The much anticipated XBOX live dashboard update is here

Several people I know have been quite excited about the new XBOX live dashboard and have been eagerly looking forward to today, when they can finally download and play with their own new XBOX avatar, among other things.

Here in the UK we won’t be getting the movie streaming that the US will get, personally I am not fussed about that, but I am sure there is no shortage of people who are very keen to see it launched in Europe.

The download and update this evening went very smoothly, so long as I ignore the system error and single red light my XBOX gave me when I turned it on. Due to holiday and various commitments, it had been about 3 weeks since it was last turned on.

My first impressions of the new dashboard are possitive, its funky and clear, though at first glance there does seem to be a lot more items to choose from, compared to the previous dashboard. I am sure this is just a result of the reorganising that Microsoft done and that the one I use most will be easier and quicker to get to.

The new avatars are well designed and while I am sure they will be compared to Nintendos Miis, I think they are more grown up.

Diego Safari Rescue

Having bought a Nintendo Wii a few months ago, it was inevitable that sooner or later I would be buying games for my 4 year old daughter. I have no idea why it was this Diego game that my wife chose, but the fact that the Diego and Dora TV series is very popular with our young offspring, was probably a significant factor. The price was about £20 would have put me off, as I like to buy games after their initial popularity was waned somewhat and so tend to be a bit cheaper.

That said, we have certainly had our moneys worth from the purchase. We have both spent some time ‘playing’ the game with our daughter and she has spent time on her own, simply enjoying playing the game. Such is the simplicity of the game that a 4 year old can very quickly get the hang of it. Yet it is not so monotonous that she is bored of it. She will simply loves playing it and will repeat sections of the game just for the shear pleasure of playing the game.

Its a sad indictment of my ‘grown up’ attitude to games that I detest replaying games that I own and once completed, or more accurately, one they get too hard, they tend to be discarded to the dusty back shelf while another new and exiting game takes my fancy.

Diego will be familiar with many parents of young children and is a safe programme for all kids to watch and includes some educational aspects as well. Safari Rescue builds on that and has very simple game play and gradually eases in more complicated moves as the game progresses. There are also sections that make use of the WiiRemotes motion sensors, such as pumping up a balloon or doing a swimming action. Even a four year old can work out that you can still do these actions from the comfort of the sofa, but at least the game play is not restricted to pushing buttons.

Movement of Diego on the screen is done by tilting the WiiRemote, the only button pushing required is to do an action, such as jump. The menus are navigated in the same way. This is a good implementation, as it makes the whole experience much easier for a young child.

So pleased am I with this Diego game, that I am certain that I’ll be purchasing more Diego titles and will very likely purchase Dora ones as well.

Samsung R700

My wife has had her new Samsung R700 laptop for a couple of weeks now, so I thought now was a good time to give a detailed review of it. We have already had to deal with poor quality Dells before so Dell was out of the running, my preference would have been to have a Lenovo as I have had very good ones for my work, but for personal use they are just too costly for our home budget, which is a shame.

We chose the Samsung over many of it rivals because it was given a good review on CNET. We wanted a high power laptop and a decent keyboard was very high on our priorities. The R700 offers a full size keyboard and a separate numeric keypad, so barring a poor review, the Samsung was effectively top of our list of laptop choices.

This laptop is our second R700 because the first one suffered from a dead screen the first day we got it, see here. Having already refunded us for a failed Sony Viao, DABS continued to provide good customer support by shipping us a replacement Samsung. We did have to wait about three weeks for the replacement and communication was lacking a little. But at no point did Dabs fob us off or fail to deliver on a promise, which means they will continue to get my business and recommendations.

So, now that we have it, how is the Samsung to use? I’ll do the negatives first as it is by far the shortest list.

Negatives

When sitting on the sofa (as I am currently typing this) the balance of the laptop is wrong. There is far too much weight at the back of the laptop, meaning that the front edge lifts off your lap, leaving a gap of about half an inch or more. This makes a large typing effort (such as this blog post) less comfortable as it should be due to the wobble of the laptop as the typing pressure causes a see-saw affect. Lifting my knees up to counter this is only a temporary releif because its not long before the laptop starts to slide down my lap and I have to adjust the position every few sentences.

