Monthly Archive for November, 2008

NFS:Underground & LittleBigPlanet

Published on 28 November, 2008 in Life and Technology. 0 Comments

Those are the best PS3 games ever! :)

Bought LittleBigPlanet first thinking it would be a bit of a laugh as it’s clearly designed for younger children, but maybe just because I am childish, I find it great! :) The fact that more or less the whole game is user generated content makes it exciting, sure there is built in levels that you can work up on if you don’t have online access but once you have signed in to PSN all the other user designed levels show up and you can play and even edit them yourself. If you wish you can choose to start with a blank canvas and create you own level, this can be played alone, shared with only friends or shared to the whole world if you wish. It so creative and you can spend hours just playing around with it. Totally recommend the game! :D

My Audi TT in NFS:Underground.

Secondly I pre-ordered Need For Speed Underground from Tesco with my staff discount, it came last Friday and since then I haven’t been able to put it down. It’s the most addictive game I have played to date. It’s a basic story line that you are an undercover cop that is trying to take out a network of smugglers. You take part in events and races to gain their trust but ultimately you have to take them down. The amount of car modifications you can make is dazzling and every car can truly be your own, it’s much better than the previous NFS (ProStreet). Physics also seems a lot better with cars actually moving them in the way you expect rather than tapping the control and you car goes flying into the nearest wall. Races and such are rewarding and you get cars and other points that gets you discount on parts. Overall a very good and addictive game, I have only been playing it for a week and I am at 70% complete already.

MacBook

Published on 7 November, 2008 in Life and Technology. 4 Comments

Got my new MacBook on Monday, have been using it almost non stop for the past 4 days and I have to say it’s a good laptop that seems to be built well however there are a few issues with it.

First the good points:

The looks, as usual it looks great, the aluminium is a great material and the way it’s manufactured (UniBody) makes for a sturdy laptop that can be picked up from the edge with the laptops weight placed on that edge and there is no flex at all, same with the display, it’s really thin thanks to the LED technology and has no flex as it’s all one block of aluminium.

The power, thanks to the 2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4GB of DDR3 RAM the laptop is nippy and does everything quickly. The new 9400M means that it also plays 1080p without any hassle which was a no go on the old MacBook with stuttering and stuff.

The trackpad, this thing is great, although it’s made of glass don’t be put off, it feels nothing like glass and is nice and big. There is plenty of space to move around in and this makes Drop ‘N’ Drag easy to do with one finger. There is also no button as the whole trackpad is a button, personally I never used the buttons anyway preferring to tap to click so this hasn’t really affected me so cannot comment how it feels to people that have always used the button. Right click is much better to as it can be assigned to the right hand corner meaning that you simply click or tap where the right hand button should be and it works rather than the unusual two finger tap like the old MacBook’s had. However under Bootcamp the trackpad is a disaster and multi-touch is not supported, right click is also nearly impossible. This seems to be a driver issue that Apple hopefully resolves sometimes soon.

Now on to the bad:

The screen, this is quite disappointing considering the price, I was expecting it to have the same screen as the MacBook Air which by the way is excellent. Unfortunately this is not the case, they have put in an LG screen which doesn’t have good viewing angles and out the box looks washed out, when this has been calibrated it does look much better and is defiantly usable but for the price I was expecting better and it can be done as it’s clearly done in the MacBook Air. However I didn’t get any dead pixels so I was quite happy about that aspect of the screen.

The keyboard, the black keyboard on the aluminium body looks the part and the backlighting is nice, the white is a good choice of colour unlike some tacky keyboards that use colours that are dull and useless. The backlighting is quite bright and is spread evenly with no bright or dull patches, the ambient light sensor is also quite good as it adjusts the screen and backlight brightness to make it look best in the current light. However the keyboard also has two major problems, all the F (F2,F4 for example) are slanted to the left with the right slightly raised, this is really annoying and shows to me that Apple just don’t have decent quality control. Also the spacebar squeaks from time to time which can be annoying when typing in a quiet environment, it appears that it is rubbing against the aluminium body, this may cause long term ware of they key but that will have to be checked in the future.

Overall the MacBook is a decent laptop and I would say even with it’s few problems that is still worth the slightly higher price, the new aluminium body seems more stable and resilient than the old plastic MacBook’s. However the slanted keys and the not up to par screen is annoying for a laptop the price of the new MacBook, I chose the highest model and added 4GB RAM which brought the price very close to the Pro range which apparently have a much better screen but still not as good as the Air, as the Air is a 13.3″ display I don’t see why Apple didn’t use it in the new MacBook. I am happy with my laptop and it ticks all the right boxes for what I use it for.

Would be happy to hear from any one that has the new MacBook to see if my problems are universal or wither I got the dodgy laptop. Hope this review helps people that are looking to purchase the new MacBook, best advice to anyone that is, try and get to a retail outlet and have a look at it before purchasing it.