I don’t even know what it actually does that my current phone doesn’t do, but I still need one.
It doesn’t look amazing, but the HTC G1 - the first Google Android phone - is, for some reason, a necessity. It’s not even vastly different in size to my Vario III, although it’s slightly narrower and thinner, and a mite taller:
My old Vario II was on it’s way out, so T-Mobile kindly furnished me
with a shiny new Vario III. It’s very lovely.
Play Asia started selling these recently. They look like a Megadrive variant of the many Famicom “famiclones” out there, but they’re not - they’re officially licenced by Sega! And they’re really cheap too, coming in at under £20. You get 20 games built into the unit, but it also has a cartridge slot to play original (and forthcoming re-released) cartridges. I tested it with quite a few games of varying geographic origin, and aside from the UK version of Street Fighter II SCE crashing, I didn’t have any problems.
Anyway, if you want one, get thee over to Play Asia. They even come in green and blue!
We ordered an MSI Wind laptop (rebadged and sold in the UK as a PC World Advent 4211 Netbook) for work recently, and it arrived yesterday so I’ve had a chance to have a play with it.
My very first impressions were quite poor. It looked very nice, is small, light and seems reasonably well built. However, it wouldn’t power up. Every time it tried to boot past the POST screen, the hard drive squealed and it switched itself off. Even after fully charging the battery, it still refused to boot. I thought it was DOA, but then, it finally started up properly and has been fine since. Very odd.
After the usual Windows setup stuff (it comes with XP Home), there was about 15 minutes of “Tech Guys” automatic customisation, no doubt adding nonsense to the machine I don’t need. Not that it matters, as Home is going to be replaced with Pro anyway.
Once properly up and running, I was able to give it a test run. It seems very quick (although has no bloat on it yet), and the keyboard is pretty good to type on. The trackpad is a little small, and the area on the right for scrolling isn’t marked - and the “scroll sensitive” area seems very narrow making it awkward to scroll. The trackpad button is very stiff and rather small too, and would benefit from protruding above the case rather than sitting flush.
Comparing it to an EeePC 701, the Wind would seem to be the better machine. It’s 1024×600 screen is both larger (10″) and higher resolution than the Eee’s, the keyboard is superior, and the unit isn’t actually much bigger. In fact, it’s slightly thinner, and appears to be a little lighter too. It has all the same ports as the Eee - VGA, three USB, audio, ethernet and an SD card slot. In addition, and unlike the Eee, it has bluetooth built in.
The 80GB hard drive is acres more space than the Eee’s 4GB, but it isn’t flash which may impact on battery life (which I haven’t tested) or resilience to knocks. The Wind has a built-in webcam, but its quality is rather poor compared to the Eee.
In terms of price, we paid just under £240 for the Wind, whereas the EeePC 701 set us back about £185. Is the extra £55 worth it? When you consider that a copy of XP is around £55, then you could argue yes - especially if you were going to put XP on your Eee anyway. Here’s where to get one.
I wasn’t going to buy this. It didn’t interest me as much as previous GTA games, or as much as Saints Row 2, but then I saw I could get it for 22 quid at Play-Asia and, well… Weakness. At least I didn’t break the £25 Rule, I suppose.
It arrived today. Yay!
I’ve now had my PSP for four weeks, so I thought it was time to re-evaluate what I think about it. All six games I wanted for it have now arrived, and I’ve given it a good poking. So, did things improve?
My previous comments on this were not very positive. In short, I said it was rubbish. For the most part, I still agree, but there are a few concessions. Firstly, my R button was very sticky, but this has now loosened up a lot and so rarely sticks now. Secondly, the battery cover kept falling off, but it now no longer does. I don’t know why - I’ve not changed anything. The dead pixel didn’t come back either, so I suspect it was a “stuck” pixel rather than a dead one.
However, the analogue “nub” is still rubbish. It doesn’t centre itself (it tries, but sticks to the right) and is awkward to use. Thankfully, I don’t have any games that need it, apart from the house building bit on LocoRoco.
The screen is OK, although it blurs easily and is impossible to see in sunlight as there’s too much glare. My thumbs keep touching it too as it’s near the right and square buttons. The unit as a whole is not comfortable to hold for any length of time either. It’s the wrong shape for my hands. Oh well.
Patapon is amazing. PaRappa is too hard, but fun. Lumines hasn’t been touched since I got it, and Castlevania hasn’t even been opened. LocoRoco is fantastic, although my wife has stolen it. Me and My Katamari is very good, but suffers from slowdown, popup and awful controls. If I wasn’t such a fan of the series I’d probably hate it.
Hmm. My opinion of it now is much higher than it was when I bought it, but to be completely honest, it’s not a patch on the DS. It’s more powerful, sure, but that’s the only thing it has in its favour - aside from the fact it’s the only place you can play certain games. The battery life is woeful - I’ve had it four weeks and I’ve charged the battery more than 10 times already. It doesn’t last more than four hours in one go, even with the sound down low and wireless turned off. My DS Lite usually gets me 10+ hours on a charge, and that’s a couple of years old now.
Anyway. I don’t regret buying it, but I certainly wouldn’t recommend buying a PSP to anyone.
Hell hath frozen over.
EDIT @ 16:30: And it’s broken. Ace.
Gaming Diary