The Reality Of The “Microsoft House”

My goal in this whole endeavour was deceptively simple. I wanted to centrally store my media and share it across my home network to my various PCs and mobile devices. If you believe the hype, this should be simple, but of course, it’s not. The purpose of this article is to give a true and reasonable account of what it’s actually like to try and “live the dream” of the ideals set out in the “Microsoft House” and why it’s not what we all have in our homes, unlike Microwaves, DVD players and yes, iPods.

The recently banned iPhone ads (Apple are liars, but we all knew that) are a great example of what should happen, contrasted with what actually happens.
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It’s a bit of a strange one, this. I was going to write a straight review of the iPhone 2.2 Firmware, but I don’t think the circumstances under which I came to use it really qualify me to write a fair review, so I won’t. Instead, I’ll tell you about my experiences with Firmware 2.2, which I hope is perhaps just as interesting.

I’ve never paid a penny for an iPhone, and the one I have now is an 8GB first-gen model which was given to me by my Dad, who’s decided that he doesn’t need all the bells and whistles and just wants a phone (I know exactly how he feels).

Obviously, it doesn’t work as a phone anymore, but it still works over Wi-Fi and functions in every way, apart from voice calls, cellular data and SMS. It’s not got GPS or any of the other enhancements in the new generation of iPhone 3Gs and this is the primary reason I chose not to do a straight review because a lot of my iPhones failings may because of the hardware, so to make a summary judgment over the Firmware alone would perhaps be unfair.

Anyway, the iPhone is basically a big fat lie.
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