Category: General

The light shines on you

You know that feeling you’re getting something nice in the mail but it proves to be just a bunch of ads? So do Wii owners with Super Mario Galaxy. Nintendo Wii has a nice little feature of illuminating the disc slot with blue light every time that you either get a message from a friend or a system update is available (proving that WiiConnect24 is on). This way you immediately know if you have a new message, even if the console is not on.

Apparently Nintendo uses this feature also on games. I noticed that on Super Mario Galaxy you’ll get messages from the game’s characters as you progress. The problem is that these guys are constantly spamming you with their notes. That’s right Mailtoad, I’m looking at you… Now I get to experience the joy of constant illumination. Guess this is what being popular feels like and inflation just struck the awesomeness of blue lights.

Wii console

Despite of running a disc-slot disco, Mario Galaxy is a great game. And after finally completing Twilight Princess, I have time to play it. A truly epic quest, it was. Making Twilight Princess last almost a year was not an easy task, but I somehow managed to do it by always having some other – usually useless – things to do, getting stuck and generally hating the water temple. My console also broke in the middle of the game, so that slowed me down too.

The problem with snail’s pace in gaming is that new releases start piling up on you. On Wii I’m still in the middle of completing Mario Galaxy and already a handful of other must-buy games await. Mario Kart and Smash Bros Brawl, for example. Dragon Quest and Nights might be worth a look too. And don’t get me started on Xbox 360. Mass Effect is currently sitting on my shelf, just waiting for that right moment.

Fix it until it breaks

Apple’s patches have generally worked well for me. The latest 10.4.11 patch for Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) also brings Safari 3 for Tiger users alongside fixes. I usually apply the software updates pretty fast, usually a couple of days since the release, at most. I’ve probably been in luck, since this is the first update I’ve had problems with.

I’m not alone with my problems, apparently, as there have been reports of the update breaking the system to a point where it doesn’t even get past startup.

I chose to install the update for my Mac Mini through the software update a bit after it became available. Download went fine, but the installer decided I wasn’t ready for the future and quit installing less than halfway through. After that it threw the install package to trash. Ok, I thought, decided to reboot and try again – just in case anything funky was going on.

This proved to be a mistake. Mac Mini didn’t seem to be able to locate the startup disk anymore, getting stuck on grey loading screen flashing with folder icon and question mark. First thoughts were hardware failure, and – sure enough – Apple Hardware Test indicated a memory error.

Apple Hardware Test

I replaced the faulty memory, tested again and it came out ok. Yet OS X refused to start. Checked the disk with my laptop only to find out it was fine, and finally chose to do a repair install on OSX. After that everything was back to normal, except Safari kept crashing constantly and identified itself as version 3 while rest of the system was still version 10.4.10. Because of the unsuccessful update? Let’s try it again. No dice. Again a failed install and a system unable to boot…

Reinstall #2 returned things to normal (aside from a still broken Safari). This time I decided to download the combo update and guess what, it installed with no problems whatsoever. Everything still worked after reboot and even Safari was back to normal.

Now, had I downloaded the 350 megabyte combo in the first place, none of this would’ve happened. Except the faulty RAM, of course. That sucked. Unfortunately, I installed the 110 MB package that came through software update and so did many others. Makes me think that either someone at Apple slept through the testing phase or none of their systems suffered from this. Or they tested with the combo update…

Amusingly the PowerPC-version of the same update that botched up an Intel Mac Mini did not have any issues with my iBook G4. Magic of working RAM I guess. Wonder what are the odds of memory going bad just as you install a system update?

I see a New Wii

The Wii has returned to the household.

The warranty report I got from Nintendo simply said “console replaced”, so whatever it was, wasn’t easily repaired and they sent me another console instead. Fortunately they were kind enough to transfer my data to the new console: all game saves and settings were intact, as were Miis. I had to redownload the channels though, but that was no biggie – especially since I could still download Internet channel for free.

A few things still come to mind:

  1. Although Miis were transferred, I can no longer edit them. Since they were made on another Wii, the system now tells me they weren’t made by me and disallows editing despite of my account being transferred to the new Wii.
  2. What was the issue in the first place? Obviously it was serious enough to have the console replaced, but it took them three weeks to deal with it. Either it took more than a week to diagnose the problem or they’ve got a nice backlog of consoles waiting to be repaired (that, or serious understaffing issues). Still, it would’ve been nice to know what was wrong with the console.

On the bottom line, though, I’m happy I decided to send the console for repairs. Few more months and the warranty would’ve expired, making this possibly an expensive deal.

Who would’ve thought that my Wii goes sour before my Xbox 360? I’m knocking on wood with that one still and glad Microsoft extended the Red Ring of Death warranty. Playing with the console sometimes feels like playing a game of russian roulette and my turn hasn’t been yet.

