[O.G]

Yep that's right. Wireless Internet finally comes to the DS. It's no secret that the DS has Wi-Fi capabilities, and Nintendo has teamed up with Opera software to bring us this: the Nintendo DS Browser. Available in the UK for around £28.00 - let's take a look at how it performs...

The browser is sold in a regular DS game box. Inside can be found the cartridge itself, plus a memory expanison pack that goes into the GBA port. This memory expansion module is used for storing ttemporary cache files whilst browsing, and also to store a list of browser favourites (bookmarks).

Turning on the DS and starting the browser takes seconds. Wow! Upon launching for the first time, options for searching for avaialble wireless networks are easy and intuitive.

The DS Browser supports open wireless networks, as well as ones using the WEP protocol for encryption, but not WPA (sadly). An on-screen keyboard appears for you to enter the encryption key, and the DS is capable of storing settings for up to three different Wi-Fi networks.
This worked flawlessly at my house, my parents house, Starbucks, McDonalds and the local pub.

Because the DS uses a stylus, the control method when using the browser seems slightly weird at first, although I very quickly got the hang of it after about 20 minutes or so. It works like this: Pages are squashed to fit on the bottom screen of the DS. Whilst this means that text is impossibly tiny to read, a little blue rectangle can be dragged around with the stylus. The contents of the rectangle are shown at full-size on the top screen.


Pressing the X button flips the screens, so to fill text boxes and enter passwords, etc all one needs to do is press X and then use the stylus to click on the box and enter the text using the on-screen keyboard. After a bit of practice, inputting text in this way becomes rather speedy.

Websites that use Flash will not work on the DS browser. This means no YouTube. Javascript does work, but it is patchy at best. Because of this, The Nintendo DS browser is not a substitute for an actual computer. However, when I'm away from home I can use it to check my email, visit MySpace (yes I am one of those people) use Google and Google maps, and have a wealth of information at my finger-tips wherever there's a wireless hotspot.

Nintendo have an agreement with BTOpenzone and TheCloud, whereby even though laptop-owning businessmen have to pay to use these hotspots, Nintendo DS owners do not, which is nice.

Wrapping it up then, The DS Browser offers near-instant connection to the Internet wherever there is a wireless hotspot available (and those are becoming increasingly common) and offers pretty fast browsing of pages. Because of the absence of Flash and the limited Javascript support, it loses out. However if you're the kind of person who won't really miss these features, you could do a lot worse than snapping this up

Seem okay for the price and may be useful for the DS user ;)