This is by far the biggest frustration but since we more often use the laptop sitting at a table its not something that effects us every time we use it.

The home/end/pgup/pgdn keys are part of the numpad and not separate as on a desktop keyboard, this means much use is made of the Num Lock key if you like to use the keypad for numeric entry.

Other issues with the laptop are minor niggles; the black gloss finish marks easily, there is no physical switch to turn the wireless on and off, something that has been very useful on laptops that have one.

Positives

The keyboard is great, the full size keys make it as easy to type on as a normal keyboard and the feed back is good.

The screen is bright and sharp, making everything clear and easy to read. Glare from the sun is only a problem in the brightest of sunshine, which means we can use it in the conservatory.

The R700 comes with a good array of connections, including 4 USB ports. However, we have not had need for any of them since the printer, scanner, external storage, iPod etc are all connected to my desktop upstairs.

There is also an HDMI port should we want to connect it to our HD TV (also a Samsung), though to be honest, I really don’t see that need arising, unless a digital camcorder makes its way into the house.

One thing that has caused frustration in the house before is wireless, we use a wireless TV sender so that we can watch TV in the bedroom upstairs without having to fork out the extra cost of Sky Multiroom. This has on occasion caused wireless laptops to fail to connect to the wireless box upstairs. The solution is simple, switch of the wireless sender, usually this results in someone coming back downstairs when we realise we’ve forgotten to switch it back on again. It is helpful that this does not seem to affect the Samsung, the wireless connectivity is excellent.

Summary

A solidly built and well specced laptop that I have no hesitation is recommending.

Sometimes Technology Just Lets Us Down

Sometimes technology simply, and for no obvious reason, lets us down and we feel lost without it.

This week was my turn to experience the frustration, and even anger, and being inconvenienced by technology. First it was my wife’s Sony Viao. Just inside its 12 month warranty we noticed the screen would fade to black and back to normal again. For a while there was no discernible pattern, until I noticed it was related to the angle of the screen. A little manipulation of the screen angle usually brought the picture back. On a laptop within warranty, this is obviously not acceptable, so it was returned to our reseller, dabs.co.uk. Within a week Dabs had refunded the full cost of the laptop (nice customer service Dabs), but it would have been nice to have had a slightly more personal email explaining the refund and why as well as the formal refund notice we received.

With refund in pocket, it was time to go hunting for a replacement. We looked at several and eventually plumped for the Samsung R700, after cnet.co.uk gave it a particularly good review. We decided on the older R700 over the newer R710 because there was a wait for the R710 and no one was giving the full spec of the delivery machine, even though they had a price for it. Not knowing the exact spec we were going to be paying for is a good reason not to buy. So order placed with Dabs on a Friday evening the an excited wife received her new toy on Monday. Initial opinion of the machine is on a par with the CNET review. It feels sturdy and the keyboard is nice to use, the screen clear and easy to read. Its when I settle down with it for a couple of hours of setting up for our home network and the software that Mrs Limey requires that things start to go wrong. The first sign is on a post install reboot, the laptop appears to boot okay with all the right noises being made, but the screen remains blank throughout, only to be resolved by a hard power-off and back on again. Not good, but hopefully a one-off, I hope. The next post install reboot repeats the process. Now I am concerned. The next gives me reason to be very frustrated, this time the screen is covered with a series of vertical lines of varying colours and subsequent reboots don’t change the situation. This laptop is not .

Having been without a laptop for a few weeks, the wife is starting to get a little jittery about access to her emails and facebook profile, the thought of a couple more weeks is almost too much to bear. How did we get so technology dependent?

To Dabs’ credit, collection is quickly arranged and we are hoping the replacement will be okay. Since there was no second choice to the Samsung R700 we have chosen to have the faulty one replaced with the same model in a hope the faulty laptop was a one-off. We shall have to see.

To add to the evenings frustration Mrs Limey also noticed that our Richo R6 digital compact camera had two faulty buttons on it. The camera had only been back with us for a few weeks, after being repaired for a faulty screen display and previously we had sent the camera back for a issue which came up just after we bought it. So this is the 3rd time the Richo has failed on us.

Despite being very unsuperstitious, in fact I’d describe myself as anti-superstitious, I must admit I am wondering what the 3rd technology failure is going to be.