On Fri, 18 Feb 2011, Steve Dulieu wrote:

Sony PRS 350? smaller than a Kindle, no web browser, hold about 2K
books. has got a basic music player but headphone only so no annoying
your fellow travellers.

Is there any reason *all* mobile devices couldn't or shouldn't be
headphone-only for music, and indeed everything except phone calls? If the
EU can regulate device makers into all providing MicroUSB, maybe they can
regulate them into that too.

tom

--
There's no future.

On Feb 19, 12:57*pm, Tom Anderson wrote:

On Fri, 18 Feb 2011, Steve Dulieu wrote:
Sony PRS 350? smaller than a Kindle, no web browser, hold about 2K
books. has got a basic music player but headphone only so no annoying
your fellow travellers.

Is there any reason *all* mobile devices couldn't or shouldn't be
headphone-only for music, and indeed everything except phone calls? If the
EU can regulate device makers into all providing MicroUSB, maybe they can
regulate them into that too.

Why "except phone calls"?

In message
,
Mizter T writes

On Feb 19, 12:57*pm, Tom Anderson wrote:

On Fri, 18 Feb 2011, Steve Dulieu wrote:
Sony PRS 350? smaller than a Kindle, no web browser, hold about 2K
books. has got a basic music player but headphone only so no annoying
your fellow travellers.

Is there any reason *all* mobile devices couldn't or shouldn't be
headphone-only for music, and indeed everything except phone calls? If the
EU can regulate device makers into all providing MicroUSB, maybe they can
regulate them into that too.

Why "except phone calls"?

And, besides "headphone only" they could enact - at a volume inaudible
to anyone more than 50 cm away. That might also be a useful health
measure, helping to prevent deafness which appears likely to be
prevalent in later life by those pumping high sound levels into their
headphones for hours at a time.


--
Clive Page

David Cantrell wrote

On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 03:58:26PM -0800, Mizter T wrote:

It's an opinion I doubt many on here will share, but I think it's
rather a shame there's now a web browser present on the new Kindle
- I
really liked the idea of a pure single purpose book-like reading
device, unencumbered with the infinite distractions of the web -
the
joy of immersive, long-form, non-hyperlinked reading.

I do *not* share.

A device that only does one thing has to do it a *lot* better than
the
competition to justify carrying it around*. And so I don't have a
Kindle. My phone isn't quite as good at being a book reader, but
it's
"good enough". My ability to use it for the joy of immersive,
long-form
reading is limited solely by how well the author has done his job.

Trouble is, the Kindle makes a pretty damned poor web browser too, so
it still effectively only does one thing, and does it in a very large
device which counts even more against it.

Until screens that roll up or fold up are available the size is
necessary for a pleasant reading experience. The Kindles (and Sonys and
Nooks) are about the size of a thin paperback (original Penguin) and
most of this is screen area. An iPad is still bigger.

Since I have long regularly carried my current paperback in my shoulder
bag this isn't a problem.

I have now read several books on specialised ereader devices and have
enjoyed them.

What you get, built in to the device, is weeks of use between recharges
(if you don't use wireless much), capacity for vast numbers of books (I
have hundreds, having been buying for ten years) search, large print
and Text-to-Speech. If you are not accustomed find 3 or 4 books with
you on holidays and trips not enough this won't mean much and if you
don't buy dozens of books a year the savings there won't be much either


--
Mike D

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011, Mizter T wrote:

On Feb 19, 12:57*pm, Tom Anderson wrote:

On Fri, 18 Feb 2011, Steve Dulieu wrote:

Sony PRS 350? smaller than a Kindle, no web browser, hold about 2K
books. has got a basic music player but headphone only so no annoying
your fellow travellers.

Is there any reason *all* mobile devices couldn't or shouldn't be
headphone-only for music, and indeed everything except phone calls? If
the EU can regulate device makers into all providing MicroUSB, maybe
they can regulate them into that too.

Why "except phone calls"?

