Mrs got one for Christmas, she’s not overwhelmed, much prefers books.

Also, Readers absorb less on Kindles than on paper, study finds

An essential ingredient in Long Island Iced Tea and Nigella’s Ham in Coca Cola, for that reason I’m in.

Given that you’re going to France and Spain go for Polycotton or canvas. They polycottons from Outwell etc are heavier and consequently slightly more difficult to put up than the poly equivalents but they offer a much nicer place to be imo. Bell tents are heavy too but as said above are very easy and quick to pitch.

May be able to pick something up decent second hand if people are up/downgrading for this year’s models in a few weeks when camping (shopping) season begins.

I pay my 13 yo daughter £40 pm less her mobile contract, for this she does her ironing, clean room etc and has to pay for anything discretionary from this sum. We still pay for (school) bus fares, school uniform, sports kit etc.

Dude, you’re in your 40’s. Nothing is as good or exciting as it used to be. Women, sport, music, film, food, holidays whatever. We live a sad black and white pastiche of our technicolor youth.

HERE you go

Lush, don’t need one, but really want one

Google’s development/acquisition of Android was a defensive move, not one to generate massive profits.

Nonsense.

Google make their money from search and could see that as the internet goes mobile they needed to make sure they grabbed a big chunk of mobile search traffic, hence Android. They give it away free hoping to make money on search and apps.

You didn’t read the second paragraph did you.

Google could see the way the internet was going to move towards mobile and at the time towards 1 company (Nokia as well but they were so slow and wedded to Symbian) who could lock them out of the only major source of revenue, advertising, as they’re doing now.

the total revenue Google has made from Android since day 1 is less than Apple’s revenue in a single quarter from iPhone

Google’s development/acquisition of Android was a defensive move, not one to generate massive profits.

Google could see the way the internet was going to move towards mobile and at the time towards 1 company (Nokia as well but they were so slow and wedded to Symbian) who could lock them out of the only major source of revenue, advertising, as they’re doing now.

It should also be noted that we may not be buying Smartphones in the future, Apple are effectively leasing phones in the US, for $30 to $50 per month you get an iPhone with a yearly update.

Samsung is a company in horrible trouble

Errrm no, Samsung are absolutely massive, Samsungs phone business is just a small part of the company, they’re involved in everything from Insurance to heavy engineering. Some of the components in iPhones are manufactured by Samsung, notably the SoC is fabricated by Samsung (as well as TSMC).

In terms of Apple iPhone sales decline I think we’ve gone past “peak phone”, the excitement at the idea of having a personal computer in your pocket has waned, low end Android and to some extent Winphone can do everything that the flagship phones can do at not too big a performance penalty. Low/mid end phones are not the egregious PoS they were just a few years ago.

Plus the incredible growth over the last 2 years has been driven largely by China.

see the dentist every 6 months, I see the hygienist every 3 months

I’m a total brand snob but find cheap fleece from the likes of craghoppers or regatta work just as well as my more expensive Mountain Equipment or Rab fleeces I own. Agree with above, softshell would be better.

I’ve a Quito, am large, wear large.

I have some of the Howies Epic jeans, definitely not waterproof, probably takes a little longer to wet through than ordinary jeans and then cold+wet. Plus mine have basically completely worn out within a year, although they are my dog walking strides.

My vote goes for a regular pair of jeans then merino long johns, even if jeans wet out the magic of wool ensures your legs stay warmish

Razer smooshes house robot Matilda

Stoked for this, hopefully they don’t mess with the formula too much

99kg!

At 2:20ish if the timecode doesn’t work

Mine arrived just now, nice bit of kit, actually sound better than my wired Shure SE215’s thanks to the abysmal lack of volume/general cruddiness of audio on the Nexus 5.

For those who suffer the N5 volume “issue” just found this ap (needs Root, custom recovery)

VM here, have to echo the good experiences of the lot above. Have been with them since forever, rock solid internet with a few infrequent outages, usually sorted within a few hours. They will increase the price by 10% a year which is pretty f’n annoying, and they will give you a discount off your bill (in my cases a loyalty discount) which you’ll have to renew every year or 18 months.

When we jiggled our house around they were kind enough to send an engineer around to move the modem/router box from one room to another, done FoC, which was pretty cool of them

Hated my Nexus 9, had two, one died in a couple of days when WiFi died. The other I sent back due to poor performance, why was it so much laggier than N5 given the superior hardware?

Then I got a Tab S, amazing screen, literally jaw dropping, but SoC mid range, worked well until it died, after 6 months.

Then I got the Lenovo 2 10, really liked it, weighty, but screen size made up for it all round nice bit of kit but poor gpu meant playing any fast moving game (couldn’t play pinball!) impossible. Went back to JL.

Got an Nvidia Shield k1 now. It’s OK, screen a bit washed out (maybe just in comparison to the oled Samsung screen) , WiFi range not great, really annoying power and volume buttons. Can do all sorts of stuff with other Nvidia products. Already on Marshmallow, sd card now fully supported (again) in the os,nice speakers, feels solidly yet cheaply built. Good value at £150,reminds me of the Nexus 7 2013 but with way more grunt.

If you’re not worried about games or bothered by the weight the Lenovo is a good tablet,else the Nvidia seems like a bargain for £150,and if you’re really into gaming it’s a no brainer.

