Exclusive to Tesco in the UK, Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox have released today the first LEGO themed Star Wars animation, named The Padawan Menace. IF you’ve ever played aLEGO Star Wars video game before, you’ll know from the cut-scenes that these are aimed at younger viewers and are steeped in more humour than normal. This adventure is no different.

It costs £5 for the DVD and £8 for the Blu-Ray – the latter comes with an exclusive “Young Han” Lego figure. There’s also a few extras to make up for the fact that the main feature is just 21 minutes long.

None-the-less, on Blu-Ray it’s the full 1080 resolution and looks brilliant – the LEGO brick animation is very well done. Sounds and music from the original movies are also used to good effect. It has a U (Universal) certificate.

I was not expecting a great deal for something cheap that’s aimed at younger kids but thoroughly enjoyed it.

Here’s the “official” description and a trailer video…

A routine Jedi Academy field trip is turned into a rip-roaring comic adventure in LEGO Star Wars: The Padawan Menace. Tour guide Master Yoda leads a group of rambunctious Jedi Younglings through Senate chambers when he senses a disturbance in the Force. Summoned to help save the Republic, he discovers that one of the Younglings, Ian, has secretly boarded his ship…and young Ian has a taste for adventure! Meanwhile, C-3PO and R2-D2 are put in charge of the boisterous group and find themselves in over their heads. As the evil Sith prepare to wreak havoc, it’s up to Yoda and the Droids to ensure that their young charges aren’t torn to bricks!

Summary of LEGO Star Wars : The Padawan Menace

It only has a short feature but it looks and sounds gorgeous. The story is fun and there’s an entertaining cameo too. Star Wars fans and kids will really enjoy it. Maybe a filler for Christmas?

Reviewed by David Artiss on 7th November 2011.

Acer Aspire One

Well, I did it. I’ve made my mind up and purchased a Netbook. And as you can tell from the title, I plumped for an Acer Aspire One – Windows XP, 120GB hard drive, 1GB memory. It’s excellent and the battery and keyboard are better than I expected¹.

Only downsides found so far – no disks are provided, so there’s no way of restoring Windows  in the case of a drive failure, and there’s an annoying occasional flicker when using it off batteries².  But these are minor issues.

I bought it from Tesco – via Quidco and with my Clubcard to get maximum returns. And, like the picture, I bought the white one. I’ve also ordered a cheap mouse from Play.com and a nice leather case from Proporta.

1. in fact, I’m typing this blog entry on the Acer [↩]
2. it’s a known problem caused by the power drain [↩]

Today I received 3 emails from Tesco, the first at 5am. And only 3 days since I replied to them. A new record.

Thank you for your email

We would like to offer our sincere apologies for the delay in reply. Unfortunately, we have experienced technical difficulties which have resulted in a number of our responses not being sent.

All customer contact is incredibly valuable to us and we understand how frustrating this must be. We are currently working on these issues. You will shortly receive our original reply to your enquiry.

Thank you for your patience.

Then, 3.5 hours later…

Thank you for your email.

I just want to let you know that your email has successfully reached us, and we promise to be back in touch as soon as possible.

Thank you.

So, now we have 2 replies, neither of which say much other than to say they’re GOING to reply to me. Why do they do this close to when they do reply? Wouldn’t this kind of response be more appropriate not long after I’ve emailed them, to “set expectations”?

Now, if you remember, my reply was to go into detail about the IE 7 pop-up issue on their website. I didn’t have to, but I did. 3 hours ago I got my third mail of the day…

Thank you for your reply.

I would like to thank you for your comments regarding “The OK Button”

We find all customer feedback valuable as this helps us when we are looking at ways to make our service better. I would like to assure you that I have fully logged the points you have made. These will be directed to the correct area of the business.

Thank you for taking the time and trouble to share your views with us.

So, have they told someone? God only knows. However, the fact that they define it as a “view” does trouble me. I’m pointing out a god-damn failure of your online ordering system, you fools.

I did some testing of the site with Opera and Safari and that seemed ok. So, it only breaks in IE7. And Firefox. Which, by my reckoning, means their site works quite successfully for 33% of people, a figure they can be proud of.