Because it would be a monstrous pain to have to put my earphones in every
time someone phoned me! On top of which, the sound output during a phone
call is not usually loud or sustained enough to be annoying (unlike
music), so there's nothing to be gained by forcing phone calls to go
through earphones.

tom

--
That's the problem with google. You can usually find what you're looking
for with a fairly simple search. It's knowing *which* fairly simple
search out of the millions of possible fairly simple searches you need
to use to find it ;-) -- Paul D

On Feb 19, 11:40*pm, Tom Anderson wrote:

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011, Mizter T wrote:

On Feb 19, 12:57pm, Tom Anderson wrote:

On Fri, 18 Feb 2011, Steve Dulieu wrote:

Sony PRS 350? smaller than a Kindle, no web browser, hold about 2K
books. has got a basic music player but headphone only so no annoying
your fellow travellers.

Is there any reason *all* mobile devices couldn't or shouldn't be
headphone-only for music, and indeed everything except phone calls? If
the EU can regulate device makers into all providing MicroUSB, maybe
they can regulate them into that too.

Why "except phone calls"?

Because it would be a monstrous pain to have to put my earphones in every
time someone phoned me! On top of which, the sound output during a phone
call is not usually loud or sustained enough to be annoying (unlike
music), so there's nothing to be gained by forcing phone calls to go
through earphones.

I was thinking about the delightful speakerphone function, but I see
that my sloppy reading of your comment and my subsequent response has
taken us down a delightful avenue of confusion!

So, to be clear, I wasn't wishing to promote everyone walking around
the streets looking like made people talking to themselves, for that
is what headset phonecall making folk still look like to me.

(Yes, speakerphone has its legitimate uses - for instance it's great
for turning an effective one-to-one communications medium, the phone
call, into a confusing many-to-one babble, which is handy when one has
had enough of effectively communicating and wishes to move on into the
realm of a cacophony of unintelligible noise, as I find is so often
the case.)

On 19/02/2011 23:40, Tom Anderson wrote:
On Sat, 19 Feb 2011, Mizter T wrote:

On Feb 19, 12:57 pm, Tom Anderson wrote:

On Fri, 18 Feb 2011, Steve Dulieu wrote:

Sony PRS 350? smaller than a Kindle, no web browser, hold about 2K
books. has got a basic music player but headphone only so no
annoying your fellow travellers.

Is there any reason *all* mobile devices couldn't or shouldn't be
headphone-only for music, and indeed everything except phone calls?
If the EU can regulate device makers into all providing MicroUSB,
maybe they can regulate them into that too.

Why "except phone calls"?

Because it would be a monstrous pain to have to put my earphones in
every time someone phoned me! On top of which, the sound output during a
phone call is not usually loud or sustained enough to be annoying
(unlike music), so there's nothing to be gained by forcing phone calls
to go through earphones.

tom


There was something on BBC this morning that a Chinese company is
investing £50 million to install coverage on the tube.

In message ,
" writes

There was something on BBC this morning that a Chinese company is
investing £50 million to install coverage on the tube.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110220...ansportoly2012

I can't help thinking that it sounds a bit like foreign aid for Britain.

--
Paul Terry

On Feb 20, 11:10*am, Paul Terry wrote:

In message ,
" writes

There was something on BBC this morning that a Chinese company is
investing 50 million to install coverage on the tube.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110220...ansportoly2012

I can't help thinking that it sounds a bit like foreign aid for Britain.


Get used to it!

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011, Mizter T wrote:

On Feb 19, 11:40*pm, Tom Anderson wrote:

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011, Mizter T wrote:

On Feb 19, 12:57pm, Tom Anderson wrote:

On Fri, 18 Feb 2011, Steve Dulieu wrote:

Sony PRS 350? smaller than a Kindle, no web browser, hold about 2K
books. has got a basic music player but headphone only so no annoying
your fellow travellers.

Is there any reason *all* mobile devices couldn't or shouldn't be
headphone-only for music, and indeed everything except phone calls? If
the EU can regulate device makers into all providing MicroUSB, maybe
they can regulate them into that too.

Why "except phone calls"?

Because it would be a monstrous pain to have to put my earphones in every
time someone phoned me! On top of which, the sound output during a phone
call is not usually loud or sustained enough to be annoying (unlike
music), so there's nothing to be gained by forcing phone calls to go
through earphones.

I was thinking about the delightful speakerphone function, but I see
that my sloppy reading of your comment and my subsequent response has
taken us down a delightful avenue of confusion!

Oh christ, speakerphone. I'd forgotten to mention that another arm of this
plan would be that any use of speakerphone would be punishable by summary
execution.

tom

--
Tech - No Babble