Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

Last week, I replaced my aging 13″ MacBook Pro with a new MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Here are my impressions so far…

I went for the 15″ rather than the 13″ because a) they didn’t do the Retina Display in a 13″, but more importantly, b) the new 15″ is the same weight as the 13″, so it’s just as portable and gives me a bigger screen to work on, as the 13″ was starting to grate on me a little. It is reasonably light, though the bigger size means it won’t fit in my current sleeve.

The screen looks amazing!

Getting started was easy – but only because I paid for the ethernet adapter. I simply backed up my current laptop to my Time Capsule (you do have a Time Capsule, right?), then turned it off, connected my new laptop to the Time Capsule and restored the entire system.

This worked for most things, but not quite everything – for example, I had to copy over my hosts file from a backup, as well as my system paths, and most applications needed me to login again and some thought it was a different device (well, I guess it is, but others didn’t notice a difference). All my files and applications came back and I just logged in as normal though, very smooth.

In general, I was expecting it to be faster. It has a faster processor, and SSD hard drive and more memory, so I was hoping things would open lightning quick. They open quicker than on my old laptop, but it’s not instant like the stripped down, no crap on the system demo laptops you find in the Apple Store.

The wake up time is a lot slower than my old laptop. I used to just open the lid and was able to log in, this one there is a distinct few seconds wait while it wakes up.

There is no light or battery indicator on the case. My old one had a light on the front which told me when it had actually gone to sleep, and a button I could press on the side to activate a series of five LEDs telling me how much charge was left. This one has neither.

It’s very, very thin!

I’ll reporting back after I’ve been using it a while.

Wagyu, also known as Kobe (technically, Kobe is a breed of Wagyu), is the finest steak in the world. If there was an argument for the existence of God, and that that God had created all animals for man to eat, Wagyu would be it – their meat has a high fat content which causes wonderful marbling that makes it extra delicious.

Cattle Grid, part of the local ribs quarter that has formed around Norm, George and myself, were running a special one-night-only (that they ran twice) in which you could get Wagyu for the reasonable price of £35 (reasonable for Wagyu anyway), so we headed down.

It was superb. One of the best steaks I have ever had, if not the best.

That said, given it is normally three times the price of a fillet cut, I’m not sure I would opt to pay full price for it. I’m glad I’ve tried it, but I don’t think it’s as delicious as three separate trips to the stake house.

I needed to get some prints done for my photography course, but this being 2012 and all, obviously I have a digital camera and store all my photos digitally. So I headed onto the internet to find someone who would print them for me.

I ended up going with Photobox, who tempted me in with their free prints offer and then insisted I was an existing customer and so I wasn’t entitled to it. Apparently, I had already signed up with them, so I guess that is fair enough.

It was a bit of an ordeal to upload my photos as their Java applet kept crashing, but I eventually uploaded them by FTP (they do at least have a great array of upload methods) and sent them to print – except for one, that they insisted was too small to print.

It was around £5 for 26 photos, including delivery I think and the print quality is as you would expect. They also came in a very nice plastic wallet. They also arrived in around 36 hours – I ordered them on Tuesday night, and they arrived Thursday morning.

Will use them again next time I need some prints.

I’ve now installed iOS 6 on both my phone and my tablet. But, as of yet, I haven’t really noticed any difference.

I now have a clock on my iPad. Fine. Not used it. The maps look OK, but I was happy enough with Google Maps, so that isn’t really an upgrade because they have just replaced one thing with another, less accurate one.

The Siri improvements are very exciting, but then I haven’t used it yet. I use Siri for things like sending text messages and setting my alarms, which I can already do, and the Siri servers seem to be overloaded at the moment, as it’s practically too slow to use at the moment 🙁 .

Passbook, shared photo streams and Facebook integration I’m not really interested in, and I don’t like the cloud tabs or whatever they’re called. So, all in all, not really that impressed.

I got Sky Go so that I could watch the live Formula One and NFL. I pay for NFL GamePass but unfortunately even though I’m paying a lot of money for it, they still black out any games that Sky Sports are showing.

