The PC Pro Podcast

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:15]anyone out there in Okay, Darren can see it.

[00:00:18]>> Uh, yes. Didn't ask one.

[00:00:24]Uh so as you'll notice it's myself and John this week and uh we're getting Darian to press buttons remotely so hence we're uh asking people to just check we're working. No Riverside says Paul Riley.

[00:00:39]That's odd because we >> No, he's watching us on Riverside. Okay.

[00:00:43]Slap slap slap slap slap. Paul Riley you need to learn how to use commas.

[00:01:00]But hopefully you can now see us.

[00:01:02]>> YouTube is okay.

[00:01:04]>> Yay.

[00:01:06]Thank you very much.

[00:01:10]Okay. Until we start talking anyway.

[00:01:16]Hello Peter D. can see the regulars.

[00:01:27]Apparently your son's on a plane pay to do, but he owes me parts of a feature.

[00:01:33]>> Yeah. Oh, he told me earlier that his flight was at midday.

[00:01:38]>> Well, then he's typing while flapping.

[00:01:42]>> That's what I mean. Yeah. I'm hoping he's uh using his time wisely on the plane.

[00:01:48]My time will be will be used very wisely with Jin.

[00:01:52]If his is, I pray for this feature.

[00:02:00]I always look forward to hearing from him. See, I I normally do unless it's deadline time, but this time he owes me copy, not the other way around. So interesting.

[00:02:19]Well, Peter D, if you come here to see your son, you're going to get, you know, quite a lot of disappointment most.

[00:02:24]>> Yeah, he doesn't. They say he doesn't turn up most weeks these days. You might have to adopt one of us. PD.

[00:02:31]>> Oh, okay.

[00:02:41]I'll get the papers signed up. We're gonna need some kind of financial uh arrangements here at OPD. I don't come for free, >> even though your son basically gets me for free.

[00:02:58]Just post that there so I've got some idea what the hell's going on.

[00:03:02]Um I I am with um little MacBook Neo. Is that what you're running on for this?

[00:03:13]>> No, I'm running on an M2 M2 M2 MacBook Air 24 gig, but the uh Neo is here with my uh web sessions over.

[00:03:24]So, I'm going to be looking over here to the NBC, you see, because that's where it is.

[00:03:30]>> See, the podcast won't drop all the >> I've got a free sk free screen set up now. And the podcast is about the only time I ever use the third screen. It's when I run out of windows. Am I looking at this now?

[00:03:44]>> Yes. And next, well, actually, I can I can say this because they're all listening, can't you? Rather than typing. Yes. Next week podcast is going to be um Uncle Tim and me from um from Taipei.

[00:04:00]>> An Apple mouse is definitely not worth £99.

[00:04:03]>> I would go with the uh Logitech >> MXM 4.

[00:04:08]>> Master 4. Yeah.

[00:04:10]>> Fantastic. Now >> I have four of them. Oh, you got some.

[00:04:14]Yeah, I I have I I just upgraded from the three to the four only because I had a need that someone could take the three um in in within the lab. So, I think they're very good.

[00:04:25]>> But my advice is do not install the Logitech software. You will lose some functionality, but that software is absolutely bobbins and will uh ruin your life. Yeah, I don't want AI lookup bollocks in the middle of my screen.

[00:04:39]Thank you very much.

[00:04:40]>> Language to me, we're going to go live in two minutes.

[00:04:45]Well, we are sort of live, but live recording >> magic trackpad is nice. Yeah. Um, but the uh Logitech MX mouse pro for Master Fang is genius >> is definitely the dogs.

[00:05:08]And I really love for >> horizontal scroll on Excel worksheets with backwards and forwards on Excel worksheets.

[00:05:16]>> Yeah.

[00:05:18]>> Um absolute killer.

[00:05:22]Uh William Kirk uh recorded from Taipei next week. Yes. Um I don't know. Well, don't Taipei is seven hours ahead. So, we could in theory do a 1:00 live if it was 8:00 in Taiwan. So, it depends how good the dinner is.

[00:05:42]Um, you're relying on Tim being awake at that time of night, which is always, mind you, he might be he might be okay when we go to Vegas by about 700 p.m.

[00:05:52]he's absolutely broken. So, cheat date.

[00:06:00]Can you hear my fan, by the way? I've got my fan on, but if it's >> No, not really. Very annoying. I've got the back door open here, but the chickens are still in their run, so I'm not going to get attacked by them.

[00:06:09]>> Yeah, I got my door open as well. I apologize if there's any background noise. I think it's bin day around here.

[00:06:14]So, if suddenly get attacked by bin men, I apologize.

[00:06:23]Right. What are we doing?

[00:06:25]Start podcast, I guess.

[00:06:29]Let's move that there. Let's move that there.

[00:06:36]Make that smaller over there. So, I know what you look like, Barry. And it isn't a pretty sight.

[00:06:43]>> You're lucky it's 1:00 and I can't respond to that. Get out of it. Flies.

[00:06:47]Flies. Go away.

[00:06:51]Uh, right.

[00:06:54]Good afternoon and welcome to the PC Procast. It is Thursday the 28th of May and I'm Barry Collins, news and feature editor of PC Pro. I'm back by popular demand after our popular residency in Las Vegas about 3 years ago. It's Mr. John Honeyball.

[00:07:11]>> Good afternoon. I'm trying to work out what episode number this is. I'm I'm scrolling furiously, but um I haven't got a clue, but there we go.

[00:07:18]>> No, it's it's 79 last week plus one. Can we do it as a programming joke?

[00:07:24]>> Yes. Uh, okay. So, just the two of us this week because other people are on planes or otherwise engaged with half-term activities. So, uh you you'll have to put up with uh the the grumpy pair. Um and we're starting with you, John. And uh there's been some movements in the memory market this week.

[00:07:43]>> Well, as everybody knows, prices of everything's going through the roof. Um and uh it not surprisingly, the companies making this stuff are making lots and lots and lots and lots lots of money. uh profits are hugely increased, which of course helps feed the magic um money pile that's all going um round and round and round between companies like Nvidia and and the uh Open AI and all the rest of these companies. So the whole thing is just turning into a sort of a a hurricane or tsunami of cash flowing around. So the latest news this week is Samsung Electronics in um Korea. uh obviously makes huge amounts of uh RAM uh and they're one of the you know the big three big four providers out there and their profits are absolutely through the roof. Now there has been um a planned strike amongst employees um uh which strikes me as rather strange because the South Koreans are just so fantastically polite people. Um the idea of them having a strike just like fries my brain. Um and but it apparently they are kind of agreeing that something like 10% 10 point something percent of the profits of that part of Samson should be distri distributed amongst the workers which sounds really lovely and then you see the numbers um some some workers could be in line for over around $340,000 uh bonus. Um and um the union is now apparently voting as to whether this is a good idea and whether they should take the money and call off the strike. I would suggest if this sort of cash is around this year and next year then um then then go take the money. I I suspect that not everyone's going to be getting such huge amounts of money.

