1. Talk about iPhones ALL the time. If someone tries to change the subject tell them about the new 'App' you have downloaded that fits with the new course of conversation.

2. Apend the words 'Sent from my iPhone' to the bottom of all your emails

3. Encase your existing phone within 3 inch think rubber padding. Get upset if you get a fingerprint on it.

4. Walk around looking down at your existing rubber-clad phone, try to bump into people

5. When turning your existing your phone on pretent to wait for half an hour before you can use it

6. Frequently moan about 'lack of cut and paste'

7. Charge your existing phone every two hours or immediately after any phonecall

8. Obtain some white headphones. Wear them all the time.

9. Tell everyone without an iPhone how they would be 'better off with an iPhone'

10. Become very, very angry if anyone says anything negative about Steve Jobs, Apple, iTunes or anything associated with these three things

It’s about time I wrote the official Oast One top ten tips and tricks for the iPhone. Little things you may not know about that could just make your life that tiny bit easier.

So – no chat, straight down to business:

1. Screen Grab
This is an easy one. Simply press both the Home and Sleep button at the same time and you’ll hear a shutter noise whilst the screen flashes white. A picture has now been taken of the screen – you’ll find it in your Camera Roll.

2. Type Tools
In most applications that use the keyboard you can hold down various buttons for extra functions. Once the pop-up appears simply slide your finger to the character you need and lift off to select it. Hold down normal letters to get alternate characters with diacritic marks such as acute accents, umlauts and like. The ‘.com’ key will give you alternates such as ‘.net’ and ‘.org’. Holding the ‘123’ key will allow you to slide to a character and select it before returning the keyboard to normal characters – saving you from having to tap the key again afterwards. You can do the same with the shift key.

3. Tidy up email
You can quickly delete pathetic spam email without having to open it up or use the edit button. Just swipe the email to the left or right in your inbox. A delete button will appear. Tap to delete the message for good.

4. No place like Home
The innocent looking home button can be used for a number of time saving tricks:

• Use the home button in the same way as the sleep button when your iPhone is locked
• When browsing your Apps, press it once to return straight to the home screen
• Double-press the home button to open your Phone Favourites for quick calling
• When your iPhone is locked double-press the home button to access your iPod controls. Excellent for changing music when on the go.
• You have some control over the above by going to Settings > General > Home Button

5. Unlock hidden Emoji
Ever wondered how to unlock the hidden Emoji (Emoticons) on your iPhone (2.2.0+)? Simply follow our instructions here.

6. Use your head (phones)
It’s surprising how many people don’t know that the microphone on the headphones houses a useful button. Simply squeeze it and you’ll feel it click. You can use this button for a number of functions:

• Click the button once to play / pause music
• Click twice to skip to the next song
• Click thrice to rewind the current song / skip to the previous song

Whilst on a call:

• Click to answer an incoming call / end a call
• Click twice so send an incoming call to voicemail
• If a second call comes in when you’re on one: click once to switch to the new call or twice to ignore it.

7. Sleep button
You can use the sleep button to silence a call or send it to voicemail. Press once to silence, twice to route it to voicemail.

8. Text to fit
Whilst browsing text in Safari you can zoom in to columns of text by double-tapping on them. The iPhone will scale column of text to fit the width of the screen. You can do the same with images and menus. Double-tap again to zoom out. You can also zoom in and out of images in Camera Roll by double-tapping.

9. Save images
You can save images to your Camera Roll from Safari by holding down on the image. A pop-up will appear with a save button. Useful for changing your Wallpaper image.

10. Tap areas
There are various areas on the iPhone you can tap and certain times to useful effect. For example – if you tap to the left or right of the white dots along the bottom of your home screen it will switch pages without the need to swipe. In Safari if you tap the bar along the top of the screen the page you are viewing will scroll all the way back to the top (also revealing the address/search bar).

Please note that I am running iPhone software 2.2.1 on my iPhone. Some of the tricks mentioned in this article may not work on previous versions.

