Steve's Blog

If you haven’t been following the SuperDrive Petition then you might have missed that Apple have taken in my 12″ Powerbook for testing. Apple Sydney sent 2 DVD discs down to my AppleStore that I’ve been dealing with on this to test if the drive is indeed faulty. I thought I’d expand this test and also provided 4 blank DVDs to test. The results are very interesting:

• Ritek 8x DVD-R. Available Speeds: 1x, 2x. 26 mins to burn 4Gb.
• Princo 4x DVD-R. Available Speeds: 1x, 2x. 29 mins to burn 4Gb
• Yoshi 8x DVD+R. Available Speeds: 2x. 25 mins to burn 4Gb
• Datacell 4x DVD-R. Available Speeds: 1x, 2x. 29 mins to burn 4Gb
• Apple 8x DVD-R. Available Speeds: 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x. 12 mins to burn 4Gb
• TDK 16x DVD-R. Available SPeeds: 1x, 2x. 29 mins to burn 4Gb

In summary, only ONE of the discs worked as expected (Apple supplied the last two). These results have been sent to Apple, and I’m awaiting their reply with great interest.

A while ago, I picked up a copy of Xplane while there was a sale going on – as I’d played it a bit at Tims and thought it was worthy of purchase. I installed it on my Intel PC here, and soon after, version 8.21 came along for a $29USD upgrade. The interesting thing is that version 8.21 comes on NINE DVDs and installs to a whopping 60Gb! Is it worth it? Hell yes. The flight model is second to none, the graphics have improved heaps in the last version – as can be seen by these screenshots. Couple that with XSquawkbox and VATSIM and you can play online with proper air traffic control – using voice!. I have to say that it’s the most realistic thing I have ever come across without actually being in a real cockpit.

It looks like a couple of days ago, WordPress 2 was released. Today I set about installing it on here – and I have to say, I’m quite impressed. While most of the changes are below the surface, the admin side of things is MUCH quicker and easier to work with. I hope they keep up the good work