Can’t stand the heat? Stay out of the kitchen.

Most people familiar with current generation consoles have probably heard of Xbox 360′s infamous overheating issue (a.k.a. the Red Ring of Death). This problem eventually forced Microsoft to extend the console’s warranty to three years on certain situations. Apparently Xbox 360 isn’t the only next-gen console suffering from similar problems. Wii has it’s own share too, although this one is much less common.

Apparently some Wii units suffer from graphic errors that are speculated to have something to do with an overheating Wii. Instead of malfunctioning entirely (as in Xbox 360), red pixels start to flash on the screen during games. For some people, the graphic errors also appear on Wii menus. The amount of graphic glitches seems to vary from one Wii to another, some units have huge areas of flashing pixels around the screen while others only have few that appear on certain conditions. There have also been some cases posted on YouTube. Many reasons have been debated to cause this, ranging from defective heatsink to Wireless card heating while WiiConnect24 is enabled. As far as I know, Nintendo has not officially recognized this issue, so the real reason is still unknown.

Last week this issue concerned me personally as I finally sent my Wii for repairs. In my case, the graphic errors occurred only under certain conditions and were not as severe as other people were having. Few areas on Twilight Princess had red pixel coating (Lake Hylia and Sky City) and Super Mario Strikers displayed. Still, I thought it’s not worth risking anything, especially since the warranty ends this December and the flickering looked rather disturbing. I mailed Nintendo’s tech support and they suggested sending the console in. Which I did.

So, now I’m waiting for Wii to travel back and see what’s up. My hopes are on next week. This incident inspired me to finally publish the Thoughts on Wii-article that I actually wrote about six months ago. I had to update it a bit though, so technically it’s brand new.

Xboxing day

I finally had the time to put up the article on Xbox 360 I wrote a long time ago. It started as an overview of the console but some parts of it ended up as a campaign against noise on some. Sorry, but it’s loud.

Apart from that, it’s a fine console overall. I like the Live service. Even though I don’t play online, the service itself with demo downloads, Live Arcade and other content is great and holds much potential.

I have also written a similar piece on Nintendo Wii, and will post it here someday. Like the Xbox article, it’s already done, but there are few things to change here and there.

It is cold outside

With the chilly winter upon some of us, I decided to finally spend a moment to do a little bit of much needed reorganizing in the review categories. Since the last update, my console hardware has gotten two big additions: the Xbox 360 and, most importantly, the Nintendo Wii (I plan on writing some thoughts about them both in near future).

As a result of this all, I decided to combine all Nintendo-stuff under a single column and did the same for Sony hardware as well. I also added newcomers as Xbox and Xbox 360. The latest review has also been cooked up and just so happens to be listed under the Xbox tag, Castlevania: Curse of Darkness.

One in a million

As I speculated in my previous post a long ago, my laptop battery indeed happened to be one of those few that were affected and due for the recall.

Reporting the battery to Apple resulted in UPS guy delivering a new one a couple weeks later. I sent the old one back to Apple and now my year old computer has a brand new battery. Can’t complain, really.

The X-Arcade controller review I promised writing is finaly out in the wild. In short, this neat controller by Xgaming costs a bundle but is worth every penny. More info on the X-Arcade article.

Toasty

As reported on CNN and who knows how many other sources by now, Apple is recalling 1.8 million laptop batteries due to potential overheating and fire hazard issues. This news came pretty soon after exploding batteries caused Dell to recall 4.1 million batteries. The whole battery issue tracks back to Sony, the manufacturer of both companies batteries. Dell recall may end up costing up to $430 million and when you add the cost of Apple’s recall to that sum, Sony’s not going to be very happy they end up paying the bill.

Apple has set up a support page which offers more information on the issue. That being said, I happen to own an iBook that was built on October 2005. This issue seems to affect 12-inch G4 iBooks and PowerBooks and 15-inch G4 Powerbooks, so check. Apparently affected batteries were built between October 2003 and August 2006. Check. Affected iBook battery model number is A1061. Same as mine, so it’s three hits and no misses so far.

After checking to battery serial, it indeed seems to fall between one of the affected ranges (3K429 – 3K611). Looks like we have a winner, folks… I haven’t yet filled the exchange form so I guess the jury’s still out, but looks like my battery is one of those which can “overheat and pose a fire hazard”. Nice.

Realistically speaking, it’s a bit over 12 months old and and hasn’t acted funny so far, so I guess there’s no immediate risk of it turning crispy. Which means I plan to continue using it. Still, I’m going to check if the battery validates on the support form and if that’s the case, send it back to Apple when the replacement arrives.