Yes really... The title is correct! These IS actually an iPhone Application called ShyBladder! Obviously I am not going to waste my time installing it but the description says:

"Do you have trouble getting things going in the restroom? Perhaps just when other people are around... ...With ShyBladder on your iPhone, you will have a helpful prompt to get into your flow. With three different styles of running water."

What the hell? If I'm having 'trouble' in any restroom the last thing I'm going to do is get my phone out and start playing the sound of urine sloshing down the drain. My fellow urinees will probably think I've been recording the sound of them peeing and have some very pressing questions to ask me on the subject. Questions that start with 'What the f..." and end with my head and/or iPhone stuffed down the poopoo box.

Ridiculous!

So why do the Japanese get Emoji and we don't?

That just isn't fair... In an attempt to balance things up a bit I'll tell you how to unlock the Emoji hidden on your iPhone. Follow these four easy steps and you'll be grinning smilies at your mates (with iPhones) in no time:

1. Make sure you have iPhone software 2.2 or higher installed on your iPhone 3G (not sure if this works with the original iPhone)
2. Go to the App Store and search for an App called 'Spell Number' - it's written by a company called Waterworld and is FREE! Install it.
3. Once installed open the App and tap in '9876543.21' - this is an Easter Egg that will unlock the Emoji hidden on all iPhones with software 2.2 and above installed
4. Now to turn them on. Go to: Settings > General > International > Keyboards > Japanese. You will see that an Emoji setting has been added. Switch it on.

***UPDATE*** The 'Spell Number' application was updated on 6 March 2009 and the Emoji Easter Egg was removed! Bummer. However - it you search for 'Emoji' on the App Store you will find other applications that claim to unlock iPhone Emoji. Simply replace steps 2 amd 3 above with the App you choose to use.

NOTE: You only need to follow these steps to use Emoji - you can still see them on an iPhone 3G (v2.2+) without having them turned on. This means you can surprise all your friends by sending them a bunch of random images. (Believe me there is some wierd little pictures in there.)

Next time you type an MSN, send an email, update Facebook, etc using your iPhone you will see a globe button to the right of the Space Bar. That's where your Emoji are! Bear in mind that only people with iPhones (v2.2+) will see your Emoji - everyone else will see a strange Japanese character.

I've just taken delivery of a Vito R1 DAB/FM Radio and I must say... It's highly strokable.

See?

"So", I hear you all shouting in unison, "why the hell did you buy a £160 DAB radio in a world where streaming thousands of radio stations via the internet is FREE?"

Well really I wanted this:

The Tivoli Networks Radio. Again: Nice! This one is not just DAB and FM but also picks up your wireless Network and allows you to stream internet radio with gay abandon whereever you may choose to listen (within range of your wireless router of course). The only bummer is the price tag. We're talking £500.00. Luckily I was able to get a bit of a bargain Vita R1 on ebay. I'm sure the price of this internet-streaming-to-hifi-gear technology will come down in time and until then I am happy to use the lovely looking R1 in our kitchen.

Another picture of the R1 I feel:

Another good reason for DAB is my girlfriend, Nicky. She is still very wary of computers (having not used one at work or even had one in her house until we moved in together a year ago) and would probably refuse to use something that she knew was in any way involved with the internet. She still kind of avoids my computer and I'm sure she believes it is sitting there plotting ways to kill her! I am being a little unfair - she has recently started sending emails (occasionally) and has even commented that my iPhone is "pretty cool" (begrudgingly). ;o) I think the key is to ween her onto technology slowly.

