Well, ok this is actually a review of the new Bond flick Casino Royale. I'm going to come at this review from a strange perspective though (as the title might suggest), so if your looking for a 'proper' review then pop over and see Dan's site.

No my review is not going to be of the movie, no, rather it will be of the movies stars – The Cars.

Before you dismiss this as a bad idea, think about it, has there ever been a bad bond car?

Let's go through the list, but here I will add a warning, it get's nerdy from here on in, so either be a car, Bond or ideally both fan before continuing.

Bonds car in the Flemming books was not as most people think an Aston Martin, no it was 1930 Bentley Convertible, complete with a 4.5ltr supercharged engine. It was actually mentioned in the Casino Royale book as Bonds hobby. Flemming however got his dates wrong, as it's stated that he bought the car almost new in 1933, then in Live and Let Die states it was a 1933 model, however the 4.5ltr SC ceased production in 1930. Flemming later corrected his error in the Moonraker book.

When the movies were released however the car was given a staring role rather than just the sideline role the books had given it.

Possibly the most famous Bond car is the Aston Martin DB5. This appeared primarily in Goldfinger, Thunderball, GoldenEye and now in Casino Royale.

The car was also the one to introduce us to the Q branch of MI6. It was the car to receive the standard bulletproof panels and revolving number plates and the famous ejector seat.

The Aston Martin DB Mark III was used by Ian Flemming in the Goldfinger book. However the DB Mark III was not used in the movie, and was replaced with the DB5 above.

The reason for this was one of sponsorship. The DB5 was the car that Aston Martin had for sale in the early 60's, where the DB Mark III had gone out of production in 1959 to be replaced by the DB4/5.

You only live twice did not feature many cars, instead the star of the motor show was the Gyrocopter called 'Little Nellie'. There was however a very special car featured in the movie, even if most people will not notice it. Toyota actually built two 'one off' 2000GT Convertibles. These where the only convertible versions of the 2000GT ever built, one is on show in the Toyota headquarters in Japan.

The next movie brought back the Aston Martin. On Her Majesties Secret Service saw a new Bond (George Lazenby), and it also saw a new Aston. The Aston Martin DBS was used by the Australian Bond. The car did not have a big part in either of the movies it featured in (it was also seen in Diamonds are Forever). It did however steal the scenes it was in. The car was in the pre-credits, and it was also the car Bond got married in. Diamonds are Forever also included the Ford Mustang Mach 1 Fastback.

The Man with the Golden Gun featured a reduced car line up (in the sexy car stake that is). There was the Silver Shadow, but the car that everyone remembers is the AMC Hornet, yup the one that does the corkscrew jump.

The Spy Who Loved Me brought another one of the memorable Bond cars. Yup it was the 70's and the first of the Lotus Esprit's to feature in Bond.

This Bond car was the most Q'd up car yet. It was not only a mobile gun platform, but a submarine as well.

The next Lotus was the Esprit Turbo. There was actually two Esprit's in this movie, Bond has the white one blown up (security system) at the beginning of the movie, and is then provided with possibly the worst colour Bond car ever, a burgundy Esprit Turbo.

Octopussy featured no Bond cars as such, however it is interesting in that one of the cars used in the movie (Bond steals it in a getaway) is an Alfa Romeo GTV 6 Quadrifoglio, rare and possibly the best Alfa of the period.

Timothy Dolton took over the role of Bond in The Living Daylights. In this he was equipped again with a Q'd out Aston Martin. This time it was one of the best sounding cars of all time, the Aston Martin V8 Vantage Volante.

GoldenEye introduces another couple of names. Those names are BMW, Ferrari and Pierce Brosnan. The Ferrari in question was a F355 GTS. In the movie Bond races Xenia Onatopp down a mountain side in his DB5. Now we all know in the real world Bond would not stand a chance. But the sequence is good, and shows off some nice driving. The movie also famously has the T-55 Tank chase sequence. The Bond car however was a BMW Z3, it was the first non British Bond car, and is only actually seen in one scene of the movie.

