X-Plane-Airliner Review

Feb 22

MoggyApp Store, iPhone/iPod touch No Comments

Hey guys,

Many of you iPhone & iPod touch users out there will have heard of the app X-Plane, released in September of last year. It is a really awesome flight simulator app that allows users to fly planes using the built in accelerometers and touchscreen. However, with every first app, there was a couple of bad things – cost, for example, it’s £5.99 here in the UK which is a lot for an app. The simulator, too, was a bit sluggish, had reports of crashing, limited number of flying locations and only 4 relatively unheard of aircrafts.

Well, the folks down at Laminar Research, decided to fix some of the issues customers were having by releasing two awesome new apps just before Christmas:

X-Plane-Airliner, and X-Plane-Helicopter. Both are much the same as the original, but, these versions have:

- More commonly known aircraft (in ‘Airliner’ you get the choice of a Boeing 777, 747, 787 and an Airbus A380, while in ‘Helicopter’, you get helicopters… obviously… which is cool)
- LOADS more airports
- Larger flying areas
- And, most importantly, at half price. Thats from $9.99 to $4.99, or £5.99 down to £2.99 where I am.

The app looks awesome. As a result, as soon as I heard the news of the app becoming available, I raced to the app store, read a couple of reviews, brought the Airliner version, and downloaded it.

The app is brilliant. After a couple of months of playing, I can safely say I’ve had no problems with it crashing or anything. The gameplay is fantastic – the accelerometer is very precise, and it’s got all the features of a desktop flight simulator, such as MS Flight Simulator X. I am also getting frequent free updates that are adding new features such as new locations, new planes and other fixes.

More recently, Laminar Research have also produced a fourth app to the X-Plane series, X-Plane-Extreme, that focusses of precise mobility and flying with aircraft such as a B-1 bomber and the F-22 Raptor. On release of this application, the prices of all four games were moved to £5.99 or $9.99 – Annoying for those who wanted to get in on the half price versions.

Later guys.

Downloading & Installing Office 2007 Pro = Horrible Nightmare

Feb 18

MoggyComputer, Microsoft, Software, Windows No Comments

I have recently started running VMware on my Mac with Windows XP Professional, and today I thought I’d download the free trail of Office 2007 Professional to see what it’s like, and after the install, I am not happy at all. Here is a list of today’s events:

Morning
- Go to MS badly designed website
- Click on Download link
- Dead link, go back, try again, try elsewhere.
- Get asked for my email for an activation key… (why do I even need to do this?!)
- Download a tiny 700kb file… wondering wtf this is…
- Installs/Opens a download manager, starts downloading Office 2007; something I would have expected to do in point 2.
- The file is over 800MB. Woah. This takes a while….

Lunch
- Download manager crashes about 300MB (or about 1hr in), have to start download again.

Late Afternoon
- Finally downloads the whole thing, a long while later.
- Starts extracting the download
- Crashes
- Bluescreen, restarts XP.
- Lanches extraction again, 2 minutes later, crashes…
- Bluescreen, restarts XP.

Evening
- Finishes extraction. Now opens setup.
- On the first step of setup I get an error! I need a new version of Windows Installer, apparently.
- Download this.
- Crashes, Closes.
- Reopen Setup.
- Now installs some rubbish “Live Accounting” or something….!?
- Finishes.
- Now I manually open the actual Office setup.
- Wants my product key/serial. I copied the code from Safari, but wouldn’t accept the paste into the box. Had to type it in, letter by letter.
- Finally lets me accept the terms
- Install begins.
- Finally finishes. The install is ironically the smoothest part of the complete day.

I’m no expert at the technology behind installing applications, but NEVER have I gone through so much trouble trying to install and download this one. When I downloaded iWork ‘09 for a free trial it was far simpler, and just worked – no crashes, no serials, no bugs, no nothing.

But anyway, there you have it. If you’re thinking of downloading Office 2007 Professional, be prepared.