Back to the R1 then. The sound quality is pretty amazing for a unit of such a small size (H.W.D 17cm x 13cm x 13cm). Crisp bass and not boomy, which can be the risk when the bass port faces downwards. The cool looking control dial on the top is, whilst not ground-breaking in terms of what it does, easy to use and feels nice with solid clicks and a smooth turning action on the rubberised dial. There are two inputs - a jack on the front and phono's on the back - and a headphone output on the front.  There is also the option to plug in a external stereo speaker despite the fact that Vito don't actually make one. At least yet. The little illuminated black-text-on-white screen serves its purpose well and all-in-all I can't really find anything bad to say. Yes - its fairly expensive - but you're paying for the sound quality (which I don't resent) and the 'retro-modern' looks (which I love).

So if you're waiting for the price of Network radios to fall and are after a stop-gap, little radio for the kitchen or somewhere without a computer (or internet access) to stream radio from then I highly recomend the Vita R1. Pull one in...

I've been hearing about this thing they call 'Twitter' for a while. This week it's also come to light that both Barack Obama and Stephen Fry both use it regularly. I'd better check it out I said to myself as I clicked open a browser window and fired in the URL.

To start with I was a bit confused...

Effectively all it is, for those of you who may not know, is a way of answering the question “what are you doing?” in less than 140 characters. All your Twitter ‘followers’ can see your answers to this question as often as you care to update and they care to check the site out. In turn you can choose to follow as many Twitterers as you wish. All updates then get displayed in Chronological order on your Twitter homepage.

You can access this information in one of a number of ways - RSS feeds, Facebook, your mobile phone, Instant Messengers the list goes one. I have already added the Oast One Twitter RSS feed to this blog and I could even integrate it as a Flash application should I so choose.

So why?

As I said - to start with I was a little confused. Why would you want to be continually updating what you are up to when you have a million and one ways to already do so? MSN away messages, Facebook statuses, Blogs, email, SMS, etc etc etc... But it’s actually quite addictive. There is a real sense of community when you see the updates rolling in.

After signing up this morning I noticed that Chris Moyles (the Radio 1 DJ you either love or hate... or really hate) had signed up too only a few seconds before me; so I added him to the people I am following as a comparison to my own followers. No doubt his followers will spiral exponentially until, in his own words, he gets bored and stops using it whilst mine will probably get to about 10 then die out. Forcing me to 'get bored'.

It certainly does seem that through communications the world is becoming a much smaller place.

Oh - and Barack Obama is following me too...

Yesterday Lord Carter announced that by 2012 the entire population of the UK should have at least 2MB broadband access in their homes.

Excellent I thought. I live at pretty much the furthest point from the local, and by all accounts pretty dire, exchange and my home broadband struggles to download at speeds higher than 100Kbps. Awful when you think there's people less than a quarter of a mile away enjoying 3Mbps and two miles the other way rolling at speeds around the 7Mbps mark. Although 2Mbps is far less than the current national average Broadband speed (3.5Kbps-ish) it was was still going to be a welcome policy for people like me. Even though, at this stage, it was a bit uncertain as to who was going to pay for this massive communication upgrade.

But then today I woke up and recieved the newscast equivilent of a massive hammer in the groin! Lord Carter was suggesting that we all absorb a £20 a year tax increase. At first I thought this was not too bad if it meant we had these increases in Broadband speeds.

But then I learnt what the £20 was really for...

No - not the speed increase. Lord Carter required this extra cash to help the Music and Film Industry fight file-sharing! He wants to tax the UK's ISP's the equivilent of £20 per head which, of course, they would have to pass on to the customer. For absolutely NO benefit to them at all.

Now correct me if I'm wrong but I've never really noticed a massive lack of cash in the Film or Music Industry's. Why should the consumer pay to fight the debateable crime of file-sharing if it doesn't affect him or her in any way? I don't file share. I can't think of anyone else I know who does. As far as I'm concerned its the Film and Music Industry's probelm. Not mine. I would like to know why the government feels it needs to step in and help the poor film and music industry when, if my business was repeatedly being burgled, I certainly wouldn't recieve a govenment handout to upgrade my security. I would be lucky to get the police to turn up.