[00:09:34]>> Well, that was the average amount though, wasn't it? That some are going to get more, some obviously going to get considerably less, but >> some are definitely going to be getting getting more than that. Um it is a huge cash payout. Um apparently it's as in the region of 78,000 employees of the 125,000 domestic workforce are eligible for this. And yeah, the bonus is roughly uh $370,000 this year based on a market estimate of the annual operating uh profit. Um so they're making lots and lots and lots and lots of money. I was actually reading a one of these sort of strange tangential news reports about the cost of property in the southern side of Seoul because Samsung's global tech headquarters is in a place called Suon which is kind of like relative to Seoul is kind of like Cudden is to London. It's kind of the south side of Seoul and it's an enormous site and something like 80 odd thousand people work on this site and so it absolutely dominates the surrounding town and areas and so forth just because there's so many workers there and apparently the prices of uh property and uh nice apartments and so forth is going through the roof because of course um you know if all of this cash is about to get injected into uh into the local economy it's going distort the property prices because everyone will put their prices up.

[00:11:03]Apparently, this is a 10-year deal. Um so, but it is tied to very ambitious uh performance targets. So, none of this is guaranteed. If the market evaporates, which who knows? Um you know, it could it could go down just as quickly as it's gone up. Um some of us would say that would be a very damn good thing frankly and bring us back to some sort of um uh financial normality. Uh but if this thing keeps rolling for a while there are some people there who are going to be doing really quite nice. Now don't forget um the impact of Samsung on the South Korean uh uh uh financial uh the South Korean GDP. They're something like 12 13% of gross domestic product of South Korea. Now you know 12 a.5% of GDP of a country really should make you gulp. Um and memory chips are something like 35% of the exports of the country. So this is lots and lots and lots of money. And so basically there's an idea here.

[00:12:10]There's like a um a national dividend because on all of this bonus there's going to be whopping amounts of tax going to the government. And therefore the government can do things that governments are very good at doing which of course is spending tax money. So, it it could just all be very good around for everybody in in um in South Korea.

[00:12:32]Now, let's uh not forget they're not the only company here that's doing nicely.

[00:12:36]Um uh Micron, of course, who are very big in making chips, has just tipped the uh $1 trillion market valuation and has gone up absolute gang busters in terms of its share price uh this year. Um and uh they are doing really I mean their share price is pretty much uh tripled uh in recent history. Um and that's not the only one. Intel I've just pulled up here. Intel's share price over the last six months. I'm tappy tap on my little MacBook Neo here. If uh if we look at their sort of standard share price January, February, March this year, it was kind of around $47 a share. It's currently sitting at 123 or so US dollars. So, Intel's share price has tripled since sort of uh end of March this year. So, again, there's another company whose share price is massively growing. You could argue that some of that Intel price rise is about uh the announcement that happened about Apple getting Apple Apple Apple getting Intel to do foundry work for building M processors. So it maybe it's not just that the market here maybe for Intel there's an element of of Appleeness involved but certainly there are people out there who are making um enormous amounts of wedge out of all of this and we are picking up the tab. Well, I was just about to make that point that in fact I saw a report this morning that um prices of this the Steam Deck handheld have gone up uh about $200 $300 for each edition. And you know, we've spoken numerous times in the past few weeks about massive spikes in the prices of hardware and especially components. Um and yet these companies don't seem to be suffering quite the opposite. So, as I guess with the oil crisis and the petrol companies, there there certainly seems to be um a a deal of profiteering going on here to take maximum advantage of what is undoubtedly a shortage.

[00:14:44]>> Well, I mean, it would of course be very rash and and ill advised to suggest a small number of players here are operating anything that might be in any way uh related to the word cartel. Um and and you know I'm certainly not suggesting that uh Micron and and uh Samsung and the other big players here are all having little discussions down the back of the pub. Um but certainly uh the demand is so strong at a global level here and I think that's the key point is um the is that this is not a localized thing. This is not something that's happening in the Asian market or something that's happening in the European market. These are the big um AI titans building trying to build data centers uh often at a global uh level and just needing what they can in there and they need it as soon as possible uh because obviously they're buying insane amounts of of um hardware from the likes of Nvidia and that all of that needs RAM, all of that needs storage and so forth. Yet, these chips are depre depreciating as we speak because for one simple reason, Nvidia always has next year's new version coming along. So, the ROI on all of this is really quite terrifying. And there's also rumors of warehouses full of Nvidia uh processors that can't be plugged in because the data center doesn't exist or if the data center exists, there isn't enough power to spin it up. So, everyone's kind of holding their breath. Um, and it it just needs one major um project screw up here at a at a you know, at a gigawatt scale and the whole thing could go quite go sour quite quickly.

[00:16:40]>> Yeah. And I guess there's no real prospect. I mean, like you say, the South Korea government is just about to take a massive windfall um from Samsung's activity.

[00:16:50]there's little prospect of government intervention because there's self-interest for them to make sure that the profits keep rolling in in the form of taxes. Right.

[00:17:00]>> Yeah. And and let's not forget Mr. Musk is talking about wanting to put data centers up into orbit and the potential um market for for for chips and so forth. I mean, I think we would all agree that that's that's a distance away uh because of just the difficulty of getting stuff off the ground up to there in the sort of quantities that matters.

[00:17:21]I mean, it's it would be relatively and I use the term relatively in a in in in big quotation marks, it's relatively easy to to lift one heavy load up into orbit. It's a whole different ball game to to lift 10,000 of these things up there. Um, so you know, but it looks for the time being that until there is a major financial calamity in this space, it looks that the prices are going to stay high.

[00:17:49]>> Yeah. Wow.

[00:17:51]Bubble you around at Samsung, etc. Uh, okay. Unless there's anything more to say on this one, John, should we move on?

[00:17:57]>> No, no, let's go, go, go.

[00:17:59]>> Okay. So, this one's with me, and this is a decision made in the UK high court, I think last week, which has made it easier. basically for film and TV rights holders to block pirate websites. So, this is something we've covered periodically over the past decade or so, but under the the sort of current regime, uh the rights holders have an opportunity to block copyright infringing sites by applying to the high courts for an order. Um, so they discover a site that's pirating, shall we say, football. uh they collect the URLs of the sites doing so. They go to the high court and the high court issues an order if if found to be doing so. Uh that forces the major ISPs to block those sites and it's a game of whack-a-ole that these sites appear, they block them, new sites appear the week later. Uh what appears now to be happening is a new order is being um issued by the high court which is called an omnibus blocking order which basically gives the rights holders more flexibility. So they they can now target services that keep changing their names or opening new domains or brands without having to go to the court every time to get that URL blocked. So uh the idea being that the rights holders just identify these sites and then identify the variance of those sites and the first court order against that company basically seems to cover all the variants that go with it.

