The Nintendo DSi
For my birthday a couple of weeks ago, my daughter gave me a Nintendo DSi.
I was delighted. Maybe she thought I was entering second childhood, or maybe she was being very pointed in including a program to increase my brainpower, but nevertheless, I am having great fun with it.
I tend to be a messer at heart. When I get a new toy, I try just about everything, just to see what I can do with it.
I soon found I could connect to the Internet, but that seemed to be rather limited, in that I could upload photographs to Facebook, but that was about it.
Then, on another messing trip, I hooked into the Nintendo software download area, and lo and behold – there was an Opera browser.
It is remarkably simple to operate. I have visited quite a few sites, with no problems. However, I then tried to write a post using the DS. That’s where my problems began.
As the DS doesn’t have a keyboard, an on screen keyboard appears if ever a text field in encountered. It’s slightly slower than typing, but not much. The main problem though is that it doesn’t seem to recognise Textareas on a web page, which means that I can log into my sites, enter my username and password, enter the title of my post, but then I come up against a blank wall.
Pity.
It would be a lot lighter to lug around than a laptop!
Trying to turn a Nintendo DSI into a netbook are ya’? That’s funny, I always thought you were supposed to play games on it. Silly me. 😉
I have an Asus Eee that’s not much bigger than the DS. The chief problem I have with it is trying to figure out how to use the Linux platform.
Kirk M: I’m quite a hotshot at Age of Empires too!!
Ian: Be very careful of Linux. It is highly infectious and causes a nasty rash of nerdishness. Side effects are a compulsion to post on forums and an irrational need to gloat at the problems of Windows users.
I don’t scoff at the problems of Windows users. I just feel sorry for them. (Of course, this comes from a guy who used to pay for the privilege of beta testing new OSs and software from MS back in the 90’s.)
You obviously haven’t been using it long enough to get infected. Or else you are immune, through some strange heredity?
I like my Eee but have no understanding of operating systems. I must admit to wishing that I had delayed buying it until a Windows version was launched.
I’m really not sure a DSi, even the XL version, is the ideal thing to be using for connecting to the Internet and doing day-to-day things on it.
That’d probably be the sort of thing you get one of those Internet tablet based phones or something.
If I had to use it to browse the Internet, it would drive me demented. I only connected as an experiment. I am quite happy to rely on my old laptop to do the grunge work, and my phone shall remain (to me) a means to phone people, though I can connect to the Web with that too! 😉