I recently upgraded to Adobe CS4 Producton Suite. It's pretty good as far as upgrades go. Photoshop now uses your 3D card to make zooming in on images a treat to behold and the groovy new interface for After Effects is a little bit more like Final Cut than my previous version of AE (something like 6.5 I think).

The problem was the help files...

If you clicked on About > Help (or hit F1) in any of the CS4 applications to bring up the help it took you online to the Adobe support area. There's lots of information there - from all over the shop - user posted info from the Adobe community, training videos, stuff from the Adobe support site and all sorts... Far too much data if all you want to do is know how to loop a sound clip in Soundbooth or reverse a piece of footage in After Effects.

How could I get to the local help files that are installed with the CS4 applications?

I knew that if I unplugged my internet connection and hit F1 I would be taken to the local help files so they must be on my computer somewhere. After a spot of searching I finally managed to stumble across where they were all hiding:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Help\en_US

or

Macintosh HD:Library:Application Support:Adobe:Help:en_US

All the folders are there for the various applications so I was able to make a load of shortcuts to the index.html files and stick them somewhere easy to find.

J

As an Interactive Designer I've always worked on both Mac and PC - dependant on the application, the software, the delivery platform the but mainly what machine was available at the time. Personally I own a MacBook laptop and also a Dell desktop PC. I can see the advantages (and disadvantages) in both OS's.

This, in my experience, is an odd way to be. Most people in the design industry fanatically champion either PC or Mac... but not both! I know people who would take you outside to 'discuss it like men in the street' if you so much as suggested a PC was as good as a Mac. I know another individual (no name mentioned) that has a tattoo of the Windows logo on probably one of the most painful areas to have tattooed on the human body... now that devotion!

This Platform Fanaticism is a strange phenomenon... almost like the hatred you get between Snowboarders and Skiers - if you are one you automatically have to hate the other. Yet no one really knows the reason why. If you challenge a member of either faction you usually get the response: "Cos PCs/Skiiers are ****!" or "Macs/Snowboarders are just ********!" Not very well thought out, or considered, answers. It’s almost like two separate religions blindly going along with their own individual faith and totally unaccepting of others. Maybe in the future when the human race no longer has need for traditional religions we will begin aligning ourselves with Operating Systems (or ways to travel over snow) instead.

Personally I find that Macs are great for design and video editing. They specialise in throwing graphics around quickly, they are easy to use and (since OS X) they always seem to just work. PCs are more versatile and I find it is much more sensible to develop website and Flash or Director Applications on them. There are two reasons for this: mainly that the chances are the end user will be using a PC to view the finish project so it makes sense to develop and test on one. But also because you have a lot more features available on the PC to help you with development processes.

However – things have changed slightly lately. Since Macs have been using Intel Processors it is possible to run Windows XP and Vista on them. This means I now only need to buy one piece of hardware. Although Macs can be expensive it is far cheaper to buy a Mac and a copy of Windows than it is to buy two whole computers. This brings me on to Boot Camp…

For those of you that may not know Boot Camp is Apple’s way of helping you to install Windows XP onto a Mac creating a dual-boot system that can start up using either Windows Vista/XP or Mac OS X. I have to say – it is excellent. You simply download Boot Camp to your Intel-based Mac. Once run it will create a disc containing all the Windows drivers for your Mac hardware and allow you to partition your hard drive - one partition with the existing OS X and the other for your new Windows install. Once this is done you simply insert your Windows installation disc and away you go.

I have heard people say that it is as easy as installing Windows on a normal PC. In my opinion they’re wrong. It’s easier!

You see once I’d installed Windows on my MacBook I simply put the disc Boot Camp made for me in – it automatically installed all the Windows drivers for my MacBook - even rebooting where necessary and continuing afterwards. It was a simple as that. Everything worked perfectly.

