Apple iPad 2

As you know, I already have the original iPad, or should I say, I had the original iPad (C is now the proud owner of a shiny, carefully used, original iPad).

I decided that due to my iPad 2 shipping early (the 9th, and not the 15th that they originally stated), and C was working away for a week, I could survive a couple of days without the iPad and handed it over on Friday night. To be honest, you don’t realise how dependant you become on tech, I felt like I’d lost a limb…..that was until today when my iPad 2 turned up

A few noticeable things,  it’s definitely a lot thinner, and seems a lot lighter….as for the speed…much snappier

Like most people getting the iPad 2, I threw on Infinity Blade to see how it looked. Infinity Blade is one of the games that has been enhanced for the iPad 2….and yup, the additional textures really do make it look at lot better, make me almost forget that it’s the same resolution as the first.

To be honest, I was slightly annoyed at the official announcement of the iPad 2, and how it was keeping the same screen and same resolution. Being an iPhone 4 user, the resolution difference is very noticable.

The only other real addition that affects me is the front and rear facing camera. I’ve had a quick go on Facetime with C, and all worked well, but I can’t see me really using it much. I currently have a front facing camera on the iPhone 4, but can’t remember the last time I used it, and with the recent purchase of the Panasonic DMC-TZ10, I don’t really see a use for the rear camera.

The improved gyroscope is a god send, as I couldn’t play Rage HD on the iPad as I’d got so used to playing it on the iPhone. As for the rest of the games, to be honest, it’s still early for the new hardware, and expect more developers to hit the “More Textures” button as time goes on, as they did with the Retina Display patches they provided. Right now, I’ve just got a thinner, faster, lighter iPad.

All in all, it’s new, it’s shiny and it’s Apple

One last thing, before I had the official case for the original iPad, this time I thought I’d give the Nude Case a go as it was meant to be lightweight…..to be honest I’m blown away buy it, you can hardly tell it’s protected

Unboxing photos below.

Tags: apple ipad, Blade, button, couple, couple of days, DMC-TZ, Facetime, Friday, friday night, God, gyroscope, hardware, HD, infinity, iphone, iphone 4, last time, nbsp, new hardware, panasonic, panasonic dmc, proud owner, purchase, rage, rear camera, resolution, Retina, screen, snappier, textures, time, today, tz10, use, yup

Panasonic Lumix DMC TZ10

I’ve been on the lookout for a new camera for a while now, as my previous Acer CR-6530 camera was getting a tad old. Now don’t get me wrong, the CR-6530 is still a great camera, but the battery was on it’s way out, and it’s not quite as portable as the newer camera.

I was lucky enough to received the Panasonic HDC-SD200 HD Camcorder for my birthday a couple of years ago, and was blown away by how good the camera quality was…so since then, I’ve been on the lookout.

The thing that really caught my eye about the TZ10, was the ability to meta tag your photos with the GPS co-ordinates. Now I know this is a little geeky, and not everybody’s cup of tea but it’s just something I’ve got used to with the iPhone 4.

Each photo I take on the iPhone get meta tagged with the co-ordinates and passes this information to iPhoto and then to Flickr. Now granted you can do this manually, but where’s the fun in that !.

Now I know that the new model has just come out (the TZ20, 14.1 megapixels and a touch screen), but this was the perfect time to buy, as the price of this little beauty has dropped like a stone. When I originally looked at it around Christmas time, it was sat at £250+, now it’s £190.

So, now you know why I’ve gone for Panasonic, and why this model….so how is it…..it’s pretty damn good. This camera is so feature rich, after a week of playing with it I’ve still not scratched the surface, I could attempt to describe how good it is, or just look at the bottom of this post for some images I took in the back garden, the rest can be found on my flickr public gallery

Below, are the unboxing pics, as well as tech specs

 

Product Features

 

Technical Details

Tags: auto mode, camera quality, christmas time, cup of tea, great camera, hd camcorder, hdc, HDMI, image stabilizer, intelligent auto, iphone, iphone 4, little beauty, meta tag, new camera, optical image, panasonic lumix dmc, resolution technology, sd200, tz10

Playstation Plus

I’ve got a few good things to say about Sony’s Playstation plus, however a lot of bad things. Granted it’s still in it’s infant stages, but it’s so lacking at the moment, especially when you compare it with the Xbox Live service.

