Missives from the 6th Floor

The Mini is a bit underpowered, especially in the graphics department, and over-priced for the performance it offers. The iMac offers the core functionality she needs, but will force her to settle for a smaller screen than we were otherwise considering.

On the same topic - with the recent rats jumping off the HD-DVD ship, most recently Netflix announcing they're ditching HD-DVD in favor of Blue-Ray, my passing interest in acquiring a PS3 was strengthened.

I was figuring I'd wait for the next price reduction - expected by many to follow the Cell processor built with the new 45nm manufacturing process.

And then I discovered that the PS3 doesn't speak infrared.

As in, you can't control it with a normal infrared remote. Like my Phillips Pronto.

WTF?

Sony will sell you a Bluetooth based remote to control the BlueRay player portion of the device, but that doesn't let me build macros (like the ever-popular turn on the TV, the receiver, the device, and set the inputs appropriately). And there's a 3rd party USB IR dongle, but being a USB dongle, it requires that the PS3 be powered on to function.

Meaning you can't turn on the PS3 via IR remote.

Some engineer at at Sony had his head firmly up his ass when he made the decision to eliminate an IR port - hopefully not just to save pennies on a device destined for the living room.

It's driven people to doing rather insane things to try to bridge an obvious gap in the product design.

Maybe, just maybe, Sony will fix this idiocy in their 45nm re-spin, but I'm not holding my breath.