As a comparison I have recently reinstalled Windows Vista on my Dell desktop PC. It was been a nightmare. Yes Dell supplies the drivers but they are bundled with all the other drivers for the current Dell models via a very cumbersome interface - it’s not really that clear which ones need to be installed. Dell also have a useful web-tool where you type in the serial number of your Dell and it comes back with a list of all the hardware your Dell was shipped with plus links to the drivers. Good idea. Except you still need to click on all the drivers separately to download them (even if you add the drives you need to ‘My Download List’ you still can’t download them all in one go). And of course – once you have downloaded them you still need to install them all individually. Time consuming and - compared to boot Camp – irritating. It took me a whole day to get Windows Vista up and running on my Dell.

I have been running Windows Vista on my entry level MacBook (with 2GB memory) for almost two years now. I use the apps from Adobe Master Suite all day, every day and it has been excellent. It runs far, far, far better than my (slightly newer) Dell – which was “Designed for Vista”. It’s almost embarrassing that the Mac can out-strip the PC in terms of reliability when running a ‘borrowed’ OS. Yes it does have a few niggles such as the lack of right-click on the track-pad and no ‘print screen’ button. But I can get round both of these with a piece of free software. Or just plug in a normal mouse.

So – after the nightmare I have had re-installing windows Vista on my desktop Dell I have made a decision… No more native PC hardware. From now on (and unless anything major changes) I’m only going to buy Macintosh computers.

A good few years ago (February 2004) I purchased an Alienware laptop. I didn't have a blog at the time so wasn’t able to comment on the product or my experiences with Alienware. However - I was having a chat with a friend on the weekend and he reminded me that somewhere in storage I have a ‘Saucer Silver’ Alienware Area51 Laptop and thought it may be beneficial to someone if I was to post some sort of review about it.

It wasn’t cheap – costing me about £2,500.00 (inc VAT) – but was a great spec. I was after a really powerful, hi-res laptop that would enable me to run Photoshop / Illustrator / Flash / After Effects and the like when I was out of the office or on contracts where they couldn’t supply me a reasonable machine. The Alienware seemed a good choice though I must admit it was the slick looks (yes – and even that little alien on the back of the screen with illuminated eyes) that tempted me away from the likes of Sony Viao’s or MacBook Pro’s.

For some reason I still have the manual in my bottom drawer so I can give you the spec:

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.00GHz (x2)
Case Colour: Saucer(!) Silver
Memory: 1024MB
HDD: 60.1GB HTS726060M9AT00
Optical: QSI DVDRW SDW-041
OS: XP Pro
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc 080009 A M I 2000410
AGP: ATI Mobility Radeon 9600/9700 Series (128)
C-Media AC97 Audio Device
Smart Link 56K Modem
Realtek RTL8169/8110 Family Gigabit Ethernet NIC
O2Micro OZ711Mx MemoryCardBus Accelerator

As I recall the computer also had 3x USB ports and one of those mini FireWire ports. It also had a built in Wireless adapter, a IrDA Fast Infrared Port and a combined SD/Memory Stick reader. It came with a remote control (as big as an average TV remote), an Alienware T-Shirt, mouse mat and manual/folder with some nonsense about “For your eyes only: Agent James Marett” printed on the front. I think I had also opted for a Microsoft Intellimouse in Green, branded with the Alienware logo.

Sadly I can’t find an image of the exact model I bought at the moment but will post if I do come across one.

As far as ‘looking forward to new hardware’ goes I was pretty excited after completing my order online and checked the automated tracking system on their website at least bi-daily. I was pleased to see that, quicker than estimated, my laptop had been assembled and was ready for shipping. Over the next few days I tracked my order from Ireland, to the UK and on to the Midlands… But suddenly the trail went cold. My laptop had seemingly disappeared! I waited a few days then felt the need to make further enquiries. After a good deal of to-ing and fro-ing between Alienware and the shipping company (who both blamed each other) I finally got Alienware to look into the situation. This took over a week and luckily resulting in my order being restarted from scratch as, in Alienware’s words, a priority order. What happened to my laptop I'll never know. Without wishing to offend anyone in the Midlands I'm guessing it was stolen...

