Where the description says "primarily consists of information on Wikipedia" this actually means pretty much all the content in the book has been copied and pasted from Wikipedia. Even the layout of some of the facts is exactly the same. Complete waste of money unless you don't have access to the internet, in which case you wouldn't be able to order the book from amazon in the first place and would be much better off.

Really should have given more attention to the product description.

Sadly amazon does not provide the opportunity to rate an item 0/5 stars, though maybe the virtue that this book does, despite all common sense, exist warrants it that 1 star.

This is a great bedside lamp, the light intensity is set on a scale between 1 and 20, with 1 offering a faint glow through to 20 which renders a light so blinding you could read a book in the next room, let alone the one the lamp is in. As an alarm it works very well, you can set two different alarms and the switch between them is very quick and easy to use, which is very helpful. It is also very intuitive to set up. The alarm sound effects are also very pleasant and the system which gradually wakes you is far nicer than your traditional alarm clock.

However, there are some drawbacks, the USB playback has no support for media players such as iPods and the FM radio antenna and quality is not particularly good. However, as an alarm clock, this is the best one i've ever owned.

I'd like to start by saying if you are looking for a light-hearted book with a few jokes thrown in that would offer some guidance for university life, this is probably not the book for you. There is a wealth of information between these pages, however the majority of it is a mix of common-sense and pedantics. However, if you really want to take time out of studying for A-levels to read this painfully dull book, I would only suggest doing so if you have very little clue about how the outside world works. However, as I stated earlier, it does contain a wealth of helpful information, if you can persevere to find it.

I'll start by saying that if you want to play around with designing houses, and you want to pay out for a grand designs branded product in exchange for some pre-designed objects and some tutorials; don't hesitate, that's exactly what this is. However free programs such as google SketchUp offer much the same functionality as this package, if not more. So check out Google SketchUp first, download it, try it out and if you feel like you want to cut out some of the design processes and have a more simplified experience then i'd strongly advise buying this. Although i cannot imagine that the proportion of people who would want to pay for a product like this when SketchUp is free is particularly large, hence the low rating.

It's easy to use, has a fairly wide range of samples, but when it comes to creating anything more than an amateur mix it falls short. so for all the basics, it's a good choice if you're just getting into digital music making, but not a scratch on the more professional programs.

The Wii is undoubtedly a commercial success due to its family-friendly approach, but, as many Wii owners would agree, 90% of the software on the Wii is "family oriented" shovelware. There are some great family friendly games on the Wii, but they are few and far between.

However, those of you looking for a family friendly experience that is also a well crafted and enjoyable experiences for all ages should look no further than LittleBigPlanet.

The singleplayer game consists of 8 sections, each of which is divided into 4-5 levels and each section is themed according to a different part of the globe (Europe, Africa, South America, Mexico, USA, China, India and the Arctic). These levels are beautiful and provide a smooth learning curve for the game. All of these singleplayer game can also be played with up to four people locally or over the Playstation Network. Overall these levels are great fun and always offer interesting changes to the gameplay and puzzles. There are also a multitude of smaller challenge levels, these are usually races or survival challenges where the difficulty gradually ramps up.

The online community is great and offers a massive selection of levels created by the community, these levels have a wide spectrum of quality, but the search system allows for you to find the best ones easily.

These online, community created levels are created using the ingame level creator, the level creator lets you do more things than i could list here, but i'll just say: it will cater for any platforming level you would care to create. This level creator obviously takes some time to learn but is fairly user friendly, and all of the tutorials are narrated by the wonderful Steven Fry and are a joy to listen to.

This brings me to the soundtrack, which is spectacular, offering a wide variety of lesser known songs that you will be humming to yourself for weeks.

Overall, 10/10

This product works great, it does exactly as it's advertised to, opens up the PSP 1000 or 2000 into the PSP Service Menu. Now, from this service menu you can install custom firmware or perform system maintenance. Another use for this battery is to un-brick a psp that has bricked due to a software fault.

A great product, but just remember, in order to install custom firmware you need to create a magic memory stick, this isn't too difficult and you can find out how on the internet.

This year has seen the release of many highly anticipated titles such as Gears of War 2, Fable 2, Battlefield: Bad Company, GTA 4, Dead Space and of course; Fallout 3.

Fallout 3 takes place in the year 2077, but not as you'd expect. Fallout 3 is set in a parallel universe where things are the same up until about the 1950's, which is where it all changed. In the Fallout universe, nuclear war broke out between the east and west and left the earth devastated.

In this post-apocalyptic universe you find yourself in an underground vault shielded from the radiation and key events in your childhood play out before you until your character becomes 16, when your father mysteriously leaves the vault (Vault 101) and you follow after him. This part of the game only lasts about half an hour and serves as a nice tutorial.

Upon exiting Vault 101 Fallout 3 certainly has the "WOW" factor. The plains of a post-nuclear Washington DC are set before you. You will find yourself looking around the local landscape a bit (which is very detailed and fun to explore) and then proceeding the the main quest (to find/save your father) or one of the many deep side quests.

The world in Fallout 3 is an "open-world", this means you can go anywhere and aren't restricted to pathways etc. (except for when in the capital of Washington -which is about 1/10 of the game world- where you are restricted a bit as many streets are blocked by rubble). As far as gameplay is concerned Fallout 3 is amazing, with the option of first or third person viewpoints and the ability to either play it like any other first person shooter or as a combination of first person shooting and use of the VATS system.

The VATS system is hard to explain, but lets say it involves limb-targeting and gory close-ups. Gore in general is not something that Fallout 3 is a stranger to.

To sum up:
Graphics: 9/10 Overall incredible, some minor glitches.
Gameplay: 8/10 Very good in general, lets you use a variety of tactics.
Presentation: 10/10 Whilst bleak, the Fallout Universe is lightened with plenty of dark humour
Lasting Appeal: 9/10 Whilst there is no online play, the single player could last you forever.

This is the definitive media creator for the average PC user, and whilst it lacks some of the features found in more expensive packages, it makes up for it with it's wonderfuly simple user interface.

You can create Cds, Audiobook CDs, DVDs and more. I found that a great feature of this program is that, whilst it supports Blu-Ray disc, you can put up to 60 minutes of HD content on a standard DVD without having to shell out for a £100+ Blu-ray writer!

I nice feature for those who find technology a bit hard to get there heads around (understandably with software like this) there are simple functions like burning a DVD straight from your camcorder (HD or not).

This package can also transcode audio and video files into a variety of farmats including MP3, WMA, WAV, DVD, VCD, AVI and MP4. This is very useful if you want to convert some of you media to be playable on a portable media device like an iPod, PSP or Archos.

A feature that is found in many camcorders now is added in Roxio's media package and that is the ability to upload media directly to Youtube.

Te Beatmatching tool is a welcome feature and is similar to that of Apple's Genius, it matches together songs with similar tempo's and pitches, and does this very effectively!

Overall, a much recommended program that is amazing value for only £55

I had not heard of this author before reading this book, and overall i found it to be a pleasant read with an engaging plot. This book has definitely made me mor likely to buy books from this author.

I was a bit sceptical before i started Winter Song, but it had won me over within the first few pages.