[00:19:40]uh the rights holders argue that this has become a much bigger problem over time and now with automation and AI in particular, it's much easier for them to spin up a hundred different versions of a pirate site than it was even previously. Um and so the motion picture association who seem seems to have bought this case say that this constant hobby makes the the previous blocking process too slow and too repetitive. But from the other side of that, it looks like we we yet to see the full detail of this because this this judgment hasn't been made public, but um it looks like the the rights holders are going to get a much sort of broader um level of responsibility for identifying sites and the ISPs having to block them. they're not having to go for each individual individual URL and who knows how much scrutiny has been applied to in the first place but uh they're just going to identify the sites and it seems the ISPs will have to will have to block them at least for this the period of this uh new agreement. Apparently this new agreement lasts for 6 months. I think this almost like a trial run to see how it works. But an interesting one, how do we feel about the rights holders being allowed to basically determine what's blocked and what's not, John?

[00:21:01]>> Well, it it sounds glib. It's always a difficult one, isn't it? Uh there is no one right answer. I mean the right answer here is that um websites properly authenticate the people that are coming onto them and therefore it's possible to do some sort of next level um authentication but that is fraught with its own difficulties that's certainly not some you know golden bullet that can solve the problem the the issue here of course is that the Hollywood studios have got you know hundreds of millions millions of dollars tied up in a film they've spent and what they don't want is it going out onto pirate sites and then being, you know, jumping around the world and onto torrent streaming and so forth. Um the the problem there of course is that they have um worked for years with a system that effectively allows for unencrypted uh data, unencrypted versions of films.

[00:22:06]uh you only need to go back um to uh the earliest days of DVD and remember that DVDs had an encryption key on them, one per company and it was burnt into the encryption of the DVDs and it only took one software player to leave the key unencrypted and then suddenly it was possible to decrypt any DVD and the cat was most definitely out of the bag at that point. you know, roll forward 20, 25, 30 years and here we are with your late latest film traveling the world very quickly. Um, there is no right answer to this. There is no easy answer to this. Um, I think I think pushing the blame onto ISPs, I think, is the wrong thing to do.

[00:22:54]Although you could see why it is an easy target for Hollywood to go after because if you hit an ISP, you're then hitting, you know, thousands or millions of of customers in that geographical reach.

[00:23:07]So, but but why is it the ISP's responsibility for the legal or not legal operation of the customer at the far end of the line?

[00:23:18]It's this whole idea about the common carrier, isn't it? that you know the post office is not liable for things carried in in in a in a letter. Should an ISP be um responsible for the traffic going to an end user? Um especially when that traffic is almost certainly going to be uh encrypted. So how are they going to get into this encrypted encrypted stream to see what the content is and therefore make a decision? All they can then do is hit things at a site level. Um, having said that, there are services out there like Cloudflare that do filtering, DNS filtering, blocking and so forth. Um, and they are incredibly popular.

[00:24:02]Cloudfare has some significant double digit market share of the internet. Uh, and that's fine for, you know, Mr. and Mrs. Jones of Acacia Avenue in Serbbertton. Uh that's not so good if you're trying to lock down what's happening in a shall we say uh less locked down part of the planet because revenue there is a is a problem and there are certainly jurisdictions around the world which simply don't recognize copyright anyway. So I don't know it's it's a complete mess. This is, you know, Hollywood is obviously trying to push its cost base for dealing with this onto anybody other than them.

[00:24:44]>> Um, and >> yeah, I mean, to be fair to them because often, you know, these sites aren't hosted by British companies or American companies. They're often out of, you know, jurisdictions where they have no hope of shutting down the server. So, >> to be fair, the only real option they have is to block block at the network level. I I can't see any other more effective way that they could do it.

[00:25:06]>> No, it has to be blocked. Uh but it has to be done with with governmental level authorization within a country and there are unfortunately plenty of countries where that's not going to work. Yeah. So are we now saying that the UK should block arbitrary country number one or two or three simply because they have no um uh support of UK uh uh uh copyright and intellectual property and that's going to open up some very difficult questions with some very large countries in the Far East.

[00:25:40]>> Yeah, I don't think anyone's suggesting that. I mean they're just suggesting they need to block these individual sites, not the the country as a whole.

[00:25:46]Well, you know, at what point uh at what point does this actually make a meaningful difference other than rather than an awful lot of lawyers getting paid a lot of money to sort of sit around and shout at each other? I mean, Jeff Campbell on on our uh live Discord makes the absolutely correct uh comment, which is it's sweet that they think they can beat the avarice of tens of millions of board techies. um you know because there are 101 ways that we can use to get around um blocking and encryption and all the rest of it. Um the only question is what's our boredom threshold versus our appetite for expending time on breaking through whatever restrictions they try and put in place.

[00:26:30]Um and and uh as Jeff says, yes, well Jeff and I and others have talked for years about doing steganography in cat pictures. Uh actually cat videos or dog videos on YouTube. I mean YouTube could be a fantastic transmission medium, especially if you've got uh lots of um lots of bandwidth, which of course in the old days we didn't have. So I don't know. It's it's a mess. It's not going to get better. And I'm not in any way convinced that this is actually going to really help long-term in a big way. Um, so I don't know. I don't know.

[00:27:04]>> Yeah. I mean, one assumes they must have some of it because as you say, this is not a cheap process to go through hiring lawyers to make high call applications.

[00:27:12]So they've been doing it for a long long decade. Don't don't forget though that if you're I mean I am not a copyright lawyer and whatever but if I've certainly have heard that if you don't actively attempt to protect your your copyright or your trading trademark or whatever it can be deemed that you are sort of complicit in somebody else but using it without your consent. You have to be seen to be doing something.

[00:27:41]>> Yeah.

[00:27:43]Okay. Well, we'll obviously keep an eye and see uh if anything materializes when we get to see the full full court order with that one. Um in the meantime, let's shuffle along. And uh John, you've discovered some issues with roaming charges on your your travels >> and uh and with with health insurance.