Possibly ‘priority’ means something different in Ireland because Alienware’s second attempt at assembling my laptop took over three weeks. More than five time longer than the first time round. This time it was shipped it actually made it all the way to my house. Though instead of being delivered it was driven straight past and back to the depot! It took a great deal of phoning, complaining, being hung up on, made false promises and finally begging to get the shipping company to allow me to go and pick it up from the depot the following Monday rather than wait an indefinite period of time for the next ‘scheduled delivery’.

So finally… I had in my hand my shipment. I rushed home and set to work removing the outer packaging. The box inside was very swish – gloss black with the Alienware logo picked out in white on the front. Nice! This, I thought, is going to be worth the wait.

It wasn’t.

(Before I go any further I should say that this all took place over four years ago, Alienware may have vastly improved (or otherwise) since then so please don’t relate this article to any of their current products. I also want to steer clear of pounding the reader with a swathe of negativity so I am going to use a concept I saw on Family Guy… The ‘Compliment Sandwich’. This means I will say something good followed by an ‘area that needs improving’ followed by something good followed by an ‘area that needs improving’ and so on. So here goes…)

I carefully opened the box and removed the well packed laptop. I’m afraid to say that in the flesh the design of the laptop was disappointing. The Alienware machines always look so great in all the well-lit, cunningly positioned marketing photography but sadly in reality they aren’t so stylish. Just like the Ford Puma! What part of the ‘aluminium casing’ that was aluminium (the lid) was, to my mind, poorly pressed out of thin and tacky feeling metal. The Alien head logo in the centre of the lid looked decidedly cheap. And the rest of the casing was bulky and bulbous. It didn't seem to hang together very well – certainly a million miles from the sleek lines of a Sony or MacBook. I couldn't believe I had fallen in love with this lump of tack I was staring at.

Undeterred I pressed on, opened the screen and pressed the power-on button. It sprang to life and booted up into XP Pro in no time. It was, and still is, one of the fastest machines I have ever owned (Mac or PC). I noticed a demo of Quake (or something) that was installed as part of the OEM so I thought I’d give it a whirl just to check out how fast it really was.

I never got that far. As I moused towards the icon I got a MASSIVE blue-screen crash! I say ‘MASSIVE’ because it truly was. Nothing I did would resurrect the machine. Turning it off and on, various safe modes, system recovery, even reinstallation from scratch. Nothing worked. I phoned the Alienware 24/7 technical support line only to find out that they weren’t! Eventually I had to call to my IT Guru brother, Alexis, to help me to figure out what was wrong. I forget the exact details now but it was pretty major and required something major to be fiddled with at BIOS level. I was eventually able to reinstall the OS and went to bed composing a lengthly letter of complaint in my mind.

I had some success with the re-install and was able to run all my high-end apps such as After Effects, Lightwave, Director, etc. on the huge 1600x1200 resolution monitor which was crisp and focused. Feeling smug I went ahead and also installed a copy of Doom 3 as a little ‘treat’.

It soon became apparent that although everything ran smooth every 20seconds or so the system would lock up for a few seconds pausing whatever you were doing. This became highly irritating. It also seemed that unless the laptop was within three meters of the wireless router the built-in WiFi was just not powerful enough to get a signal. In addition to this the battery-life of the simply enormous battery (stretching the full width of the already chunky laptop and surely weighing a full kilo) was about 50 minutes at best. Not even long enough to survive my train journey to work. This meant that I had to cart around the absolutely massive power supply as well as the extremely heavy laptop itself. During this period of my life I had almost constant backache! Portability was not one of its key features.

