Starship Troopers was awesome.  It's an ultimate lads film - testostarone central in a sci-fi setting.  Big guns, big ships, big bugs.  Starship Troopers 2 however... was painful to watch.  It was low budget, badly acted, and terrible scripting.  We couldn't work out why they'd done it - why, with a guarenteed box office following would they have made the sequel on £50 and a book of food stamps?

We burried the memory, and vowed never to speak of it again.

But friends... I don't know about you but I had no idea they were doing this... it is time for the sequal we deserved - it is time for the sequal we hunger for.  Starship Troopers 3 - and it looks like everythign it should be, with some of the original cast.

Want to know more?

  
Ok.. it's straight to DVD but still... looks good.
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Phil
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The Xperia X1 is one of Sony's offerings to the mobile phone industry, and one I'm very much looking forward to with baited breath.  It's their first ever mobile phone to run Windows Mobile, joining the range of touch screen all singing all dancing smart phone.  When it's released in September 2008, it will be competing with HTC's models, which have dominated the marker for a long time (you might know them better as XDA's, SPV's, Vario's depending on what provider your with - but those phones are all actually made by the same people: HTC).  It'll also be competing with Blackberry's, and the iPhone.  So how does it match up?

 
HTC

Blackberry

 
Apple iPhone

Well first off - it looks hot.  Not everyone will agree there, but it's sleek enough to be cool and professional enough to be a business phone.  HTC's tend to look, well, they're for geeks and they look like geeks phones.  Sony have made something beautiful here and I appreciate that.  It supposedly will run a full version of Windows Mobile, and has a memory slot, sliding keyboard, touch screen, Bluetooth, wifi, 3G, GPS, yada yada - in other words, it can do everything a HTC can do - but it does it with a little bit of style. 

The interface is being given a facelift too - adding a little bit of smooth drag and dropping, swishy transforms, and multi panelled menus (this is actually a pretty clever new idea), making it nicer to use and cooler to show off.  In fact I'd say it looks like it'll be as pleasant to use as the iPhone, which is the sexiest of it's competitors, but the Xperia doesn't loose the business functionality.

Again, to better the HTC's, the Xperia has a headphone minijack socket.  At last.  I lose HTC's but it drives me mad that they have USB connections for headphones.  The USB socket being shallower does not last well in a pocket situation and they tend to break the USB plugs.  The Xperia has USB hosting like the latest HTC's (so not only can you plug it into a PC, you can plug a USB device *into* the phone), but it has the headphone jack as well.  Thankyou Mister Sony - you heard my cries.

The Blackberry's are of course, the most business suited phones of the three rivals.  HTC are the second here, but Blackberry have always looked more the part and had better support.  Sony aren't exactly small fry though, and the X1 looks more executive than any blackberry model, so market penetration is well within their ability - it remains to be seen how aggressive Sony will push this to business users.

So there you go!  As sexy as the iPhone, as smart as the HTC, and as professional as the Blackberry - The Sony Xperia X1.

The only niggle in the back of my mind is that Sony do have a tendency to screw things up in the final development stage.  They'll try to tie this into some kind of unpopular or unwanted Sony proprietary technology - like their own brand of flash memory of... I dunno - maybe they'll try to install a bluray player into it as standard.  So far they assure us it will use SD Cards like the rest of the world, and that the version of Windows mobile they use wont be cut down and limited to Sony based software but it would be a first if they did.  the other thing Sony are well known for is over pricing, but I doubt they'll be any worse than the iPhone for this.

I live in hope.  In the mean time, enjoy their promo video, which doesn't really feature the phone at all but has nice music so who cares?  Oh - and the website for the Xperia for full specs etc is: http://www.sonyericsson.com/x1/

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Phil
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