[00:28:01]Um, I'm actually Uncle Tim of this parish is we think about an hour and 20 into his flight to China at the moment where he takes a uh he then transfers onto a flight down to Taiwan. Uh he'll be in Taiwan uh tomorrow morning local time at some point. I'm flying on Saturday landing Sunday uh afternoon and I'm going via Shanghai for about three hours. Um why are we going? It's Computex in Taiwan, which is a fantastic It's kind of like the Far East version of of CES except uh quite a lot more sort of component level stuff. Um a lot of Chinese companies, as you would imagine, being in Taiwan and to Taiwanese local uh manufacturers, quite a lot of what you might um wrongly call mom and pop operations, but doing some really interesting stuff out there. Um, and so we're going over to Computex actually independently. Uh, this I'm I'm also seeing U Synology for a day and uh, GTA. Um, but we are going to get together for a beverage, I'm sure. And hopefully we're going to do the uh, PC Procast from a hotel room next week. Uh, the details of which and exact timings and whether it will be live or not, I have no idea. Uh, but we will discuss this on Discord in the coming week when we know what the hell's going on with our schedules. Um, anyway, I um decided I was needed to take some um my phone with me, so roaming SIM, and I was looking at three. Now, I've got 10 business SIMs with three. Um, and they come in at the magnificent cost of something like eight quid a month per SIM plus that for unlimited data, unlimited phone calls, etc. And I think it's five quid for roaming if you're outside of Europe. It's something like three quid a month. Sorry, three quid a day in in Europe. Um so in the past I've tended just to roam on the sim when I've gone to the states for example like I was uh beginning of last month. But China's a bit more difficult because it doesn't appear to be in the roaming list. Uh and if you go digging around thre's website and woe beside you trying to do this uh you will need an extra extraordinarily large bucket of coffee and intravenous gin if you start going around these telos websites trying to find out which countries are covered on which package for which amount for how much for how much data and is there a Thursday of the month and did you have a banana for breakfast? I mean the the choice levels and complexity is truly terrifying. In the end I did my fallback position which is to go back to Holofly which does EIMS. Uh and Hollifly is great because it's just data. It's not any phone calls. It's just just data.

[00:30:48]But who cares? That works fine and and all my calls can be um will be uh tunnled over VOIPE over our 3CX system.

[00:30:58]So it that's not a problem at all.

[00:31:01]However, of course, I'm going to China.

[00:31:04]Yes, in real China, if only for three or four hours. And then I'm going on to Taiwan, which is a different country, of course. Let's not get um the president of the United States involved in this.

[00:31:14]Um and then I'm actually coming back via Hong Kong for a few hours. So, I actually would quite like to have data guaranteed uh when I'm in the terminals. Yes, I can probably find some local Wi-Fi to connect on to with all the dangers that come with that. So, um, I needed a China and Taipei and Hong Kong eim and actually the best one for that was Asia.

[00:31:39]Asia good covers all of the countries I could possibly find myself in even if my plane gets diverted. Um, so I I have gone for Asia on some eims for 10 days.

[00:31:49]I always take a few extra days simage here because if your flight gets delayed or gets cancelled, you don't want to get cut off at exactly the moment when you're trying to shout at British Airways or call your travel agent or whatever or even just phone home and say you are still alive. Um, and so that's I've got that sorted and that was fine.

[00:32:08]Then I just wanted to check my my um my personal travel insurance uh because um I have health insurance, their travel insurance and a company called insurance and go which is very well known. In fact, they quite cheerfully announced that they are um which best provider thing for the third year in a row or some such some such claim. And I was reading on Facebook on a motorbike group and discovered that um insure and go do not cover riding a motorbike above 150cc outside of the UK as being part of the insurance. Your health insurance is void. If you are riding your own motorbike in France, uh yeah, you can drive your own car, but you can't ride a motorbike. And uh so I went digging around because as I said I have uh hazardous activities. Uh I have um full health insurance with uh insurance and go. Turns out yes uh on there's a long list of what what's called hazardous activities. Um and number where was it here? Number uh 25 on the list of things you can't do is motorcycleycling over 125cc.

[00:33:26]Okay. So, if I was in France and I came off my bike, my health insurance wouldn't cover me.

[00:33:31]>> Is number 24 flying to Taipei with Tim?

[00:33:34]>> Uh, I think probably number 24 would be uh going out to dinner with John in Taipei because, you know, that could be that could be quite fun. So, I phoned them up and I said, you know, this wasn't make it wasn't terribly obvious in your site about motorbiking. I can understand, you know, jumping off a mountain as being a hazardous activity, but apparently not. So, uh, I took out the hazardous activities bit on top of my policy for the for the ginormous and eye watering sum of three quid for the year. I'm now covered for hazardous activities, which in my case I was actually most important about when I go motorbike to Ireland or Belgium or whatever later this summer. But you will be pleased to know I am now covered for hang gliding. I am now covered for luge.

[00:34:24]Either dry or concrete. I didn't know there was such a difference on luge. Um I am covered for ostrich riding or racing is now specifically covered here.

[00:34:37]Parasailing. Uh paragliding.

[00:34:40]Uh and there was another one here. I really like the shark diving brackets inside cage.

[00:34:46]Um and tall ship crewing. So that's I guess that's where you sort of climb up to the top of a tall ship and un unfurl something. Um, so I I know, you know, and I was actually just pondering this and this is kind of the point here, which is why these damn things so difficult to find out? Why are getting these services at the end of the day?

[00:35:08]Um, why is it so complicated these days?

[00:35:12]And do I actually need some sort of AI agent to say um, you know, uh, find me something that will do this and it will come back with the suggestions. But then given the error rate on AI, do you then have to go and double check it all?

[00:35:26]Anyway, so my my my point here is if you think you're buying an ESIM for somewhere, be careful as to what countries it actually supports.

[00:35:34]>> And if you've got health insurance, which you really really should have if you're traveling abroad, please check what you're allowed to do because the exclusions might not be quite so obvious. And I must confess riding my motorbike in France as being excluded was came as as um quite a shock. Okay, egg. Uh, I I do have to apologize, by the way, if it sounds like an elephant's being brutalized on your audio. That's because the be men have just turned up outside. I've had to leave my door open because it's about 28° in my office. So, apologies if you're getting any background noise. Um, moving on. And this is um a sort of another sort of personal I don't it's happened to me this week, but um I think it shines a light on the best and worst of of Apple basically. So, uh, I was out walking, uh, on Saturday morning and I got a rather panicked phone call from my daughter who couldn't work out why she couldn't get into her MacBook Pro that I handed down to her because um, the one of the keys wasn't working. She could she couldn't type a zero, which was one of the letters in her password, but she could hold down shift and zero and that would work. But obviously, because that wasn't the letter in her password, it wasn't letting her in. I said, "Have you have you spilt anything on that keyboard, dear?" And no, no, no, no, Dad. No, definitely not. Okay, I can't I can't do this remotely. We'll we'll sort it out when I get in. So, I get home and under the mildest of cross-examination, she finally confesses that last night she spilled some J2O orange juice all over the keyboard and hence we have some keys that aren't working. Of course, instead of doing what I would have told her to do had she told me on Friday night, which was turn the thing off immediately, turn it upside down, and that's hope for the best, she plowed on, kept pressing buttons to try and get the password to work, left the thing on.

