Thursday, June 12, 2008

HTC Tytn II - A Pile of Crap!


This is quite possibly the most hatingly infuriating piece of crap I have ever had the misfortune to use. Crashes all the time. Display is as slow as hell. Drops calls. Needs hard reset once a month. Bluetooth hardware is dead within 4 months. Brain-dead battery management sfotware keeps switch the device on to tell you to switch off and charge the dying battery! The bundled "Free" TomTom GPS navigation software only has one city map and then they hit you with an over-price uprade for the full set. HTC never replied to a single one of my emails. The will be the last HTC device I ever buy. iPhone 2...

Monday, June 2, 2008

Muzzy Mandarin from Early Advantage

Just bought the Muzzy Mandarin Chinese programme from Early Advantage http://www.early-advantage.co.uk/product/detail/muzzymandarinchineselevelidvd308.aspx . It's rubbish!

The animation is early 70s and the audio quality is like a copy of a copy of a VHS tape. Come to think of it, that's what the video quality looks like.

So what do you get for your £143? A flimsy plastic box (broken on arrival). 2 very short Muzzy DVDs dubbed in Mandarin. 1 Mandarin vocab DVD. 2 undubbed English Muzzy DVDs (Why?) and a audio CD containing the soundtrack to the 2 Mandarin DVDs (Why?) and a couple of inconsequential booklets. And, oh, a very tacky and small Muzzy soft toy. It's close to being a complete rip-off.

My 4-year-old lost interest within 5 minutes. The older ones just sniggered and walked off. When I first showed it to a native Mandarin speaker, his first reaction was uncontrolled laughter.

Avoid like the plague.