Have you got any less scaremongering sources for that? Even the source it links to uses vague phrases, “data is sent to Microsoft about various activities” for instance. It’s practically clickbait.

Microsoft backports data slurp to Windows 7 and 8 via patches[/url]

Have they? Got any sources for that?

Just Like Windows 10, Windows 7 and 8 Also Spy on You – Here’s How to Stop Them

Upgraded 2 of my machines over the last couple of weeks, like it a lot, a more polished Win 7 with Win 8.1 bits.

Shame about the spying, which they’ve also bolted on to Win 7

LG G5 and Samsung S7 are out in a matter of weeks if that makes any difference.

Golden ratio

Between those two I’d probably go for the Asus, although the £220 reduction is massive BS, that was never a £600 laptop (except for the two weeks it was priced as such to qualify for the discount tag). It has a better processor and a full HD screen.

Consider John Lewis, they’re doing 3 year guarantees on a lot of laptops. Have a pretty big range in their larger stores.

I’d echo the advice above about getting the best/fastest you can afford, I’ve got a “J” model and sometimes wish I’d gone for the faster more powerful non J or “+” models.

You could also consider a HP mini server, much more powerful but a bit more complicated

The only printer I’ve had at home that was worth a damn is a Canon 610 something or other, been working for years now, not sure if they have a model now which fulfils your criteria but it’s the only one that wasn’t a raging pain in the rectum/ugly plastic paperweight.

I recently bought a Country Innovation Rover jacket, it’s two layer Ventile, so heavy (about 1.5kg), but completely waterproof. I looked at the Howies one but only single layer. Fair to say it’s the best jacket I’ve ever bought, just as well as it’s also the most expensive jacket I’ve ever bought. Totally love it, other than the weight the only other real downside is it takes a while to dry, oh and it’s meant to be hand wash only – really?

Upsides are that they are so much more comfortable, quieter and just nicer than man made fabrics, including Paramo, cooler too, which of course has a down side.

On recent bloods done, yes it does. Was concern about food related to some complaint I had recently so they ran loads of tests and came back fine with no worries about the diet.

Even Vitamin D? Blimey you must have a great diet/live somewhere sunny.

I don’t buy into supplements myself. Eat a decent balanced diet and you get all you need

Presumably your blood work backs this up?

I take the Solgar Omega-3 EPA & DHA, Triple Strength, confused by which one has the higher EPA/DHA as the tricky b’stards often “suggest” you take multiple pills. That CNP one suggests you take two per serving because EPA & DHA is 352mg and 171mg per capsule respectively.

Bill Burr (not his best one but always great to hear them together)
Bert Kreischer (Listen to Bert’s own podcast – superb)
Dana White (in the hours following Rousey’s loss)
John Wayne Parr
Michael Dowd – this one was particularly good
Nick DiPaolo & Adam Lowery – Hilarious with Nick then fascinating when Adam joined

The Bill Burr one was a bit meh, Bert was good, I’ve given up on the martial arts dudes, there’s been alot of them on recently, but JWP was good the last time he was on. Missed the Nick Dip one, have to give that a listen, he’s always value, just checked, have listened – that was from July!

Been a bit of a fallow period for Rogan of late (for me at least) but really enjoying this so far. Whisper it but Lance comes across as a contrite and alright guy.

My daughters have to play Sims (3 & 4) with the laptop on a tea tray with the fan side slightly raised on the lip of the tray, otherwise heat death.

I was doing £1/year of age/month, tried to tie it into chores but too much like hardwork.

Eldest daughter,13, gets £40/month less her mobile phone contract and she has to pay for all her discretionary spending from that.

Have you had a second child?

Yes

Is the short term pain worth it in terms of them playing together, having a sibling etc etc

Yes, but then again my youngest just turned 11 so the massive PITA that babies are has sort of faded into the background, which tells it’s own story.

or should we just enjoy the family we have and as parents perhaps be a little happier as we are able to enjoy some ‘me’ time again???

Interesting wording

I’m in the same boat, buying DD1 her first laptop. Buying Laptops is such a pain, so much easier to buy Macs. Currently looking at John Lewis, at least if you buy a lemon from them you can take it back and exchange it without too much fuss.

In terms of longevity the new Intel 6th Generation Core processors are just out but hard to find a machine under £500 with them in. I’m looking for a i5 (or equivalent) 5th or 6th gen equipped, full HD screen with an optical drive.

I’m thinking of leaving Virgin as I don’t really use the TV any more or the phone I just need decent unlimited broadband. Any recommendations?

My loyalty bonus ended last month so bill is going to go up £10pm, shopped around and it’s really hard to match Virgin in terms of bang for your broadband buck.Phoned up and got loyalty bonus of £9pm. Probably enough to keep me from moving.

Bought my partner and daughter a Moto X 2014 each in an earlier sale this year. It’s a lovely phone, nice in the hand, good size as long as you’re a non-hobbit, lovely screen, pure-ish android (although no marshmallow yet), camera is ok, although not that fast or great in low light, plus I see that Moto Maker is free at the moment. The 32bit 801 processor is a match for any of this year’s 64bit Snapdragon processors in real world use.

Moto X Play is also worth looking at if you want a larger phone with massive battery. Nexus 6 is massive but a very good phone (particularly if you turn off the encryption which I believe slows it down, although not sure if they fixed that) and has pure android, should be supported by Google for the next two major software releases.