[00:37:26]It's obviously caused some damage to the keyboard in the meantime. So, uh, we worked out that this, uh, we couldn't get any joy out of this keyboard. A couple of the keys weren't working. Uh I booked an appointment with Apple's uh Genius Bar at the Brighton store. I I have to say for a laptop that is 5 years old that is well out of warranty, two years outside of its Apple Care Plus, they got me an appointment that afternoon about 2 hours later. So we drop down in the car to Brighton. Had to go through three different people with iPads before we got plumped at the uh Genius Bar. And a bloke comes along. He says, "Give me that laptop." shoots off into the back behind a door that looks like the safe at the Bank of England and uh shoots off and runs some test. Comes back down about 5 minutes later and says, "Well, I don't think uh there's no there's no damage to the underlying machine. Now, let's test your keyboard."

[00:38:25]So, uh he drags in front of us, he drags, uh a cable into the side of the device and it runs a piece of software that basically tests every key. So he's literally pressing every key on the keyboard in front of us and we can see about half a dozen keys in the affected area are not working. Uh at which point he sort of says well now you've got one choice. This is uh you can either well two choices. You can either take this home as it is or we can arrange a replacement but to replace this keyboard you need to replace the entire top unit and I need to look up how much that costs. Oh that's £68 including VAT. He says, "And the other complication here is that there's none in stock and we don't expect any in stock for about a month." Uh, at which point I mentioned the straight from use and he he's he slightly giggled but didn't confirm. Um, so uh I obviously was not going to spend £68 replacing the keyboard on a 5-year-old MacBook Pro. Um, I came back home. There's various online videos saying it's nonsense that you need to replace the entire top panel for a damaged keyboard. Lots of places will send you a keyboard, but getting to that is not a job I'd want to tackle myself.

[00:39:41]Looking at the videos, I think you need Lee Grant levels of patience and equipment to get anywhere near that keyboard. Um, but the the bigger problem here was we couldn't actually get into the machine. So even if he wanted to use it, neither my password, which was still on the machine, or her password were without the keys that um that have been damaged. So we couldn't get in the machine. It' been turned on and off in the meantime. So Touch ID wouldn't work for either of us because once you turn the machine off, you need to enter your password.

[00:40:14]Plugging in an external keyboard didn't work because you have to have the accessory plugged in before the uh password has been entered before Apple will accept it. and you couldn't access the accessibility keyboard, the onscreen keyboard, um, without having that setting already turned on. So, you're basically locked out of the machine. The only way after two days of fiddling around with this bloody thing, uh, was to basically go for a password reset procedure in the recovery mode. And once you're in the Apple recovery mode, it does accept external keyboards being plugged in that haven't been plugged in previously. And then I was able to reset my own password to one that works with the the keyboards on the uh the working keys on the keyboard. And now I can obviously use the external keyboard that we've already plugged in because it's once you reboot and add it as a device, Apple then accepts it or the Mac then accepts it as a device you can enter on the keyboard. So, this is a sort of a a warning, I guess. Both brilliant that Apple with no, you know, this was a, as I said, a 5-y old machine with um well out of warranty care that they went to the trouble and did lots of tests for us.

[00:41:28]Well, a couple of tests for us in store very at very short notice and diagnose a problem. But the expense of replacing those devices and then getting into a device if you've damaged the keyboard, I think Apple really needs to do better on both those counts. But I I know you had an experience similar experience with uh >> I mean I I'm just reading the the the comments on um PC Procast and and there's a lot of negativity against Apple and I can understand the point of view which is you should be able to plug in a keyboard and it should just work. I I I get that point of view. Um, however, you could argue that that is an element of a security risk, which is that if you can plug in any old device and start injecting um keystrokes up the USB port, that's not such a good thing. Could you Did this thing have fingerprint reader or not?

[00:42:20]>> It did, but because the machine had been rebooted, the fingerprint >> you need to put the password in. Yes.

[00:42:25]Yes. Yes. That makes sense. I mean, I 10, 15 years ago, I actually was visiting Microsoft and I managed to pour an entire Starbucks latte through my MacBook Pro. Um, and I it was the day I'd landed and I was, let's just say, tired and emotional. That's probably the best excuse I could have. and I went over uh to the Apple store over the road in just up the road from Microsoft headquarters and bought an identical new MacBook Pro and used a Thunderbolt cable and did a transfer before my original one gave up the ghost. Um I this was done within like 45 minutes. Um a very expensive way of getting around the problem, but it got me up and running.

[00:43:06]Afterwards, I did take the thing into the Apple store in Cambridge here back in the UK and they managed to completely rebuild my laptop on a Sunday afternoon.

[00:43:16]Now, it was u somewhat newer than six years old and therefore I would imagine they had the parts in stock. So, um I don't know. There is no really um uh there is no really good answer to this.

[00:43:31]Uh, you could argue that yes, the keyboard should be unlocked.

[00:43:38]That's interesting point. If you unlock it in the firmware, which is not something I've ever done, but if you unlock it, does it stay unlocked?

[00:43:46]>> What do you mean?

[00:43:46]>> Well, you you managed to unlock it so you could do a so it would see a USB keyboard. Yes.

[00:43:51]>> Yeah.

[00:43:52]>> Right. Does that unlockness is that is I hate to use the term is that sticky, but do you know what I mean?

[00:43:59]>> Yeah. So now I can plug in that same external keyboard once it's been accepted in the OS and it says do you want to accept this device now it can be used as a login device but previously it couldn't.

[00:44:08]>> Okay. Well, you know it's it's I I can see pros and cons to it. I think on balance I think it should recognize a USB keyboard when you plug it in because that just saves everybody's bacon. Yeah.

[00:44:22]Uh there must be a reason why they do it that way. And the only thing that I can think of is for some sort of rogue keyboard injector to try and spam keystrokes in to try and but then the the OS itself is very well hardened against repeat password failure. So I'm not sure I'm convinced of that argument.

[00:44:39]Yeah. So I'm trying to weigh up all the possible pros and cons and thinking uh I don't like the default.

