ThunderPeel2001

Not that I'm calling you a liar or anything, but... how do you know that? Are touch-sensitive VDUs of higher quality that regular TFTs? I wasn't actually talking about quality, though. Yep, very true... but it doesn't change the fact that you won't be able to read that text in the top left hand corner unless you step back. Right now I can see everything on my two monitors with minimal effort, meaning it's very quick to work. Being so close to a screen, and this obscuring a large part of it from my field of vision, does not seem practical. (Maybe for such a large workspace some sort of curved VDU might be useful?) My point is simply that, however cool, it could be impractical in daily application. Fingers crossed that I'm wrong, of course, but it does strike me as a potential problem.

I wouldn't mind checking out Final Fantasy on the XBox 360 (see my sig for details!) but I've heard it's the worst version by far... (compared to other formats). Can't imagine how, though?

Just thinking about practicality, you rude bastard. I don't know about you, but I can imagine standing with my head six inches away from a massive VDU would prevent me from really seeing what's going on... Which is a potential flaw, if you ask me. Try sticking your head 6 inches away from your monitor now, and then imagine your screen was 6 times as big... Can't see how that would be in any way functional. It'd be like sitting at the front row of the cinema... all day long. Surely the next logical step would be to allow the user to be further back, so they could see the entire screen in their field of vision... which would require some sort of motion sensing technology, I guess.

Lol!

I think that Ron Gilbert comment about Star Trek applies here... WOW! Of course... it looks good to us, but does it look good when you're 6 inches away from the screen?

Silly ginger...

PS3 = Ugly? 360 has "good form"? Let's get one thing straight: The XBox 360 looks like a Dell Desktop PC from five years ago, but in white, whereas the PS3 looks like a sleek, modern and sexy machine.

I disagree. So, what are the changes going to be?

Am I the only one who is yet to see a benefit from going "next gen"? I'm an owner of a 360 and I'm, quite frankly, bored to tears with it. I find myself getting more exciting with the games on my girlfriend's GameCube, than I do with anything on the 360. And really what extras does the 360 have anyway? All of the games on the 360 are pretty much available on the PS2, only with slightly worse graphics. As we all know: Graphics are the most important thing! Now the PS3 has come along and I'm still a bit baffled. What are these new ultra-expensive consoles actually offering to us? They're certainly not offering the leap in gaming quality that the PlayStation > PS2 offered us. I could quite happily stick with the graphical quality of the PS2, but have a better selection of more interesting games. I haven't seen a single game that HAS to be played on a next gen console (Oblivion and FEAR are graphically intensive, but they're essentially PC games anyway - more mods and options on the PC, too). It seems to me that the only time we see a game that's "next gen only", it's more to do with rights than processor limitations. (If only Microsoft would get it's thumb out of its arse and actually give us proper backwards compatibility, at least I could enjoy some decent XBox games!) At this rate I'm considering selling my 360 and just getting a cheap PS2, and maybe a even Wii (for the same price!)

That's cool! I'm glad that it's actually a decent game. It's nice to see something so different on the XBox 360. I should give it a try, I guess!

You just know that there's two guys doing the entire backwards compatibility on their own... inbetween bug fixes for Vista. MS really suck sometimes. It's very annoying to not be able to play decent XBox games with we wait for some decent/interesting XBox 360 titles. The PS3 has damned decent backwards compatibility already, it's just ridiculous that we're still waiting for games to trickle in. I for one am getting very fed up! On the upside, I think they added some games I asked for, so that's cool... Still plenty I'm waiting to play though! The Wii calls!

Cool!

So Microsoft's answer to the iPod is finally here... or at least in the US! We don't have it in the UK yet. Any of you US folk picked one up yet? The way I see it is this: The WiFi thing: Useless unless they can get it to sync to your computer using it. Who cares about sharing a song for 3 plays for 3 days?! (Where did they do their market research...!?) Bigger screen: Very nice! Nearly 50% than the iPod, great for watching TV shows on the train. The interface: Finally an update to that drab iPod effort! It was nice in the original black and white models, but they really didn't use the colour capabilities of the iPod when they updated it. Radio Included: Who can complain about this!

Here's, finally, a decent review that ACTUALLY lists all the awful things about the Zune, but also the good stuff, too: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2061973,00.asp Read the rest, it's definitely the most unbiased and indepth Zune review out there at the moment. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2061973,00.asp

BooJaka: I think FF3 is supposed to be one of the better ones, so I think you made a good choice! Personally I've only ever played FFVII - but I totally fell in love with it (completed it in a week ).

I didn't see the first episode, so see how you get on.

I understand what you mean about not everyone needing a 30GB portable video player, but it still seems expensive to me. According to SanDisk's site, the 8GB model retails for $249.99. The battery life is 20 hours (compared to the iPod/Zune's 13/14 hours) and I cannot think of any reason why anyone would need more than 14 hours of continuous music playback in one day, and certainly not on a regular basis. The longest I'm away from an electrical outlet in one day cannot really be more than 14 hours... But I suppose there must be people who need longer...? The Sansdisk doesn't support music bought from iTunes or Zune Marketplace, either, so that narrows people's options a bit. I know it's more to do with how they're made, but the smaller capacity models like this still seem like a bit of a rip-off for those that would rather use them. Even Apple's Nano is the same price. It'd be much better if they were cheaper, but I suppose if size and durability are prime concerns it might be worth it.

