The Zune in Review.

Around a little more than a month ago, my two year phone contract expired and I was trying like hell to retain my old cell number when changing plans, it was becoming quite the frustrating affair and I was becoming quite annoyed. When I'm angry I like to buy things and I had been interested in the Zune, the customer service debacle I had endured had led me to Radio Shack and on an impulse, I purchased the Zune. I already owned a video iPod, but I wanted to try something different and this presented the best opportunity.

I arrive home and unbox the zune quite unceremoniously and found the box itself to be quite functional and on par with the packaging of the iPod. I install the software which quickly locates my audio and video files, much more than my iPod had indexed, since it can handle more windows media formats, admittedly the zune PC software is primitive but so was the early versions of iTunes. The interface on the zune itself is quite nice, showing album covers mostly full screen and displaying the album information beneath it. It does occasionally stutter when loading a song but the problems are being taken care of.

I have been using the Zune Pass and have been very satisfied, it's $15 a month for all of the songs you care to download. You can continue to use them until you stop paying for the service, it's very good especially if you buy an album every month anyways. Being able to use all of my playlists when connected to the Xbox 360 has been quite the bonus as well, I had used my iPod with the 360 but there's no comparison. I have yet to use the wireless sharing because, frankly, it's difficult to find other zune owners. You can personalize the background of your zune from any picture stored on the player, also you can have a slideshow with your music playing.

An additional nice feature is the built in FM tuner, it has channel seeking and when one is located it displays the frequency, the station call sign, song, album and artist as well from stations who transmit the information. The player has a 30 GB HDD, a 3 inch screen and the ability to wirelessly share songs with other zune owners. You get 3 plays over 3 days, whichever comes first. I don't think that applies if you both have the zune pass though, but I'm not certain.

The Zune itself is more rugged than the iPod, more scratch resistant and feels hardier. The battery life is slightly less but than can be expected since it has a larger display. I am satisfied with the Zune and I'm glad I made the switch. I give the Zune an 8/10

Crackdown impressions.

To put it simply, I am going to buy this game. In fact, I should probably preorder it this evening after work, to ensure that I'll get it the day it comes out. What it lacks in story it makes up for in holy-crap-this-is-fun. I have yet to play the "co-op" mode, which is truly a misnomer as you do not have to cooperate in any form while engaged in this mode. You could just sabotage the efforts of your cohort if that strikes your fancy.

You start out in this underground garage where you choose your vehicle, a "supercar", a SUV or a Semi Cab. Each has their own handling style and weight differences. Driving around in the supercar I find that you force vehicles to ramp over you as if you're applying a wedge between them and the road at 150 MPH whereas the SUV has quite the opposite effect and prefers the high road. The Semi has a much more direct approach of simply driving through obstacles.

You have several abilities which increase in effectiveness as you use them; strength, agility, explosives, driving and gunplay. Each starts above normal human ability and in the demo they increase rapidly. For example you can eventually lift over 2 tons and throw said objects around 200 feet. There are glowing orbs placed around the map in two types: agility and secret. The agility orbs obviously affect your acrobatic ability and make you feel like The Tick jumping from rooftop to rooftop. The mystery orbs increase all of your abilities. In addition to the orbs there are other ways to increase abilities including rooftop races for agility and plain old street races for driving.

The demo lasts one hour but is dropped to half an hour if you increae any ability to two stars. The only real objectives are killing gang bosses and capturing agency supply points. Doing the latter allow you to quickly travel between captured points, change your equipment and reload. I find it much more enjoyable to travel via rooftop, making huge leaps and only catching the edge of the roof barely with my fingertips. Driving becomes more exciting as your increase your ability, you better handle the vehicle, including air maneuvers, and if you use agency vehicles they improve alongside you. They literally morph when you enter them, starting simply and ending extravagantly. The vehicles extend, streamline, receive larger engines and larger tires.

This game reminds me of some of my favorite sandbox titles, the obvious is GTA, but go as far as spider-man and even Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. All in all, if you have a 360 and xbox live, you should download this demo immediately! You won't be disappointed, unless you're a game-snob.

My Wii Repair Saga.

The day I first noticed the problem was like any other day, I was playing around on Wii sports doing a little boxing. On the screen where it splits to compare you to your opponent, I noticed a little oddity. I thought perhaps it was just an in game problem and wrote it off. When I exited the game, I noticed the graphical anomaly on the Wii menu as well. This greatly saddened me. I tired all of my games, lo and behold, it was present everywhere.

It appeared to me that some GPU memory was faulty as I had seen the same thing on bad video cards in the past. A somewhat checkerboard pattern of flickering pixels was present, this often happens when one set of memory associated with a certain area of the picture goes bad where the rest is fine so it happens to every other pixel per row.

I submit a repair request on the nintendo website quickly and proceed to call nintendo technical support just for my own curiosity. I know most of the support members are just reading text from a flow chart but there's no harm in trying. Apparently the error I had encountered was undocumented, to little surprise. I get off of the phone and pack up my Wii, awaiting the UPS label to ship the unit to the repair facility.

Apparently the repair facility for California is a company named "Minilec Services, Inc.", located in Chatsworth, CA, which is just a bit north of LA.
Their website states "We are Authorized Warranty Centers for: Motorola, Nintendo, Nokia, Panasonic, Rigid, and Ryobi. Additionally we have experience in repair of Apple, Ericsson, HP, Handspring, NEC, Palm, Phillips, Samsung, and Uniden products." so it sounds as though they're rather busy little bees.