Tomorrow Never Dies has an excellent scene with a BMW 750iL. Bond uses the car to escape the bad guys in a chase sequence inside a multi story car park. The nice thing about this car is that the writers obviously realised that a German car for an English gentleman was not perhaps the greatest marketing choice. They where however stuck with it having signed a 3 movie deal, and decided to play on the Germanity of the car. The 750iL features a female computer voice with a very 'German' manorism.

The World is Not Enough featured the last of the BMW cars. This one was the BMW Z8 and also did not feature highly in the movie. This is the last time that Desmond Llewelyn hosts the Q role. The car get's cut in half late on in the film.

Die Another Day brought Aston Martin back to the Bond car role. The Aston Martin V12 Vanquish is used in the last of the Pierce Brosnan movies. This car along with it's sister Jaguar XKR are used for some of the big segments of the movie. There is a great car chase on ice. The Jaguar is the bad guy car and has as many toys as the Aston Martin. The Aston however can cloak itself, and uses this to save the girl.

That brings us gloriously onto Casino Royale. The star car of this show is again the Aston Martin DBS. However this is the new DBS, and is one fine looking car.

It's based on the Aston Martin DB9, but where that looks pretty, the DBS looks purposeful.

The DBS comes to an unfortunate end in the movie, but by then has already stolen the heart of the petrol heads amongst us.

The car does not feature as a moving object quite as much as it possibly should, and is not as gadget laden (maybe) as some of Bond's previous cars. It does hint at a gadget laden underbelly though. The car after all saves Bond's life (twice if you count the fact he does not die in the accident). Aston Martin have stated that the DBS will go on sale next year, and although it will not be quite the same as the Bond edition, it will certainly keep all the important parts of this stars character.

The DB5 also makes a welcome return in a guest appearance, if only breifly, the old dear is still looking and sounding great.

There is one unwelcome sight though. The new Ford Mondeo shows it's face at the start of the movie. It's not that it's a bad car, or even that bad looking. No it's just that it's not a Bond car!

We all look back at Bond movies from the past 54 years and know that all the Bond cars have got that, well, Bondness about them. The Mondeo however will not hold up to that, in 15 or 20 years time it will just be an old Mondeo no matter how many shiny bolt on's they put on the car.

That said it's not in the movie for very long, and if the producers had to pay Ford Motor Corp to use the DBR by using the Mondeo, then it was worth it.

To the movie then. I would say it's a cracking Bond film, and all the Daniel Craig neigh sayers (myself included) have been proven wrong. He is a good Bond!

The book is well honored, even if it's all been updated like Texas Holdem instead of Baccarat. The torture scenes have come across well from the book.

There are some great action scenes, the Parkour scene at the beginning of the movie is well done, and very cleverly shot, and the part is played by Sebastien Foucan, who is widely considered to be the father of the sport.

The little niggle in the movie was that the Sony brand showed up FAR too often. I don't mind a bit of product placement, but the brand was everywhere in the movie. That said Ford did a good job as well, not only was the Mondeo and Aston featured, there was Jaguar and Land Rover as well.

All I can say is, go and watch it yourself, it's a good movie. Long live bond, and hurry up with Bond 22!

It looks like we should be seeing Vista final at any point soon.

Let's hope the planned outage of the MSDN Subscriber download system is to beef up the number of server that are going to be required when Vista and Office 2007 land their. Oh the outage is for later today, so with some luck we should be able to upgrade over the weekend!
Video: Windows Vista JimAllchin RTM Announcement

The VAG Direct Shift Gearbox - sometimes called the S-Tronic in the Audi range – is the world's first production dual clutch semi automatic gearbox. The system was developed for Audi by BorgWarner for use in the companies Audi TT 3.2V6, and was so well received it is now used in much of the Volkswagen Audi Group range.

The DSG is often compared to F1 style automated or robotic manual gearboxes, but differs in some very important ways.

The DSG gearbox is, however, not a new invention. The system was first designed by Andolphe Kégresse just before the second world war but because of the lack of technology, not to mention the war, he never produced a working version of the Dual Clutch Gearbox (DCG). The system was used by another German car company in the 80's though: Porsche used the PDK (Porsche Doppelkupplungs) system in their 956 and 962 Le Mans race cars, and Audi used the same system in the Sport Quatro S1. Porsche and Audi have a long history of technology sharing.

Both of these uses eventually faded, primarily because the computing technology that allows the system to work so effectively did not prove to be reliable enough in the tough and demanding world of the race car.