[00:44:46]>> Yeah. So Wonderall says, "What's going to be your next laptop?" Barry, let me guess you stick with Apple out of Stockholm syndrome. I'd already replaced this with another MacBook Pro. I two things there I'd say. One, I'm not sure any other PC manufacturer is much different in terms of could you readily get hold of keyboard replacements much more cheaply?

[00:45:11]Certainly more cheaply, yes, I guess you could. But uh I don't think certainly in terms of the service I couldn't walk in with a Dell. I couldn't walk into a Lenovo ThinkPad. I couldn't walk into a store within two hours in a Samsung >> and get that same level of service. It but I completely agree that the the l the price of the replacement keyboards is ridiculous. And I think Apple needs to be either needs to do better or be forced to do better because I appreciate this machine is out of service, but it could have been a maybe been the same problem with it or it would have been the same problem with a year old laptop if you didn't already pay for the extra insurance and that that shouldn't be the case. You should be able to get replacement parts at more reasonable rates and you shouldn't have to replace the entire top of a laptop just to replace a few damaged keys. I think that's wrong. I I think just to be I mean knowing how much it cost me to have my MacBook rea uh rebuilt which was keyboard logic board I think the storage was okay. Um the RAM obviously had to be changed and I can't remember whether it needed a new screen unit as well because I think some of the coffee had got into the flexi bits going through the the hinge. I mean that was the thick end of 900 quid. Um but it was it was really most of the laptop in a sense. So although they're quoting you 400 quid for that um >> 600 >> 600 quid sorry um I do wonder whether that was based upon a likely guess of what might be needed before they actually took it apart or was that a really fixed hard price.

[00:46:43]>> No that's the thing you if you replace the keyboard you got to replace the entire top unit which is crazy. They should it should not the design should not be that bad if and you don't have to because people online are showing you how to replace the keyboard itself. So, >> um, you know, swings and roundabouts as I say anyway, but let's not dwell too much long on this because we have nibs to get on with and, uh, the first one, well, we're back to apples sort of.

[00:47:09]>> Kind of. Yeah. I mean, Ferrari has just launched an electric vehicle, Ferrar.

[00:47:14]So, this is a Ferrari that doesn't go vroom vroom. First one ever. It's called the luche. I mean, Ferrari is getting quite notorious for really stupid names on their cars, like the Ferrari La Ferrari. Uh and and the porro sangu meaning pure blood but now they've done the Ferrari luche which apparently means light. Um and it's a four-door uh full high-end um uh EV as you would imagine.

[00:47:41]It's 1000 horsepower naugh to 60 in blink of an eye. Uh, I think it's 200 192 miles an hour top speed probably for not very long, but then that would apply to 192 miles an hour in a petrol engine.

[00:47:55]Um, and it's just over two tons, 2.2 tons and so forth. It's going to start at £450,000 in the UK. Um but uh as is absolutely typical with u Ferrari uh don't even think you can get out of the dealer with less than 60 70,000 quids worth of sort of required upgrades like tacky bits of car and so so forth. Oh you get wheels now because that's mandated by Europe and you even get a seat belt because that you know that was also mandated but a Ferrari deal.

[00:48:27]>> I'm making Apple look very reasonable at this point.

[00:48:29]>> We are. Yes. who makes upgrading your Magna Pro look positively positively cheap. But no, I mean 160 £120,000 upgrades on your Ferrari is is, you know, is where the dealer can make a lot of margin. So guess what? You get lent on or maybe your position in the queue isn't quite where you thought it was.

[00:48:47]Um, and Ferrari is so successful that they basically sell everything they make. But they do use um selling tools like the same way that Porsche does uh which is if you want the really juicy one, you've got to have bought the right number of the the lesser one. So there's no question they're going to sell everyone of this. Problem is it looks absolutely hideous. That's being polite.

[00:49:10]The the internet has really blown up about this. and the um the the Ferrari apologista if I can use such a term are saying ah but you don't really understand the market on why uh why this is why they're doing this and it's reaching to a new west coast USA market who wants a Ferrari but without the noise um and without the styling and without the grace and without the design and and all of that stuff. To me it looks like a Kia or something else like that. Apparently it is huge. It's well over 2 m long. Oh no, more than sorry more than um five six meters long. It is an enormous lump of a thing and I think it looks looks really rough. Um interesting point uh the rest of the world appears to agree because their share price has taken quite a hammering here. Um on the the day of the announcement, it dropped um it dropped what 5% or so share price. Uh which is not good. And it's currently now down uh well it peaked at uh where are we there?

[00:50:13]309 and it's it's come down to about 282. So the rest of the world isn't terribly impressed. But why is this interesting to PC Pro readers? You say, "Well, it's an EV car. That's interesting." Um but it's actually Johnny Iive who was the design boss at Apple. Um and uh he set up this uh uh design company. Um all very very west coast of course and he has been and his team has been responsible for the interior and potentially some of the exterior design of this although Ferrari apparently being a little bit tight lipped about who did the outside. Um, so it has enormous amounts of Apple style influence simply because of the impact of Johnny IV on this. Um, and then that obviously opens up the really scarous rumor which is take given if you take how long it takes to actually bring a car to market. This is not something they've done in the last 6 months and slapped out the front door.

[00:51:11]Is this actually the Apple car?

[00:51:14]Now there's a thought for you because Apple was designing an EV car.

[00:51:18]>> Yeah. uh under Johnny IV and um uh they canceled it. They decided not to bring it to market for a whole bunch of reasons uh that we can, you know, talk about another time, but they decided not to come to market with it. Is this uh Johnny Ives uh motoring? Harrah. Don't know. Sorry, this is a bit of a long nib, but that's the angle to it. It's going to be very interesting to see uh how well it sells and how well they can support it.

[00:51:46]>> Okay. Well, from Johnny IV to the Pope because Pope Leo the what is he the 14th has um released his Magnifica Humanitas this week. Um and it's basically a a sort of sermon on AI if you like. And it's basically a list of principles on which he believes AI should and shouldn't be used. So just to give a quick run through, he said AI must serve human dignity, not replace human judgment or reduce people to data. AI and warfare is especially dangerous. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. Uh algorithmic algorithmic decisions can deepen injustice. For example, denying access to healthare, jobs or security. Uh power must be concentrated in the hands of few of a few governments or tech. Sorry, power must not be concentrated into the hands of a few governments or tech companies.

[00:52:33]The hidden and human the hidden human and environmental costs matter. And apparently the church wants a seat in the AI debate. There's a surprise. Um so he's ruffled a few fig feathers with these um pronouncements and AI although I think uh the US vice president said he largely agreed with some of it. So um interesting interesting to see if anything happens on the back of that. Uh John, next one's with you.

