Okay so here in one go is the four or so posts I haven’t been gotten round to for ages, if you’re expecting a kongoni post it’s because you already know the news about it and if you don’t it’s because you shouldn’t yet.
This post will be basically three small product reviews of purchases recently acquired:
1) The WII
Now this is about a year late as everybody’s already seen the wii but frankly it is awesome and I only bought one recently. If I can make a point about it that’s a downside it’s that game developers really aren’t taking proper advantage of it’s abilities yet. Half the games are cartoonish to the point of being painful (it is only a matter of time before Nintendo’s never ending quest for younger audiences have them making controllers that can be inserted into the womb).
Compare for example Spiderman Web of Shadows and Star Wars The Force Unleashed. SWTFU (Or would it be better accronymnd STFU ?) is a truly perfect game. Lightsaber wiimote – an idea that just absolutely works. Spiderman is a wonderfully acted, scripted and true-the-character game set in the wonders of new york… and somehow still sucks on the wii – not because the game is bad but because it makes no real use of the WII’mote. I’m playing Spiderman for crying out loud – I should not be hitting a button to webshoot (and making the webswing a DOWNWARD flick was just crazy), I should be aiming a hand and flicking either the nunchuk or the wiimote to shoot a web, yanking it back to swing etc.
Star Wars got it perfectly right – force pushing ? Just jam the nunchuck toward the screen, exactly the same motion you would have made if you were a real Jedi… spiderman has to remember key strokes, wii flicks are often used for atack combos in ways that bear no resemblence to the actions… it would in fact probably be better played on an X-box or even a PC since the programmers simply couldn’t get out of the old “Push button Y to do X” mentality – and if you aren’t going to that, stay away from the WII.
The yamaha BWS 100
Now here’s something I never expected to buy, but for reasons you either know or don’t want to know I no longer really have a car. So I needed point A-to-point-B human transfer device. Since current teleportation devices are even further from my budget than cars, I opted for a small bike or scooter.
I was still aiming in the line of a bike but I got a very good offer on this particular scooter which has the 125CC upgrade installed and is after all a yamaha. Now the bikes I could get for the same price range are simply crap. The cheaper scooters are also crap – I think I bought exactly what I needed. It’s just zippy enough to be fun, wide-wheeled enough to be fairly safe and of course – I just filled a near empty tank for under R30.
The Sanza Fuze
My previous ownership of music players have been basically limited to cheap little glorified memory sticks which usually only play WMA and MP3 and use AAA batteries. The decision to get a better one was controlled by my desire to get a portable with OGG support. My entire library is in OGG format and having to transcode every song when loading to a player is a pain in the ass that makes it all really slow.
I asked for recomendations on twitter about good players and got good replies on the Fuze and a few others but the fuze stood out for me. Once I started reading reviews I really liked what I read.
The fuze is essentially trying to compete with the ipod nano. It’s in the same size range with a similar interface and look. Unlike it’s bulky apple competitor though it has a wonderfully open design. The filesystem is a simple USB-stick from the computer’s approach with nevertheless good library-app support for things like amarok.
Ogg support is not in the shipped versions but getting it is as easy as a firmware upgrade. Now I know you’re baulking – doesn’t that usually mean some weird windows only program ? Well it does usually but not in this case, there is such a program out there if you insist on using it – but it’s really optional.
Upgrading the firmware was as simple as “download, unzip, copy to device, disconnect” – it upgraded, I switched it back on – and ogg played perfectly.
Thanks KMF for the recommendation- it’s exactly right 
