OT: Anyone owned a Microsoft Zune?

Yes that seems to be most of the issue, complaining that a 128kb/s track sounds shit. I got an 80Gb iPod because I prefer the bit rate to be as high as possible. I rip CDs in an uncompressed format, and the quality of the iPod for classical music is astonishing.

Since I don't want people to know that I'm listening to an iPod or indeed to anything expensive I use JVC marshmallows when I'm wandering around. The sound quality is good and certainly adequate for use on aircraft/the street. I use AKG cans at home or play the iPod via the HiFi. The quality is as good as my CD player and that's a high-end audiophile unit.

There's a site somewhere on the web where one can get an iPod upgraded to use an external DAC, but IIRC the site mentions that the analogue output from the iPod is essentially flat and free from distortion beyond any limit of the human ear.

Have you ever tried to view an Excel spreadsheet on a Blackberry? - fecking useless.

I just send 'em to the Thinkpad to view these days - but that kind of defeats the point of having the Blackberry in the first place.

You try viewing one on anything with a small screen. There's settings you can tweak that make it better, but it's a small device with a smalls screen. And on a pearl it's hopeless.

It's not the small screen that's the issue.

That's one thing Windows Mobile can do well - you get most of the functionality of desktop Excel when you're looking at sheets on a small screen - eg. auto-filter and the ability to hide columns / rows.

It's the lack of auto-filter that's probably the biggest issue for me.

You work in IT and you use Google Apps for work related file storage?

Jesus Christ.

This may explain why you're hauling servers around in a s**te old 4x4, though.

The company uses google apps premium for email, calendaring, and public (within the company) doc storage. Far cheaper letting google take the strain of antispam, and antivirus on docs. It is a very cost effective simple groupware when combined with Thundbird and Lightning or Sunbird, or just firefox if you are happy using webmail. And the iPhones and windows mobile devices in the office can use it if needed.

Not like we need full enterprise solutions in an office of 20 plus 2 overseas outworkers.

And google can grow the number of seats as we need them, they are as secure any other externally accessible mail/calendar service, and they take responsibility keeping the equipment up and running.

I really can't believe that any company that's in the IT field would use Google for professional purposes.

That's absolutely crazy, premium or not.

You're effectively handing over all your information to a very untrustworthy third party.

Indeed - lots of complaints about the new classic being not as good though. I got a pair of Etymotic ER6s when I was frequent flying, now using the Westone UM2 (much more top and bottom extension and more comfortable, in fact very very comfy) -AKG headphones though at home and "work". Sat listening to itunes in the living room through the laptop with an external DAC on the westones at the moment and it's like the kids / TV aren't here!

For all you know she might think they've got a wanker image because they're driven by those awful nouveau riche types...

I use GMail and Google Groups too - no real problem with that!

Can you think of a trustworthy third party?

That's how the industry works - personally I like to host everything I can (host my own mail, just installing some CRM for myself as well) but the Google suite is actually quite clever.

Gmail etc is fine for personal use.

It's blacklisted by most IT departments, though.

The thought of trusting company information to Google is quite scary. I wouldn't work with or trust the kind of company that did.

We do it every day - how many people have google indexing everything on their PC then use outlook / OWA / whatever to access corporate mail??

This is google we're talking about here.

The company that effectively reads all your emails for advertising purposes, and makes it very hard to permanently delete anything. Even then, I don't believe anything is actually permanently deleted, they just chose not to show it to you when you click delete.

I don't deal with anything I personally find too sensetive for Google, however, I know our retail partners would *not* be happy if I stored sales information about them on Google servers.

Too many people, no doubt.

I won't let Google index my personal machine and I certainly wouldn't let Google anywhere near my work machine.

Any half decent IT department would block access to anything other than the google search engine anyway.

iPod, I'd say. And if you want to control it from the headunit (which makes a lot of sense if you get the right headunit), an iPod is pretty much your only choice.

I've never tried it, but MM is supposed to be able to support an iPod, and there are other pieces of software out there that do the same.

That said, I've never had a problem with iTunes and it's easy enough to use so even the wife has absolutely no problems using it.

Trouble with that is you get two opposing schools of management - them that lock everything down (external access is via SecurID and encrypted terminal services / citrix connection) and them that keep it open (webmail, OWA, all open to the world)

Personally I'm of the opinion that keeping it accessible is important, thing is that people will access webmail from anywhere, that's the whole point. So you might as well just use Gmail.

Email can never been regarded as a suitable method for transferring confidential information anyway.

Hmmm, must have just been a way to get closer to me!