[00:53:00]>> Yes, Nvidia um is getting rid of its GPU control panel outlet. This has been around for 20 odd years. is if you've done anything with Nvidia cards, you will remember this tool for configuring.

[00:53:13]Um they're basically sunsetting it. Um you will still be able to download it.

[00:53:18]They're still going to support it in terms of it being end of life. Um but you they won't be adding any more features to it. Uh they're going to replace it with something called Nvidia app. Well, goodness me, wasn't that um a novel piece of naming. So if you are an Nvidia user and I guess a great many of us are um then look out for uh Nvidia app to replace Nvidia control panel >> and a late entry John >> a late entry yes um or I think we might have I might have touched on this a few months ago um Wi-Fi 8 otherwise known by its correct terminology 802.11bn for Bertie nun such um is the next generation of the Wi-Fi 7 of the Wi-Fi specification obviously coming after Wi-Fi 7 um it is um obviously going to be absolutely fantastic it's going to be incredible it's going to be so fast and all the other marketing terms etc that um will will apply at this point um now this wouldn't really have mattered because the um the specifications panel is still doing ratification on the design and so forth but basically 80211BN is now done and dusted at least in terms of its first wave. Um, and it now needs to go out to manufacturers to make things and then see whether it interoperates and whether it actually works with each other and so forth and then moves forward from there.

[00:54:46]Uh, that's fine. Uh, and so as part of that, Broadcom have just announced that they've got a chipset uh, ready to go pretty much. I mean there is there is some staging on this to come out over the next months and into next year. Uh and there will be uh high-end versions and low-end versions and so forth of this but expect to see noise around uh Wi-Fi 8 coming soon. Now I would be quite interested by this because you know speed is good except almost nobody has implemented Wi-Fi 7 MLO correctly yet with one notable exception which is this lovely little device which is uh UniFi's Wi-Fi 7 MLO client. You plug this into your laptop and it acts as your Wi-Fi radio. This will do full proper channel bonding of five and 6 GHz channels on Wi-Fi 7. And the speed you can get through this is utterly uh mind-boggling up towards 5 Gbits a second of user data. Um but no, that's you know, let them finish that first please before anyone goes towards Wi-Fi 8. Agreed. Uh okay, thank you John. It is hardware time and this week's one is with me and it is this lump of metal here. I wonder if any of our Discord listeners could guess what it is just from seeing for those on the audio only version. I'm showing them a sort of oblong shaped uh device probably about the size of a a Mac Studio, isn't it?

[00:56:25]Yeah, it's a mini PC kind of size but um oblong shaped. Uh pencil sharpener says Jeff Campbell. Bento box says no modem.

[00:56:36]Uh is that the internet? Says JJ. No, it's not. It is a never says it looks like something teachers used to throw at a student in the good old days. Uh if they threw this it would be quite an expensive mistake because this is a ultra short throw projector um from the good people at ASA. Um so this is basically apparently designed for the increasingly smaller living spaces we find ourselves in in the UK according to the press release. Um, so instead of having to mount a projector on a wall, you know, five 10 meters away, uh, this thing, uh, works from as close as sort of 20, 30 cm away as the surface you're projecting onto. And in fact, it really only does work, uh, very close up. If you try and move this further back at what I would call a normal projector distance of, you know, two or three meters, it really struggles. It's not bright enough. The auto keystone really struggles. The autofocus really struggles. So, it really you really want this very close to where your uh the surface you're projecting on. It works both uh in this both in the sort of flat format and can be turned on its end and used to project onto a table. So the one of the purposes that a give for this is digital board games. Um so if you project that in front of you, you can, you know, play a digital board game on the table in front of you. Obviously, you'd want to put a a a white cloth on it or uh if you've got a white table, that's ideal because color tables don't work particularly well projectors, but um it's nice. And there's an additional um touch module that you can buy for this device, which I haven't tested, which basically turns the projection into a touch surface, so you can physically touch if you're playing a ball game, you know, move the pieces or whatever on the table in front of you. I've not tested that. I don't know if it works effectively or not. Um, but as a day-to-day projector, you know, this is this is primarily designed for the home, but obviously no reason why you couldn't use it in the office as well. In fact, the most useful um way I found to use it, so it's hard to to see here, but you know, you can see the walls around me in the office. I mean, quite a tight office space. just to my left um there's a white wall and I can plunk this on the desk desk next to me and have effectively a 40 50 60inch screen on the wall to my left um with the projected image in it. It has uh is it own operating system so you can just fire it up, connect it to your Wi-Fi.

[00:59:28]There's a a remote control that comes with it. So, you have to go through the rather tiresome entering your Wi-Fi password using a remote control. Um, but once you've done that, um, it it fires into its own operating a own operating system, and there's YouTube pre-installed, Netflix is pre-installed, Amazon Prime's pre-installed. So, again, once you've entered all your credentials into those apps, you can just access them like you would on a smart TV. It has a HDMI input on the side if you just want to run it from a cable from your laptop. Uh it also does wireless um screen mirroring. So if on your phone for example or your tablet uh you can have say the eye player app running and connect it to this uh via a rather clunky app um that's built in um to basically mirror the screen of what's on your on your phone. Um a few of you are getting ahead of me on the uh the resolution. So yes, it's a well it says support for full HD. Um, but uh it that is 1080i, not 1080p as John's rightly pointed out. Um, and the but the picture quality is pretty good. I would say the brightness will be my biggest issue with this thing. There are three different brightness levels.

[01:00:57]I've, you know, to be fair, I'm testing it in a fairly daylight office, but even, you know, once the lights go down later at night, it's fine. So, if you're using it for home projection, it's fine.

[01:01:09]In the daylight in the, you know, this isn't the the best lit office in the world, but um it can be a little bit difficult to see the detail at the default brightness. There's higher brightness levels, but um they don't bring enough uh to to really make the picture sing. Um it's got a built-in uh speaker as well. The sound quality is actually pretty good um from this speaker, but it can you can also connect it to a Bluetooth speaker if you want better audio quality. Um what else can I tell you? Oh, the fan noise. The fan noise is actually pretty gentle for a projector. it's, you know, especially when you're running at this time of year, the I mean, the fan runs pretty constantly anyway. I've had this for a few weeks and I've never heard the fan not run, but the fan certainly doesn't overwhelm the audio that comes out of the internal speaker. Um, so I'm not too worried about that. This thing costs £549.99.

[01:02:10]ASA say it has a 30,000 hour lifespan.

[01:02:15]Um, any questions from the floor?

[01:02:20]>> Uh, well, the 1080i bit offends my nerdness.