The following Monday my UPS label arrives and I affix the label to the box and include all of the required information, but like a dummy, I put the seven digit "Order Number" into the information rather than the "Repair Order Number" and I realize this only after the unit is already on its way there. I call Nintendo and a helpful staff member gives me the phone number and extension for the Wii repair unit for for minilec and I get it straightened out.

Days of waiting later, I receive my Wii via UPS at work and lug it home. It turns out they were unable to repair the unit and chose rather to replace it. I plug in the Wii, expecting a totally blank slate but it turns out that they transferred all of the consoles information to the new unit! All of my Miis, the address book, the internet connection settings and game saves. Yet what is noticeably absent is the virtual console games I had purchased.

I was uncertain exactly how to proceed so I call nintendo and after telling them my info and waiting about 10 minutes on hold they tell me that all I need do is re-download the games from the VC store, there is no choice to purchase, just for download.

All in all, a relatively painless procedure. I'm just glad it wasn't my Xbox 360 that was broken!

Wiiplacement

Looks like they couldn't repair my wii, so they're replacing it entirely. I'm glad I backed up everything to a SD card!

I bet you would.

Does anyone want to contribute to the noble cause of entertaining me? If so, if you have any DDR RAM for PC kicking about unused and you want to donate it to me, feel free to contact me and I'll take it off your hands. Free. Somebody? Anybody? No?

I do love NewEgg.

Especially since their main warehouse is only a few hours from me. Usually when I order anything from them, I receive it the following day. I think that will be the case with the PC case I ordered today. It was $20 with a $20 mail in rebate. That linux box is coming close and closer to fruition.

Wii to home base, repair is a GO.

Like a fool, I had placed the incorrect seven digit order number from my nintendo RMA invoice on my Wii package but I have called and bugged all of the right people and they have informed me of the repair and imminent return of my Wii. Hopefully it will arrive home by friday so laundry won't be so excruciatingly boring. Zing!

I pray for a speedy Wii recovery.

My wii has arrived at the repair facility and it is in the skilled hands of the repairmen. They say they'll repair it today and it'll be home soon. Poor, poor sick wii.

Crackdown Demo = Yes.

I shall surely purchase this game and perhaps I'll even tell you about it.

Zuney-Zune-Zune

When Hell is Full Orville Redenbacher Will Walk the Earth.

Fallout 3 on its way to the 360 (or just on its way at all!)

"With regard to Bethesda's plans for 2007 and beyond, he told us; "We started work (on Fallout 3) in late 2004 with a few people. We only had about 10 people on it until Oblivion wrapped, but most of our staff is on it now." The game itself utilizes the same Gamebryo engine as Oblivion.
"We have pretty long preproduction phases on our stuff," continues Howard "doing concepts, design, building prototypes, and such. We should be ready soon to show it off, but we'll see."

More details and the full interview with Bethesda can be found in issue 18 of the Official Xbox 360 Magazine, on sale from the 15th of February.

Yay, overnight delivery.

ATI is replacing my defective AIW card and sent it overnight yesterday. It should arrive at my place of employment sometime today.

CES... Blah blah blah.

Is anyone else sick of reading about the CES? I'm so bored of hearing about the iPhone, Cisco and Apple. It was pretty presumptuous of Apple anyways. Cisco had the copyright on the name since 2000. They come in 7 years later and expect the name to be handed right over to them

Apple iPhone? i am unimpressed.

Apple unveiled their iPhone yesterday overflowing with features many which are better suited to seperate devices. Specifically ones which aren't held to your face. Battery life will certainly be short as an LCD is a lifesucker, coupled with the slim formfactor already taken up by other hardware, including a flashdrive, the battery will be woefully small. The touch screen will be covered in scratches in short order and damaged easily unless you treat it with delicacy that you often don't reserve for usually hardy devices like mobile phones.
I am unconvinced by the mac OS being utilized on the device. Though it touts wifi and bluetooth, it lacks wireless syncing options and you're unable to download songs directly with your phone due to unoptimized download speeds. Thanks 2G!
There are two other factors which mitigate my fervor quite well, piled on top of all of this. The phone starts at $500, but only with a two year contract with Cingular.

The Great Linux Adventure

I am soon going to embark on a great adventure into a frontier relatively unknown to me: Linux. I want to put together a multimedia PC and I've heard good things about an application called "MythTV" which is apparently Linux based. I don't want to buy a third windows license so the legal, free route seems good to me. I have plenty of spare parts laying around which I shall build said computer. It's going to be an interesting journey.

Helpful Zune HowTo's

Here's a link to some helpful HowTo's for your Zune. http://zunecorps.com/?page_id=81
Includes ripping DVD's to Zune compatible formats, porting over your songs from your iPod, even DRM'd songs.

I shouldn't distract myself with dumb java games.

But I do! My favorite shows are starting back up this and next week which will also keep me distracted. Lately at home I've been trying to discover the easiest way to ready video files for my zune. Also, I am awaiting the return of my 9800 pro AIW from ATI once they decide they can't repair it and instead replace it.
Once it is returned I have decided to make a linux box with it, some other spare parts and buy a new case for it. It'll be kept in the living room most likely and record all those shows I want to make mobile with MythTV. I have been greatly enjoying my Zune, I picked up a protective cover for it to keep the large screen scratch free. I sold my iPod to a coworker so my wallet only took a $50 hit instead of $250.
I enjoy distraction, perhaps too much.

Looking for Zune Owners in San Diego.

Simple, I just want to try out the wifi connection ability of this nifty hardware. It syncs up rather well with my xbox 360 but that's all the connecting I've done so far.

Video iPod out, Zune in.

More info on that later! I know, I'm lazy.

I now own a Zune!

And I will review it once I have acquainted myself with it!