at your article regarding the pricing of the sony digital camera model DSC-T10 I can only conclude that the people originally conducting this study are idiots.

Afterall we all know that anything you buy from a high street shop in a major European city will be horribly overpriced.

If for example you did what any sane individual would and went to an online uk shop you'd find the exact model on amazon for £169.99, or 250 Euros, the same price as in Hong Kong according to the data in your article. If these people wanted to do something useful they'd have instead made a list of the cheapest price they could get for the item in each country.

Regards,
Nick

Subject: Microsoft claims Linux stole 230 patents

This is highly entertaining. Microsoft has Linux in its gunsights, but what about Sun Solaris x86, FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD? The cat has already been let out of the bag: Linux popularised free software, and if it ends up dying (in the US anyway - we don't have software patents in Europe, thankfully - so Microsoft has nothing to stand on over here), people will just focus on alternatives. With BSD originating in the 60s, it's hard to imagine Bill & Company taking that OS down with a patent dispute.

Attacking OpenOffice is equally stupid - what are they going to do about StarOffice? With Sun having a vested interest in the OO source code (it owns StarOffice, which is a derived product), I can't imagine Microsoft getting away without being counterattacked by Sun. With many of its managed customers running StarOffice, this is a threat that Sun simply cannot and will not ignore. Microsoft isn't just picking on open source people here - it's also taking on Sun.

As a European, I will watch this battle with great amusement. In a way, it is actually a good thing - it will definitely give the cost-cutting, Microsoft-hating EU plenty of incentive NOT to introduce software patents. Maybe the US government will wake up and decide that free choice is actually a good thing after all...

Oliver

Subject: IBM readies Power 6 upgrade

Hey that makes me realize something, they could release a socket 939 to AM2 card for the PC and just put some DIMM sockets on it for DDR2 seeing the memory controller is on the CPU die.

Weird that nobody in asia thought of making something like that.

W.

Subject: wi-fi speed

Hello!

If you where interested in real speed of your wi-fi equipment, you could ask that to any WISP (wireless internet provider) and they would answer you about the same numbers.

Actually to be precise, that is not mac level, because i have tested several wi-fi devices, and using OSI leyer 3 that is IP leyer of networking using TCP packets you get around that value that is around 20Mbps divide with 8 to get bytes and using UDP packets you will get around 28Mbps.

In turbo you will get, of course, more, but that nuber will not be twice as much. and these values are valid only in if there is only if communication happens between 2 devices.

Have a happy wireless :)

and there are many proprietary protocols that try to overcome 802.11a/b/g mighty overhead ;)

and actual links that WISPs utilize in real world deployments are 24Mbit 36Mbit air-rate (that is these 54Mbit for a/g modes)

Best regard,
Janis

Subject: Staggering pricing disparities 'R' us

here

here http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/fair-pricing-for-european-software.html

At the same time Adobe is charging up to 100% more for their software in Europe compared to US....

Sheeeesh

Osku

Subject: Microsoft claims Linux stole 230 patents

Kinda ironic that the linked article has a wonderfull statement such as;

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is also quoted in the article as saying Microsoft's open-source competitors need to "play by the same rules as the rest of the business." "What's fair is fair," Ballmer told Fortune. "We live in a world where we honor, and support the honoring of, intellectual property."

Honoring intellectual property eh.... now how many companies have gone out of buisness because M$ steals IP then stalls in a court room for years then the IP holder can no longer afford to stay in buisness and goes under. Now M$ comes in and buys the IP for pennies.... That's mostly how they got to where they are today.

Mr. Ballmer needs to remember than many people who have been in the PC industry for 10 years or more know this. I first time realized M$'s way was back in the good old DOS days (oh yeah DOS... funny little story about that...;) when M$'s doublespace was a complete ripoff of Stacker but the only thing they didn't rip off from stacker with doublespace was the reliability .... lost my partition 3 times before I realized that doublespace was crappy ripoff at best of Stacker's great product. Since those days I have heard of countless court battles that had ended in the same manner as Stacker.

Oh yeah I remember one great thing said during one of those court battles was that M$ had not infringed on source code since they didn't have the original source code so how could they infringe upon the code.... Hey MS is called reverse engineering... you know that don't you since you included it in one of your later revisions EULA's, right, wonder why you added that part .... hmmmmm.