Overall, I’m disappointed.

Firstly, I can only put it on two devices. Now I have loads – a laptop, a phone, a work computer, a tablet, all of which I would like to use it on depending on situation. But I can’t, because I can only register two devices.

Secondly, they have disabled display mirroring, so I can’t plug my iPad into a TV and watch it on there. It’s just stupid though, because I can just plug my laptop into a TV and do it that way, so they’re not stopping anything.

Streaming has worked quite well though. I was able to stream last Sunday night’s NFL with only a few stops for buffering and it looks pretty good on my 27″ screen.

It was Wednesday evening and Elina was being too lazy to cook (we take it in turns, and it was hers). So we decided to head out to grab something to eat and eventually settled on La Grillade.

As a French restaurant in the city centre, it has tough competition from Sous le Nez.

We decided to take advantage of their three course set meal. I say set, we went for the slightly more expensive one, from which you can just pick any starter and dessert off the main venue.

I decided to go for the frogs legs as I haven’t tried them before. Turns out they taste a lot like chicken, but not as nice. I don’t think I’ll be having them again, but it was an interesting experience.

For the main we had a rack of venison, that was cooked to perfection and extremely delicious. It also came with a wide variety of side dishes – you wouldn’t think you could do that much with chips and veg, but apparently, you can.

The desserts were excellent too – you know what you’re getting with a mouse au chocolat, and the lemon sorbet lived up to expectations as well.

All in all, a fantastic meal, but comes up at least as expensive as Sous le Nez, so I would expect it to. Recommended, in any case.

Last week, we had dinner at Veritas. It’s a great pub, so we thought it would be nice to try the food.

It was reasonable, though I can’t even remember what I had, so clearly not very memorable. Elina had the special chicken and bacon pie, which she described as “a lot of meat”, which is definitely a compliment. Don’t think I’ll be rushing back there for the food though.

Apparently, in there, every day is Friday. Except for us, it was a Monday. But now that me and Elina work over the road from each other, and TGI Friday’s is just next door, we decided to try it out for lunch (I have been to TGI before, but not in the past 15 years, which is quite a long time lol).

We both went for the ribs, which were good, but then given how close we live to Cattle Grid, it was always doomed to leave us a little disappointed. It didn’t help that they had run out of the beer glaze sauce, so we had to have the regular.

Service wasn’t too snappy either, so ended up getting back slightly late. It is otherwise very convenient for lunch though.

Over on the Know Leeds website, I’ve written a review of Gaucho, the steak restaurant on Park Row. I don’t want to duplicate too much of what I have written here, but it is amazing! If you love your steak, you must pay it a visit, it is easily as good as Blackhouse and they even bring out a meat board, with their various cuts on to show you!

While in Dublin, we stayed at StayCity Serviced Apparents, so I thought I would share my thoughts on them.

When I originally tried to book online with Laterooms, it told me they had run out of available rooms and I had to call the Laterooms call centre. I did, and they confirmed there were no more rooms available, but suggested they could book me in at another StayCity just a few minutes away – and offer that I accepted.

Having turned up at said location, I was then told that we had actually been put in the original location. They were very nice about it and put is in a free taxi to the original location, where we found they had allocated a two bedroom apartment to us (couldn’t make use of it though as Elina insisted on sleeping in the same bed).

It was a bit run down, but when the serviced apartments I have to compare against it are Warwick and Oxford, you probably can’t expect the same standards. I can’t help but feel they were falling a little too much into stereotypes though by not providing any tall glasses, yet providing several types of wine glasses.

It was rather cold at first too as they had most of the windows opened when we arrived, so it took a while to warm up (and was never overly warm). It was also rather nosier than I was expecting when it came to trying to sleep.

The location was fantastic though – it was literally over the river from Temple Bar, so for the price and location, it still comes up as a good deal. Their wifi was good too. You do need a pass per device, but I had no problem streaming high-quality video.