After I realised that I could turn off the built-in WiFi and therefore prevent the constant system lock-ups I began using my laptop on a daily basis as my main computer. Oast One was in premises in Hammersmith and I would carry the laptop to work and back every day. During this period the machine did me proud. It was fast (most the time) and enabled me to create many high-end CD ROM, Flash animation and use After Effects. I had learnt to work-around the silly niggles and blue-screen crashes the computer kept throwing at me and the keyboard was pretty good as far as laptops go, allowing me all the usual functions in a fairly well laid out manner. However – after I started working with a big Sony monitor plugged in to the Alienware as a second screen I thought I would invest in a USB keyboard (the Alienware had no PS/2 ports).

Deciding to maintain the Alienware theme rather than going for a more cost effective option I phoned Alienware and ordered a USB keyboard compatible with my Area51 laptop, a new mouse and a second power supply (so I could leave one in the office and one at home and only need one bag to carry my laptop in). The sales person happily took my order and a week or so later I took delivery. The first thing I noticed was that the MS Intellimouse was not branded Alienware as before, despite the description and premium price tag. This being the case I’m not sure why I had paid extra for it but let it slide. However – what I could not let slide was the incredibly cheap PS/2 keyboard they supplied. I had specifically requested a USB keyboard compatible with my laptop and the sales guy had looked this up on the system as the correct one. After calling to enquire Alienware told me that this PS/2 crud was the only keyboard they sold! In disbelief I asked for my money back and was told to ship the keyboard back before they would return anything. Fair enough I thought and shipped recorded delivery. I am STILL waiting for my refund over four years and many phone calls/promises later. I must admit I kind of gave up three years ago.

OK… something positive… Did I say the screen was nice?

Shortly after this we decided to set up a better network in the studio. Until now we had been pretty much surviving by email small files to each other and putting larger files onto portable hard drives or iPods. Backing-up was done manually onto externals. This is where I learnt that the Ethernet adapter in the Alienware was as good as useless. It would connect to the internet no problem but was not able to perform on a network. IF you could actually see the network when you booted it was short lived. As soon as you started copying files the network connection would disappear after two or three megabytes. Maybe as much as ten if you were lucky. Once this happened you would have to reboot and hope that the network showed up again this time round. No amount of driver updating, calls to support or fiddling would correct this.

The illumiated alien eyes on the lid changed colour depedant on what mode you we in. Red for charging, green for normal use and blue for something else. Cool bu totally pointless…

I had had enough – the Area51 was getting on worse on a daily basis. It had always intermittently blue-screened but it was now getting far worse. About 50% of the time you booted it would blue-screen. Then another huge crash that required an OS install took out a load of personal files I hadn’t backed up. I decided to get a new desktop PC and stop using it. The damn thing had been the bane of my life for well over a year and was certainly not worth the money I spent on it. Yes, on paper, it looked great but there were so, so many issues. In addition to the ones I have mentioned above:

• The DVD drive totally stopped working
• The remote control never really worked correctly
• The Infrared Port never worked properly
• The thing very big and heavy and the build quality was not up to much so it would literally rip itself apart under its own weight in transit. Even in a padded laptop bag.
• It was incredibly noisy
• The fan vents along the side would spew out superheated air, akin to the after-burn of a Tornado Fighter Jet. Occasionally the whole machine would get so hot it would stop working. It required over an hour to cool down.
• Over time the monitor became discoloured in one lower corner – possibly as a result of the incredible heat it produced.
• One of the catches on the screen broke within a week
• The catch on the battery broke within six months

I’m sure there were more issues that slip my mind right now.

So all in all I’m afraid I wasn’t that impressed. For the price I paid I wasn’t really getting what I wanted out of a laptop. Yes, it was powerful. Yes it was fast. Yes it was high-resolution. But it wasn’t portable and it certainly wasn’t reliable.  It really makes me wonder why you would buy it over a killer desktop PC for half the price. But then again I did. I really regret not going with my gut instinct, making more fuss and sending the thing back with a demand for a refund after that very first crash. Then again I probably would have never received my money back!

A very sorry 2 out of 10 stars and a lesson learnt. No wonder I’m not sure where I put it.