Db

Subject: price disparity in India

you're worried about prices in EU...

just come to india and try to buy some half decent piece of computer hardware or some new consumer electronics item. then you'll see what price disparity is.....

Psycho McCrazy

Subject: !!!!! GOD !!!!!!

K.. We understand that sony and microsoft are playing the one up game. We know microsoft is trying to make up for what it didnt do in the first place, When a Project such as folding at home comes into play... can we not just leave it alon..e ... FOr the luv of god.. Where using it to cure things.. and Bill steps up and says.. we can use our graphics card and our processors.. and that will be better than sonys.. !.. God.. When did folding @ home become a competition.. Bill donates money to foundations... and sony helps with research.. leave it at that..God.. Compare games. Dont fight over curing things when your a greedy electronics company... All they want is money.. and all everyone wants is a cure.. Dont mix your Crap in with the cure.. ! anyway.. Publishing garbage like this just takes away from the real meaning of gaming and curing diesea.....!

Pudgier

Subject: Power Issues

You are not going to get any real protection against power feed issues from one of those cheap-a** so-called UPSes from anyone that supplies OfficeMax, Staples, BestBuy, or any of the other stores dedicated to separating the computer ignorati from their money.

Only thing that MIGHT work is a fully on-line, double-conversion system, where the incoming AC is converted to DC, filtered, tied into a battery, and then the AC is reconstructed from the DC buss, with the battery available as extra power when the incoming voltage drops. Oh, and having a backup generator set to take over from the UPS after about 30 seconds is practically necessary if you want to run longer than 15-20 minutes.

Naturally, only real data centers can afford this kind of setup.

Nice thing about DC is that it can be filtered to remove almost all the noise either from upstream or from downstream sources. In fact, most multiple motor systems, like for paper making machines, etc. use a common DC buss for the motors just for that purpose.

Rich Wargo

Subject: 20% more HDDs fail in summer?

Let's see... Ben Carmitchel says "surveying some of our customers, we've found that power surges caused by air conditioners may play a significant role in the springtime increase [of electronic -related issues]."

Sounds shockingly un-scientific for it to have come from an outfit that charges over a thou to perform data recovery, eh. But the fun's not over - then everyone starts waving their creds around.

Hey Sparks, you certainly do know a lot about power provisioning, but did the folks at Electchester teach you anything about semiconducter electronics and switching mode power supplies? I suspect not.

The recommendations from the lame-brains at ESS Data Recovery are no less valid however. Blocked ventilation slots and dust build-ups are responsible for many temperature -related failures and most consumer computers pay very little attention to cooling today's high-performance hard drives. Backups are always important, as are off-site copies. Perhaps it might make the Local 3 folks happier to urge the use of good, full-time UPS units instead of whatever's on the middle shelf at CompewSA. And lightning is funny stuff. Electrical wiring acts like a big antenna. Unplugging is a beginning but is no guarantee unless you've unplugged everything including your network or modem wiring, etc.

Brad

Subject: Asustek confirms distaste for Microsoft Vista

Microsoft definitely beats around the bush on this one. Vista isn't mature, and it's nowhere near ready for gaming. At natural resolution on the ASUS G1 laptop, every game experiences a sort of 'delay' in reaction time, which I've found to be directly related to Vista itself. The only solution is to lower the resolution to minimum, and even then some delay remains. As far as I'm concerned, this 'gaming notebook' is about as useful now as a glossy picture frame that runs Aero. No kudos for Microsoft this time.

Ajake

Subject: ONLY Sony ?? What about Microsoft ?

Just to not refer all the others, yes, it's true Europe pay it hard.

Let's see today prices for xBox 360 Pro (w/HD): UK = 434 Euros
PT = 410 Euros
ES = 400 Euros

and about USA ? Just 296.00 EUROS ??????

It's Sony who is ripping off all us here on Europe ??? Why don't edit this news and correct the information ?

Regards
Jose Romao

Subject: Sony prices

Actually there are worse:

Adobe online shop - UK pre-tax price Photoshop CS3 Extended Edition 755 GBP, US price 999 USD - which means at current exchange rates we pay 1469 USD. Our total inc tax - 1726 USD

Putting that into perspective, with that 727 USD you could get not one, but *two* brand new Sempron based Dell desktops from the Dell US website ;)

Adrian