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| Dream Cheeky USB Missile Launcher Review |
| 2 - Conclusion |
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Although it might seem a bit cheap and nasty, the USB Rocket Launcher form ‘Dream Cheeky’ is so much fun it
should be banned – and I’m sure in schools and offices across the country it will be.
The USB Missile launcher (selling online for AU$59) is a rather compact device that will fit nicely on your desktop (I would say put it on top of your monitor – but only if you have a CRT, which no one does) and is completely powered and operated via the USB port, so no extra power packs or control panels are necessary.
Its compliment of armaments include 3 x soft foam ‘missiles’ with a claimed effective combat range of around 10 feet (about 3 meters). However when testing in our own personal firing range (i.e. the office), we found they could be effective at distances up to and including 7 meters (almost 23 feet) with remarkable accuracy.
Don’t be afraid of hurting someone in the office with a well placed shot though, as the projectiles would have to weigh all of about 1 or 2 grams (0.07 of an ounce). So they’re not going to carry enough momentum to inflict any pain or injury, but just enough to be really annoying to those you hit, and that’s what it’s all about isn’t it?
If no-one of particular importance is around to aim at, there is a sizeable paper bullseye target included which you can hang on your wall or cubicle partition and shoot at to your heart’s content.
The launcher is controlled by a very simple (and extremely poorly written) piece of windows based software. The software will help you move the launcher left and right on a full 360 degree rotation, as well as the level of elevation, so shooting is more like artillery than missiles, but maybe I’m just being picky on the terminology.
The software is, well, awful quite frankly, some of the worst I’ve ever seen for any product in a long long time. Firstly the graphical box for the software is about twice the size it needs to be with a large area of grey existing around the GUI for no apparent reason, and secondly, none of the buttons actually work... well they do, but the spot where you have to click the mouse is about an inch away from where its picture is (see picture). Thankfully it can be controlled via the keyboard with the arrow keys and fired with the spacebar, this way works flawlessly.
There a targeting cursor situated on an X and Y axis grid (with X and Y the wrong way round *sigh*), however this cursor is completely useless. The cursor moves completely from one side of the screen to the other, while the device itself has only rotated about 45 degrees. Basically the dot/cursor will move around the screen, but it doesn’t relate to the device at all.
When firing the device it simply rotates the firing order in a clockwise direction whether there’s a missile on the end of the barb or not, so it’s best to keep it fully loaded if possible. The device fires by making quite a lot of noise, presumably pulling back a small piston of sorts, and releasing it suddenly which pushes a small shot of air out the barbs, enough to propel the missile a good 20 feet or more according to our tests. Hours of fun to be had, no matter how old you are.
Conclusion:
At AU$59, it’s really not cheap, but it works well (despite the software) and is a lot of fun, so much so that it’s sure to have you annoying all those around you within minutes of you plugging it in. It would be much cooler however if they could integrate a web camera into the device, as I’d happily pay $10-$20 or so more for the ability to fire it a bit more remotely and see what I’m aiming at, maybe even over the web, I think that would make it a whole lot more fun.
There are a few things that bug me about the device though, it only has 3 missiles total (no spares), and you just know you’re going to lose one or two pretty quickly, the software is appalling, and it’s rather loud so it’s hard to surprise someone with a sneaky shot, they always know it’s coming.
Overall it works well for what it is, but it looks and feels very cheap and probably won’t last very long before something breaks, but you’ll have a great time while it lasts.
OzHardware Rating – 6.5/10
This product can be purchased online at www.techbuy.com.au (Direct Link)
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|123.109.254.xxx |2008-04-30 13:32:19 Brad - GUI...I have one of these as well as the original Marks & Spencer launcher. The range of the Marks & Spencer unit was awful but this one is far better. They are both fairly stable sitting on top of a cubicle partition. I too had issues with the GUI but they went away when I got rid of the Windows 2000 box it was plugged into and switched to XP. I've heard reports that upgrading the .NET framework also helps.
