Virgin Wines loudly and repeatedly promise "next day delivery" on their wine cases. What they don't tell you is that this excludes orders made on Friday. And Saturday. And Sunday too. Basically, they only consider an order valid if it was placed on Monday - Thursday.

I believed their lies and ordered my wine on Friday morning - so it would arrive in time for Cheesemas. It was only after placing my order that I was made aware of Virgin's "creative" interpretation of "next day."

The Evidence

The very first page of their promotion mentions "next day delivery".

No mention of restrictions there. No asterisk and no disclaimer.

A little further on in the purchase process, and I'm again promised "next day delivery".

I'm well before the cut off time - both for regular and gift orders - and I'm reassured that there's only a 4% chance I won't get my lovely wine.

Still, best to check the terms and conditions, eh?

Express! Well! Now I know I'm getting my wine tomorrow!

It was only after I placed my order that I was explicitly told that a Friday order means a Monday delivery.

The Accusation

I've reported this to the UK's Advertising Standards Authority. They appear to agree that this is misleading and they've raised the issue with Virgin.

Am I being unreasonable?

If the adverts had said "next working day delivery", this could have been avoided. The only reason I can see for Virgin's choice of wording is that they intend to mislead their potential customers.

We live in a world of instant delivery - or close to it. If I place an Amazon Prime order on Saturday, it will get delivered on a Sunday. The concept of "working days" is an anachronism which isn't suited to the modern world.

The web is not the same as a printed brochure - it can be updated instantly. It would be easy for Virgin's website to dynamically change depending on the weekday. Once Friday rolls around, the website should let customers know that their tasty wine won't appear until after the weekend.

What's next?

The ASA have asked Virgin Wines to respond by 22nd December. We'll see if they can manage those timescales.

This is a brief guide to getting the game working on Linux - including multiplayer and widescreen.

I'm using Ubuntu 14.04 - but the steps should be broadly similar on any distro.

Install the latest version of WINE.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wine1.7

Install the game as normal, the installer will probably crash at the end, ignore it. You can now run the basic version of SWGB without any fuss.

I found that on quitting the game, my desktop wouldn't always revert back to to the correct resolution. To solve this, run SWGB in a Virtual Desktop :

wine explorer /desktop=name,1024x768 swgbg.exe

The virtual desktop will expand and shrink depending on the resolution of the game.

I did find that running the virtual desktop at a lower resolution occasionally gave graphical glitches like this : A quick restart fixed it.

Multiplayer

To get multiplayer working, I followed this advice and installed DirectPlay from Microsoft (you can ignore the stuff about disabling your network adapter).

winetricks directplay

On restarting the game, you should now be able to play across a LAN. Our two laptops communicated quite happily over WiFi.

Remember, Microsoft Zone doesn't exist any more - so you'll either have to play with people on a LAN, or ask for their external IP address. I've no idea which ports need forwarding.

Widescreen Patch

This game was originally designed for a 4:3 screen. If you've got a laptop or modern monitor, you'll probably want to make use of all that extra space.

There is a Wide Screen Patch available. Follow the instructions in the .zip file to apply the patch. Tell the game options that you want to play at 1280*1024 - this will switch it to widescreen.

I didn't notice any graphical glitches - but this game is over a decade old, so the graphics are quite low resolution.

One thing to note, if you're using the Virtual Desktop, you may find the game doesn't take over the whole screen - leaving you unable to access the lower portions.

In which case, I recommend running without the Virtual Desktop.

Gameplay

It's still just as good as I remembered! The music is epic, the voice acting is adequate, and the game mechanics are perfectly tuned.

Everything works well on Linux - even if it does take just a little bit of fiddling to get it right.

Totally worth a go for four quid. Buy it on GOG.com.

Unhandled page fault on read access to 0x00000068 at address 0x7bc34e57

After lots of fruitless digging around, I discovered that the issue is with the Facebook integration!

The fix is simple. Visit the Facebook Applications Page, remove Spotify.

I've noted this error on the WINE Site.

If you're a premium Spotify user, you can run their Linux Preview of Spotify

Alex Hilton wanted to know how easy it was to recycle. So, for your edification and delight, I present...

Recycling The FreshCase

Disclaimer

These boxes of wine were sent to me for free. Enjoy alcohol responsibly. Do not attempt without adult supervision.

The American Association of Wine Economists (what a job!) recently published a paper "Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better?" Well? Do they?

Our main finding is that, on average, individuals who are unaware of the price do not derive more enjoyment from more expensive wine. In fact, they enjoy more expensive wines slightly less.

Ah. Back to buying those 2-for-£1 specials at Lidl, then? Perhaps not. Thanks to that wonderful chap, Documentally, I was able to get my hands on two free boxes of wine from FreshCase. Now, I know what you're thinking. Boxed wine is usually the sort of "drink" served a school's bring-and-buy sale. Often emblazoned with the words "Product of more than one country" or, more likely, "If ingested, seek medical help".

The wine contained in these boxes is Hardy's Nottage Hill. Now, I don't know much about wine - but this stuff is regarded as rather good. What's more, the box is actually rather clever. Take a look at my amateurish review.

Taste

I'm happy to report that the wine is eminently drinkable. While the packaging says it will keep it fresh for six weeks, ours was drained dry, disassembled, and recycled within a week.

The white wine has a slightly different tap placement so it can lie flat in the fridge.  Delightfully chilled, it makes it easy to enjoy half a glass of wine without feeling the need to finish off the whole bottle.

Pricing

The suggested retail price is £20. Given that each box contains the equivalent of 3 bottles of wine, that works out at a fairly reasonable £6.66 per bottle.

That compares very favourably to similar wines.  It's also lighter, and has an integrated handle, making it much easier to carry.

It seems that people can't tell the difference between cheap and expensive wine.  Give your friends a blindfold and see if they can tell the difference between FreshCase and a traditional glass bottle.  I'm sure they'll be pleasantly surprised.