I disagree! It's brilliant! I loved Dark Places too!

It's apparently got far less restrictions that the iPod, and I don't recall anyone ever calling that "DRM fucked", so it just baffles me why it should be an issue now? If I make an MP3 from a CD, it doesn't have any license information whether it was Michael Jackson or that band from down the road. So do you really think that they'd let the Zune just WiFi music to other Zune users with any restrictions, based on the license? My mistake. The thing is, not a single person I know with an iPod uses any of those features. Not one. I've even heard complaints that there's "no games" available to download like on the iPod... I commute to London every single day (it's a nightmare) and I literally see about three people in my carriage with white headphones every single trip. Not once have I ever seen anyone playing games on an iPod! If it was the other way around I can't help but think that people would be saying "oh, look at Microsoft's device trying to be something it's not! They should follow Apple's example and have streamlined their features. It's a music player, not a filofax, afterall!". Indeed! For how long, do you think? A month? Maybe two? Once they have the stuff available to BUY, will you be happy then? Well, I can still download them manually from the sites, which is what I do to most of the podcasts I'm interested in at the moment. But you're right, it would be preferable to have this feature, but it's not a deal breaker. This is totally, 100% fucked. I completely agree with you here. This is the type of decision which makes people hate MS in the first place. What a bunch of complete assholes! Thank god for fairplay4wm! It's the same price as a 30GB iPod or a 30GB anything. If it cost more because of that, I'd be unhappy, but it's just academic. It's exactly the same with Apple and iTunes outside of the US, so it doesn't affect me. I think it's pretty shitty that they're making interest off my money (I assume this is what your point was?), but I'm stuck. Plus, since I have an XBox 360 account, at least it means I've only got one evil interest-stealing account to worry about. It's pretty useless alright, but as I've already pointed out, there's no way they were going to let people WiFi music based on user-added license options! Plus, there is at least some possible light on the horizon, as rumours are circulating about them adding more WiFi features post launch. We'll see. Huh? What? Confused. It seems to me that, one the one hand you're complaining that the Zune doesn't allow people to swap music for free, but on the other you're complaining about the violation of "CC agreements"? That's pretty nice, except the 8GB costs almost (or exactly) the same as a 30GB Zune or 30GB iPod, and has a screen which is nearly half the size. You must really love you're friends to want to share music with them so much! I guess on the whole, since 90% of people's complaints about the Zune are completely true of the iPod (or just wrong), yet Apple (which is just as big and an evil corporation as Microsoft, on the whole) has good PR, so therefore musn't be as "evil" or something....? It's bizarre. Don't people realize that Apple uses sweatshops? They released iPods with a virus installed on them, but they somehow managed to escape criticism (they blamed Microsoft). They were successfully sued by Creative for stealing their property, but still people think they're this "honest" company that couldn't possibly do wrong. It just amazes me that people don't realize that they're being manipulated by the Apple marketing machine (not you specifically, n0wak), even "proper" journalists. PS - I just ordered my Zune! I'm not a fan of iTunes, I hate their "wheel" scrolling thing and I fancy watching TV shows while I commute on a big(ger) screen. It's all good to me!

Sorry, just had to add the worst comment of all: Oh my God! It doesn't have the least used and most pointless features of the iPod! What an oversight!

I'm just, frankly, baffled. I thought Idle Thumbs was the place were people came to laugh at people making uninformed comments. I think some of you have been brainwashed... Will someone please explain? As I understand it the Zune only adds DRM to music that it's WiFi'd. How does this really affect anyone? I personally think the WiFi thing of sending music is a complete waste of time, but how on earth does it make anything "DRM-fucked"? Here's a quote from the Gizmodo review: Does that sound "DRM-fucked" to you? More baffling comments: The Samsung Z5F has a 4GB maximum capacity and no moving parts, so it's obviously going to have a much larger battery life. The 30GB iPod has a 13-hour battery life and I don't know of a harddrive based MP3 with anything more than 14. It's got 8GB of memory, it's got a 1.8inch TFT (almost half the size of the Zune's), it can barely play videos and it costs $250! Bargain! That MP4 player looks cheap and terrible (forgive me if I'm wrong). A friend of mine bought one of these sort of things off eBay it was horrible. Aside from that, you do know that the Zune comes with an FM receiver built-in, out of the box? Has Steve Jobs been messing with your brains again?

That Zune Master thing is pretty scary, isn't it? I guess the idea is cheap word-of-mouth advertising. ysbreker: How is it DRM riddled?

That's true, Microsoft and the XBox 360 are really not making the most of their long lead time. The XBox360 really needs a great game that's a "must-buy" that can't be done on an XBox or PS2, but with slightly worse graphics. At the moment there isn't one PC CD-ROMs had Wing Commander and Myst Nintendo had Mario The PlayStation had Metal Gear Solid The XBox360 REALLY needs something special that won't be available elsewhere.... and isn't just another FPS!

Check out the superb World of Spectrum: http://www.worldofspectrum.org/archive.html#top100s There's plenty to see and do, but also some Top 100 lists, too!

Where is MixNMojo.com? Has anyone seen it? It's been down for ages... (well, days).