I've been advised by friends of mine who are all pretty intense gaming heads to get an R4i for my Nintendo DSi. Well, rather they were shocked and appalled that I hadn't got one already.

"What do you do with your DS then? Just like, play standard games from standard cartridges?" one of them asked in a shade of horror. I don't understand what's the big deal really, that's what they're for right?

I know they have great capabilities, but I use my iPhone for pretty much everything - apps, internet, email, chat and so on. So I've never really needed to use the web functions of the DS, it's just for gaming really.

But apparently I'm missing out on a whole world of gaming too, because a lot of games can be downloaded for free from the store, and a lot of independent game developers sell their games online or give away some for free, but you can only download them onto R4 cards.

Photo: inju (Flickr)