[01:02:25]Um, I must confess. Uh, and the max brightness is not fab. Um, but it's a small thing and you can put it up against a wall quite nicely like the side of your garage. So, I've sort of tentatively suggested on the chat channel that this could be quite a good good thing for like a barbecue projector of an evening. If when it's starting to get dark, you can, you know, throw some shrimp on the barbie or whatever the phrase is and watch the footy. And how good is it? I mean, what sort of size of of image throw are you likely to be getting from this?

[01:02:59]>> So, I think the maximum you where it's comfortable is about 50 60 in. Um, >> so it's useful, but it's not huge. I mean, 50 60 inches is a good size, but that's not quite the size of my garage, is it?

[01:03:13]>> No, it's not. I I wouldn't think of this as like a >> So, it's not really a party projector.

[01:03:18]It's uh because that size is not going to be big enough to support a group of people sat outside swigging beer.

[01:03:26]>> Yes and no. I mean, you know, you'd sit around a television that size quite comfortably watching a game of football, for example. Well, I don't I'm not too worried about that. The resolution thing, I wouldn't get too hung up on that. It's not the sharpest image I've ever seen, but you're not sitting there looking at >> Yeah. thinking this is really blurry, horrible pitch quality. It's It's decent. The frame rates are decent. Um I Yeah. Someone's now posting the PR images showing what they've put on their press release. It is nowhere near as good as that. In fact, >> I believe that image. No.

[01:04:00]>> No. It should that it's really bad that they even put that image out because it's not even close. But no projected images is I mean what they've basically done there is put a still of a film on a white wall that that is not representative of the quality. I I was I was looking at the web page and I looked at the wrong thing and thought it was 154 quid at which point it would have been hotter than hot because you know goodness me 150 quid let's let's have three of them because just such a useful thing at 150 quid at 500 and something quid it's a little bit more intense on the wallet I must confess.

[01:04:35]>> Yeah.

[01:04:35]>> And I'm not sure the spec is good enough for me for 550 quid. it. What I mean by that is I haven't looked, but I suspect I could get something quite a lot better for maybe 800 and spend a bit more, but get an awful lot more use out of it and usefulness. Maybe I'm just barking off the wrong tree, but that's kind of my um impression.

[01:05:00]Yes, I think that, you know, the the the chief selling point here is the ultra short throat that the fact this can work in fairly tight spaces. is like I say on the office next to me literally sit on the desk next to me and give me another 50-in screen on my desk to my right. I really like that as a thing. I'm not sure I would make this my first choice if I was looking for a family projector that we're going to use to watch Netflix every night. I don't think it's unless you're in a very tight living space.

[01:05:30]>> Um I'm not sure. And you know a lot of people live in flats these days.

[01:05:35]traditional projectors aren't always brilliant for those. Um, so yeah, I think there are definitely reasons to to buy it, but I think they're reasonably niche.

[01:05:46]>> Now, Ian Ratson has just pointed a link to the Acer website for this.

[01:05:51]>> Yeah.

[01:05:52]>> And says it's Android version 9. Well, he's done better than finding out the version number than I did, but it's definitely the only thing I'd say about that is uh there is an app store in it that only links to um Asus app store. You don't have access to the Google Play Store as far as I can see. Um so there's a selection of default apps in there. But how much RAM does it have?

[01:06:20]>> I don't know. I guess I'm just thinking here is maybe they don't allow you into the full app store because it's actually a pretty small specification internally sufficient for what they're trying to do but nothing more >> or maybe for security reasons to have to say you know it's >> 2 GB according to um uh several people which is you know okay but not exactly brilliant is it?

[01:06:44]Yeah, but I mean how much memory space do you actually need on the projector? I mean, most >> if you're using this as a as a smart device like a super like a super big tablet rather than rather than a a video projector, you know, function difference.

[01:06:59]>> Yeah. But that's I think that's a little bit unfair. It's a it's a projector.

[01:07:04]It's not a it's not a tablet. But um yeah, there are obviously I I wouldn't be too worried about the the version of Android being out of date to be honest.

[01:07:15]>> Okay, so we um >> yes, hotter or not from >> we do. Yes. Well, so if you're listening online, uh Running Dak has kindly started a vote rolling. I'm not even going to press the show results button because I can feel how this one's going already. But go on, John.

[01:07:29]>> I have pressed it. Um uh for me, I'm sorry. It's not cheap enough to be in that kind of fun bracket and it's not good enough wi with I accept a slightly elevated price tag for me to be happy with its spec. So, I'm going to have to bow out and say it's a not for me.

[01:07:51]>> Yeah, look, I'm not I don't you you'll be shocked to hear I don't think this is the uh the hottest of hot hardwares I've ever had in my hands. I think there are like like I say I think there are use cases where this comes in very handy that sort of next you're on a desk scenario where you create an extra screen if you're in a very tight living space where you don't have much space to fit traditional projector and I know saying like you know £500 is punchy you know I remember 10 15 years ago we were paying 2,0003,000 for a projector that the price of these devices has come down considerably over the last decade or so nice to see the price of something coming down but I agree that um there are other better specified models that um wouldn't cost you a great deal more if not similar amounts, but I think you have to the Ultra Shul Pro is very much the selling point of this, not the the general projector qualess of it. So, I'm going to say it's hot for those specific purposes, but not >> Have you looked at the vote?

[01:08:51]>> Certainly generally. I have looked at the vote now.

[01:08:54]>> Go on, tell us.

[01:08:55]>> It's not gone particularly well, I'll be honest. Um, so the current score is 89% not 11% uh with me. Thank you, Mom. Um, but it does appear the uh the uh the the mighty jury of the PC Pro listenership is not been convinced by my appalling sales job on this projector. So, I apologize to Asa immediately. Um, thank you very much for listening this week. Uh thank you very much if you're uh joining us live especially we're here at 1 pm every Thursday except we won't be next week because uh John might be well we might be next week >> but we'll we have to so we'll be seven hours ahead so we'll just see how things are >> but John and John and Tim will be uh broadcasting from Taipei at some point.

[01:09:46]So, even if they're not live, keep an ear or an an ear out in your um in your podcast feeds and uh we will all see you in a couple of weeks time, I guess. So, uh goodbye.

[01:09:58]>> Thanks a lot.

[01:10:02]>> Thank you everybody. I'm off to throw myself into a bowl of cold water. It is very hot in this office now.

[01:10:11]>> And apologies to the B.

[01:10:12]>> Turn the air conditioning on because it's a bit noisy for the podcast.

[01:10:16]Yes, like my bin men. But I will try my best to scrub them out of the actual uh the audio which I'm about to edit. God help me. Uh okay. Thank you everybody.

[01:10:26]Thanks John.

[01:10:27]>> Thanks all.

[01:10:27]>> Take care.