Sorry for the delay in back to this. I'll blame the jet-lag and the reason I am here in the first place - lots of hard work.

New IFE in Business Class.

I won't go into a fluu detail of the system - that can be found on the QF web site. But I will give my own views and comparison with the old J IFE.

The major difference and most obvious is the size of the screen. The old J screens were very small (about 6" diagonal at a guess). The new screen is huge in comparison - more like 16". They are also brighter. With the old screens, I remember always playing with the brightness control to try to get a half-decent picture. I didn't have to touch these controls on the new screen - the picture was as good as you would expect from a modern LCD screen.

The new system has more video channels in J (now 18, up from 10 previously). Y seats only get 7 movie channels. However, that only helps if they are showing programming you want to watch!

I found the games quite boring. However, I am sure my kids would love them and be entertained for many hours. I had a bit of play with some of them and found the operation of things like Solitair a bit convoluted compared to using a mouse on a PC.

I did my usual trick of requesting a "D" seat on the lower deck and having the "E" seat free was able to pull up both my own and the free "E" seat's screen so I could watch the flight path at the same time as a movie.

Sound was very good. However the headphones offered are still the same and I carry my own Sony NC20 noise cancelling headphones which I find pretty good (not as good as the Bose, but less than 1/2 the price).

New Sydney First Class Lounge.

I arrived in SYD on a domestic leg of an international flight from BNE (QF20), so entered the main International terminal via the transit security check. When I got to the top of the escalators I had to look around for a while to find directions to the Qantas Club.

Decided to go find a nice bottle of red to bring over hear for my boss and selected a St Andrews Shiras which was very well accepted.

Then followed the sign up the next escalator and promptly walked right past the First lounge and into the Business lounge (not knowing the First lounge entry was not separate).

Anyway, the agent at the QC desk read my BP and noted the "One World Emerald" and pointed me back down the walkway to the First lounge.

My first impression was that it was a bit or a rabbit warren with several areas of seating and wall all over the place. A brief walk around helped to become orientated. There were two food/beverage areas with the normal things on offer. Couldn't bring myself to down a scotch in the F lounge in BNE at 5am, but by 9am in SYD I had been "on the road" for 4.5 hours so it was much easier! (JW Black or Chivers Regal on offer - I took the JW with ice).

The seats first appeared less plush than I had expected for a new F lounge. However, they were very comfortable and I can't really complain.

There were lots of power points and phone outlets all over the place. I chose a seat against a wall and had a double power point and two RJ-45 jacks on the wall. I assumed these jacks should be phone lines and plugged the modem in, guessed I would need to dial "0" for an outside line and hit the go button on my laptop dialler. Connected first time. So although there was no sign or info on the use of the phone jacks, it was very intuitive for an Australian. However, most international visitors may find it strange to dial "0" for an outside line - in the US it is more common to dial "8" or "9".

The overall lounge is much larger and brighter than the old lounge. There are significantly better views of the airport - both the angle and being up one more floor helps. I was able to check which gate my QF107 flight was to use (gate 25 or 26, can't remember now) and could see the gate and the aircraft being loaded. And to my delight noted it was VH-OJR which I knew had the upgraded IFE .

So another scotch or two and I was ready to head down to the gate to board. It is then that I noticed that the F lounge is closest to the top of the escalator and the J lounge is further down the passageway, so the F lounge users who are more observant than me would not have to walk all the way down the passage (and then be directed back to the F lounge as I had to be!).

One strange things was the operation of the taps at the sink in the toilets! They were not intuitive and took a bit of thinking and testing to figure it out (no, I had not consumed much scotch by this time ). In fact, the next guy to follow me was looking just a puzzled and I told him the trick and he agreed it was not obvious. But now that we know, they really are quite cute!

Anyway, certainly an improvement on the old lounge. Not quite the facilities of the LHR T4 BA First Lounge (no spa ), but it does have a better view than the LHR lounge! Certainly comfortable and a pleasant place to "prepare" for the next 13 hours on a metal tube travelling at 1000km/h over a puddle of water.