When firmware 3.60 was release, with the online storage option, I finally took the plunge and dropped £40 on a Playstation Plus subscription. I’m in a fortunate position where I have 2 PS3′s, (one in the front room, and one in the bedroom), and the idea of being able to save to the “cloud”, then pick up again in another room really appealed to me. I also like the idea of the automatic download feature, that basically downloading the updates to the games while the machine is switched off. This would fix one of the things I find most annoying about the PS3 over the Xbox, size of the updates, for some reason updating a game on the Xbox takes literally seconds, where the PS3 takes minutes….sometime even hours (Currently updating GT5 as we speak)

Now maybe I should have read up on this first, or at least spent some time in the forums reading peoples impressions first before dropping the £40, but was what I was hoping for.

• The ability to save directly to the cloud, and pickup on another PS3 (just like the Steam Cloud)
• The ability for the PS3 to download my updates while I slept (this way I never had to see again the “There is an update, do you want to download it” screen)

What I actually got….

The ability to manually backup my save games to the cloud (the same functionality we used to have with a USB stick……). Unfortunately non of my games recognise the cloud storage, so it means I have to manually download my save game, then remember to re-upload it once I’ve finished playing. This has already caught me out a number of times….I fired up a game of the other PS3, only to have to quit to the XMB to copy the save game local….or even fire up the other PS3 to copy the game to the cloud :s

On the subject of copying, Sony really don’t make it easy. Probably like most people, the first thing I did was to copy all my save games on to the cloud storage, this I had to do once save at a time !…..there is a “group saves by game” function, but you still have to go into the grouped folder and manually copy each one across….took me an evening to back everything up.

Next the storage size…..150Mb ?….in this day and age…..when each one of my later Fallout 3 saves were over 5Mb each….obviously I didn’t have room to fit them all on, come on Sony, if the likes of Dropbox can offer us 2GB for free, 150Mb is a joke.

So, once I’d back up all my saves, I thought…ok time for the automatic download setting. Once I’d finally found the setting, I selected my 2 hour windows of “when to download” and left it too it. I then went to the 2nd Ps3 to set up the automatic download on that, in the hope to select a different 2 hour windows, but was politely told that I already have automatic download setup on my account, and I do have it on this or the other 1, but not at the same time …….really ?

Now if my understanding is currect, the automatic download feature is useless if you use the cloud storage, as it uses your local save game files as it’s base of “what to download”, if there are no saves on the PS3 (which on mine there aren’t as they’re all in the cloud), then it doesn’t download anything !….*clap, clap, well done Sony*

Ok, so finally the content, and what you really get for your £40 a year. Now I agree, you do get benefit when you have a plus subscription, but are they worth it.

Below is the list of what I downloaded from the Playstation plus “benefits”

Sonic the Hedgehog (not HD’d up, just added trophies), looked and sounded horrible

Astro Tripper, Pix’n Love and Enigmo (all mini games, played once, and deleted)

inFamous 2 Dynamic theme (does look pretty cool, I have to say)

All apart from the theme have now been deleted, this was from the below list of possible downloads for the month of March

2 March to 5 April 2011
All titles are for PlayStation 3 unless stated otherwise.

Games
Sonic the Hedgehog – one month exclusive for PlayStation Plus members
Astro Tripper
Pix’n Love Rush (minis) – two weeks early for PlayStation Plus members
Enigmo (minis) – two weeks early for PlayStation Plus members

Full Game Trial
Prince of Persia

Special Offers
PlayTV Live Chat – 25% off until 6 July 2011
Fat Princess – 50% off
Fat Princess (PSP) – 50% off
StarDrone (PS3) – 50% discount on day of launch
Premier Manager – 50% off

Dynamic themes and Premium Avatars
EyePet Avatars
inFamous 2 theme
Sega Mega Drive Classics theme
MotorStorm Apocalypse Urban Avatar
MotorStorm Apocalypse Burning Avatar
MotorStorm Apocalypse Rookie XMB theme

Maybe I’m just disappointed as I was expecting more, I was hoping for Steam Cloud type storage, I was hoping to never see a “Update is available” screen again, but currently this isn’t the case.

Maybe now they have the Cloud storage backbone in place, developers will release updates to their games to allow saving directly to this. I do however think that if they get their butts into gear and get this working properly before the NGP (Sony’s Next Generation Portable aka PSP2) comes out, then saving a game on the PS3, then continuing on the NGP ticks all my boxes. I know that Microsoft attempted to do this Windows to Windows Mobile to Xbox….but it’s not really happened yet.

Personally if anybody is planning on dropping on the PS+ subscription, I don’t think it’s worth it yet, give it a couple of months and see if developers start to implement the “direct to cloud” saves.

Tags: Astro, bedroom, cloud, Download, Dynamic, feature, firmware, fortunate position, functionality, game, games, Impressions, infant, infant stages, machine, option, pickup, Pix, Playstation, plunge, Princess, PS3, reading, reason, screen, Size, sony, steam, steam cloud, storage option, time, xbox, xbox live, xmb