To understand how revolutionary the DSG gearbox is, first I will explain the F1 style systems. These differ in name depending on the manufacturer; Ferrari call theirs the F1 system, and BMW call theirs the SMG system.

These gearboxes all have one thing in common: they are just manual gearboxes, with a manual clutch that is operated by pneumatics. This method has many of the benefits the DSG box does. The gearbox itself weighs less: as the gear change is accurate, and no human mistakes can be made, the materials can be less hardy. They are also far more performant than the manual equivalent, both the BMW SMG II and the Ferrari F1 systems change cogs in around 80 milliseconds. This means that, while the gear is being shifted, all the power from the engine is waisted and a feeling of on-off-on is felt in the car as the pneumatics shift from in gear, to clutched, and then back into gear. The smoothness of this in the car depends on the software controlling it: for the fastest changes it can feel quite 'bumpy', similar to a bad gear change in a manual car. The only way of releaving this issue in the past was to fit a torque converter, this is the way that a standard auto box does it, and why it feels far smoother than any of the manual gearboxes produced. A torque converter, however, is very wasteful in terms of power, and usually very heavy.

The DSG box takes the basic idea of pneumatic clutched boxes a step further. The heart of the DSG comes from the fact it has two clutches. The basic idea being that the gearbox can then have two gears engaged at any one time, one driving the car, the other waiting to take over.

The clutch arrangement is setup for odds and evens, where clutch 1 operates the 1-3-5 gears and clutch 2 operates 2-4-6.

DSG works by allowing the software to decide what gear the car will need next, and then pre-selects it. If you are accelerating, it will have the next gear up, and likewise if decelerating, the next gear down.

The system can then watch for a change signal – this is either done by clicking the corresponding paddle by the driver, or if in full auto mode the computer – and the gearbox can then tell the currently disengaged clutch (the one driving) to engage, and at the same time tells the engaged clutch (the pre-selected gear) to disengage. In this way the driver and passengers do not experience the on-off-on feeling associated with manual gearboxes. Instead, the gear change feels much more like that of an automatic gearbox.

However, because the change happens so quickly – around 8 milliseconds – the engine can maintain drive and the losses involved in the gear change are much reduced. This can be seen visually in the video below.

The video clearly shows the benefits of the DSG vs a very quick-changing manual driver.

The DSG gearbox is obviously controlled by computer, and this adds other benefits as well, even over race-going Sequential Manual Transmisions.

The computer in the DSG box monitors many of the cars sensors, these can be RPM, speed, angle of steering input, amount of wheel spin, braking and g-forces. It can then use these inputs to make decisions on which gear the car has to be in at any one moment.

For example, if you are approaching a tight corner you may want to change down two or even three gears. The computer sees that you are braking heavily, and that steering input is being applied, and can then change down either more quickly, or skip gears altogether and shift from sixth into third in one step. This allows the driver to keep the RPM in the best range for drivability. Likewise, if driving in snow or mud, the computer sees that there is a lot of wheel spin at low speeds, it can then shift up into a higher gear to allow the wheel spin to be controlled.

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The gearbox also keeps the F1 style gearbox's benefits. Because the computer will change gear very precisely, and not over stress the components, the weight of the whole unit is not much more than a conventional gearbox and clutch. This is because the parts can be made to much tighter tolerances, but still manage the same life expectancy as the manual counterparts.

There is a downside to the gearbox though: it cannot be used in races. This is because it changes gear so quickly, and the loss of drive is so minute, that the gearbox gets classed as a Constantly Variable Transmision. The FIA and other governing bodies outlawed this in the early 80s. However, with the speed that some of the current Formula One cars can now change, this may be altered. The current Honda gearbox is called the 'Lossless' gearbox after all, but they did prove that it reduces engine power and its use was therefore allowed.

 The crowning achievement of the DSG is the English-made, Ricardo Company's seven speed DSG, for use in the Bugatti Veyron. That particular car is worthy of it's own – more detailed – article, so that will have to wait.

So, next time you drive a DSG car just think: You can change gear faster than even the Formula One and Indy drivers.

Special thanks to Audi for the images and the link to the video demonstrating the gearbox in action.