Isn't this likely to be commercial suicide. Surely the networks generate more money from calls then they do from data (unless its pay per MB data). Why would they want to cut their own throats?Reply
@Hearthatvoiceagain supports Channan's Law: AAAA im on vodafone, have have just thrown skype at all my familly, on vodafone. I hope they are not pulling none if this rubbish aswel! But i do only get 500meg a month. Am going round the shopd today to see who can give me the most for free. But saying this aswel , i think i will use most either at my university, my home, or abroad, when i will get free wifi anyway.Reply
I would really love to see an explanation of whether a voice or data network call uses more bandwidth. I would think everyone would be better served if all the traffic was converted to packetized data, but then IANANE.Reply
I do almost all my purchasing from amazon.com and I've always been intrigued by Prime. But I generally choose the free shipping instead. While I've never been a fan of e-readers, getting one free with a Prime membership would be pretty cool. It would probably be what pushed me over the edge into getting that Prime membership.Reply
I think this is a good time to be a customer. Apple may be flexible on ipad price, Amazon may give away Kindles. I am ready to move into the whole new tablet/slate/pad media shift. I plan to wait a bit and see how this all comes together. Now if Amazon gave the Kindle away, I may have to commit to buying books from Amazon which would be a win win for both of us.Reply
@nethiker: Absolutely! I suggest a wait-and-see approach. Let them both twist in the wind for a while. Then swoop in and pick up a great deal. Ahhh...I love the sight of a desperate company. :)Reply
@geekymitch: As long as the books are sold at the same price as everyone else (which was the reason McMillan split off), they shouldn't have a problem. Beyond that, it's illegal to discriminate who to sell to if the customer is willing to pay the price. It's also illegal to discriminate when offering prices (with all things being equal).Reply
I was a prime member until just recently, and I always appreciated the slightly-faster service - it certainly comes in handy around x-mas. But I just wasn't using it enough to justify the cost.
I seriously doubt that Amazon would offer a free Kindle to every Prime customer. I can see them doing a half-price deal though, and that would make a lot more sense. Amazon offered a half-price deal to employees of (some? major?) publishing companies before x-mas this year offering them up to two Kindles for 1/2 price, and it was a smash hit. I've seen a lot more Kindles on the subway as a result.
Amazon is probably getting close to releasing the next Kindle, and it'd be a good way to clear some stock and increase their market share in the face of (real or perceived) competition.Reply
I've been a Prime member since its inception, and have been spending a lot of time lately mulling over the idea of purchasing a Kindle. But the recent ebook price hikes that the publishers have been forcing on Amazon was causing me to hesitate. So I fully support Amazon giving me a free Kindle.Reply
This WOULD be a great way to snag some additional market share before the iPad launches, perhaps give them more of a push for the pricing tier they want.Reply
what? $79 for extra-fast shipping? so far i have always received my orders from amazon the day after my order. i'm not a prime customer plus shipping is always free.
i live in europe. is it different in the states?Reply
@echo off: I have had up to 10 days. Usually it takes 3 days for them to ship it out in the first place. This would be using their super saver shipping. The other stuff isalways shipped same day assuming product is available.
Oh, and my bro is a prime customer, so I am attached to his account. Yeah, now things get here FAST.Reply
While generally prime hasn't been too bad from using it on my Dads account my initial experience with it was pretty meh. It was during his month trial and I ordered some stuff for my new PS3 slim. Some of it was sent via prime and some came from marketplace sellers. One of the marketplace items arrived the next day. The prime stuff took at least 2-3 days as far as I remember.
I thought it was pretty silly that Amazons "premium" service was getting beaten out by an independent retailer selling through the same site.Reply
Dubious. Even if they were going for extra prime sign-ups and a razor/blades model, but if they were giving away the first gen model which I guess is not selling well given the amount of competition it would make more sense, but would be a "while stocks last" kind of deal.Reply
It is indeed Symbian^3 which is being released. It's not going to be finished until later this quarter, but they're releasing the code and dev kits now.
Symbian^2 has not been abandoned. It's finished and has moved on to the "maintenance" stage. It will be appearing in devices in the first half of this year. It will not be released on open source because it contains a great deal of proprietary code.Reply
Like everyone else that has commented so far, I don't understand all this hate for Nokia, and Symbian OS, either. Maybe it's just an american thing.
I posted this comment on another article but I think it applies here:
I remember getting an N-gage in 2005 or something, my first phone.
I was actually quite delighted to find that, with the Symbian OS and its expandable memory, there was a massive amount of homebrew programs out there I could download;
nes, snes emulators, quite decent 3rd party games, custom media players, it could play almost any media I wanted it to, and without having to jailbreak it.
I also remember being really baffled when the iphone was being announced, and hailed as this revolutionary innovation by apple, and thinking; "wtf, this isn't revolutionary, my n-gage could do all of that shit!"
Turns out the n-gage could actually do more out of the box (emulators etc.) because "apps" didn't need to be approved.
And that's what baffles me; despite looking like a taco, the n-gage was awesome, seriously; a fucking revolution, because of the Symbian OS. Yet it was entirely dismissed, and mocked.
Yet the iphone, (which I still don't see what is revolutionary about it in any way,besides maybe multitouch), is hailed as THE defining phone of the decade.Reply
See Kat, I don't get the N95 dig. It's one of the largest selling smartphones of all time and simply demolished everything else in the market during its life cycle.
It still fetches a decent price in the used market because people still WANT it.
Most of the bad rap that Symbian gets is from people who have had minimal experience with it and that's sad. Functionality wise, the oldie can still beat the everliving shit out of the new kids on the block, you know?Reply
@Sandeep Murali: Hey, I owned an N95 for a year. I've still got it in a draw somewhere. I did throw it across a room several times, in frustration at how friggin' slow and irritating it is.Reply
@Kat Hannaford: If you still have it, update the firmware and see how it performs. Most of the "Slowness" was because of the earlier firmwares and were rectified later in the model's life cycle.Reply
@Sandeep Murali: It's not just the issue of speed, it's Symbian itself. Believe me, I've reviewed a lot of Nokia phones over the years, and as much as I used to love them, they need to actually make Symbian workable. I've got high hopes for Symbian 4 though, really do want to fall in love with the platform again.Reply
@Kat Hannaford: Not symbian per se, but the S60 UI. The Keitai phones that use the MOAP variant of Symbian are very fast and have no shortage of eye candy either.
Companies like Sony Ericsson ans Samsung couldn't do much to change the S60 UI because it's actually Symbian^1, which is still property of Nokia. With the code of Symbian^3 released publicly, one can expect new innovations in UI layout for the upcoming Symbian phones. For example, single touch selection is possible with S^3.
That along with qt would definitely change the Symbian landscape in a year's time. Let's hope it's for the better.Reply
Quick note. It is Symbian^3 that is open sourced, the latest version of the platform, not Symbian^2.
Details are all on developer.symbian.org. From governance model, to roadmaps and at 2pm GMT today the full source code.
That is a REAL open community!Reply
@Sandeep Murali: S^3 shouldn't be launching for six months, according to that article. Based on the 6-monthly cycle S^2 should be launching right about... well, now.Reply
@DwightJebbies: I stand corrected, it is indeed S^3 which they're releasing. It's not finished, but it should be done within the quarter and S^2 has too much proprietary code to release.Reply
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