Thursday, January 21, 2010

Oracle += Sun

Well, it took its time coming, but reports are that the acquisition has been approved by the EU today.

I expect a number of Sun employees will be opening their mailer with trepidation when they get into work this morning. Its the end of an era for a big name in the industry, but a great opportunity for a new era in the Java ecosystem.

Congratulations and good luck to all those involved.

Thursday, January 07, 2010

Dear Santa ...

Thanks for the socks and all that, but my G1 is nearly 18 months old now and I was thinking about getting a Nexus One.

The first problem was that trying to go through the order process using FireFox doesn't seem to work.

Every path after the 'Continue' button results in:I had assumed that the system was busy, but the problem lasted a long time, so I tried with IE, and hey presto it works.

The next 'problem' is that the phone is sold via the US, and as Google are right to point out, that means the sale incurs an import duty when it comes into the UK.

Rather than stumping up the $529 (~=£330) our American friends pay for the phone, delivery included, I was now looking at...

$529 for the phone
+ $19.99 for a UK charger
+ $29.65 shipping

with UK Sales Tax on the total at 17.5% and a 6.5% import duty on all that, which makes it ~$725 (i.e. ~=£453). Ouch.

For the difference I can almost fly to the US and pick it up myself!