Reviews Written By: A198CCH4NNLI2Eprovided by Amazon.com |
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 | Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS Digital Elph 10MP Camera w/ 3x IS Zoom (Grey) | |
 | "The best camera is the one you have with you" | 2009-11-13 |
| This is, overall, a remarkable camera for the size and price. Wide aperture photography in reasonable lighting is where this excels, such as what you get in portrait mode. Unfortunately, the size of the camera means some very strict limitations in the conditions under which you can get good photos. The aperture at high f/# (i.e. when the aperture is stopped down to let less light in) is so small that you get noticeable diffractive blurring. Take a picture in landscape scene mode outside on a sunny day (which stops down the lens to increase depth of field) and you'll notice a certain fuzziness to the picture due to the small aperture.
Another problem area in the camera is in the auto mode. For reasons I still haven't figured out, while the camera seems to do a great job picking out the correct mode (i.e. portrait versus outdoor) the results in auto are almost never as good as if you just leave it in P (program) mode. For some reason auto mode often results in overexposure and too high an ISO setting. Despite the photo quality limitations, many of which are unavoidable on a camera of this size, this is a suburb camera. As they say, the best camera is the one you have with you, and the compact stature of this camera means that more often than not, this will be the best camera. | ||
 | Navigon 5100 GPS Portable Automobile Navigator | |
 | "NaviGONE" | 2009-11-10 |
| I bought my Navigon a little over a year ago. Its performance has been mixed, in line with much of the reviews here. However, I can now unequivocally state that you should NOT buy this product. Navigon has abruptly left the North American market, leaving customers, even those who purchased a device and map updates within the year, almost completely without support. If you buy one of these, you're buying a dead device with no hope of updates. | ||
 | TRENDnet TV-IP422W Wireless Day/Night Pan/Tilt Internet Camera Server with 2-Way Audio | |
 | "Audio has interference from own WiFi radio, many features don't work" | 2009-10-17 |
| Where to begin... This thing is a disaster. For the bare minimum of letting you view a live feed of low quality video, it works. I'm guessing that's pretty much all the people with glowing reviews tried. But that's about all that works. I've got a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from a supposedly reputable engineering school, and yet I couldn't get this thing to connect to a Samba server, nor upload to a Mac-based FTP server, despite the TRENDnet verifying the FTP settings as working. The SMTP (e-mail) "feature" won't work with SSL (encrypted) e-mail servers, and yet most mail servers these days seem to require SSL.
But the worst thing about this unit is that the sound in unusable over WiFi due to static sounds. I figured out, by luck, that this is due to interference from the WiFi radio itself. I just happened to be looking at my wireless router with a video stream open, and the static sounds were clearly in sync with the data received light on the router. Others have pointed out that TRENDnet is working on a fix. I can assure you that they cannot be, because there is no firmware update that can fix poor hardware engineering resulting in RF interference. It's true that, if everything worked, this would be quite a bargain. Unfortunately, all this device proves is that you get what you pay for. This is, all around, a very shoddy product. I give it two stars only because it does function as a barebones, audio-free camera. | ||
| TRENDnet TV-IP422W Wireless Day/Night Pan/Tilt Internet Camera Server with 2-Way Audio | |
| "Audio has interference, many features don't work" | 2009-10-17 |
| Where to begin... This thing is a disaster. For the bare minimum of letting you view a live feed of low quality video, it works. I'm guessing that's pretty much all the people with glowing reviews tried. But that's about all that works. I've got a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from a supposedly reputable engineering school, and yet I couldn't get this thing to connect to a Samba server, nor upload to a Mac-based FTP server, despite the TRENDnet verifying the FTP settings as working. The SMTP (e-mail) "feature" won't work with SSL (encrypted) e-mail servers, and yet most mail servers these days seem to require SSL.
But the worst thing about this unit is that the sound in unusable due to static sounds. It appears to be interference from the unit itself. It's true that, if everything worked, this would be quite a bargain. Unfortunately, all this device proves is that you get what you pay for. This is, all around, a very shoddy product. I give it two stars only because it does function as a barebones, audio-free camera. | ||
 | CULLIGAN FM-15RDIY Replacement Water Filter | |
| "Great filter if you follow this little bit of advice!" | 2009-09-28 |
| At first, I did experience what a few of the other reviewers mentioned: after a short while the filter didn't appear to have any affect on the taste of the water.
The problem, I discovered, is that if you run the water through the filter too quickly (by opening up the tap all the way) the charcoal filter just can't do its job. As a rule of thumb, only allow enough flow through the filter so that it takes about 15 seconds to fill up a glass of water, and you'll have great tasting water. So, if you have high water pressure, make sure you don't open of the faucet all the way when filling a glass. There's just no way a filter as small as this can do its job properly at the max flow rate of most faucets. You really need a large in-line filter for that. Note that this only applies to the filter's odor and taste removal properties, because this involves a chemical reaction of sorts where activated charcoal pulls chlorine (and other chemical) out of the water by binding to them. This is a completely different mechanism than what you normally associate with filtering, such as particles being caught in a mesh (which is essentially how the rest of the filter works in these, and so it's really only the odor and taste that is affected by the rate at which you let water through the Cullgan). | ||
 | Culligan FM-15DIY Faucet Mount Water Filtration System (FM-15A) | |
| "Great if you follow this simple advice..." | 2009-09-28 |
| I have no complaints about the construction or operation of the filter. It's one of the nicer faucet-mounted filters there are, with a very nice solid feel of quality. However, I did experience what some of the other reviewers mentioned: after a short while the filter didn't appear to have any affect on the taste of the water.
The problem, I discovered, is that if you run the water through the filter too quickly (by opening up the tap all the way) the charcoal filter just can't do its job. As a rule of thumb, only allow enough flow through the filter so that it takes about 15 seconds to fill up a glass of water, and you'll have great tasting water. So, if you have high water pressure, make sure you don't open of the faucet all the way when filling a glass. There's just no way a filter as small as this can do its job properly at the max flow rate of most faucets. You really need a large in-line filter for that. Note that this only applies to the filter's odor and taste removal properties, because this involves a chemical reaction of sorts where activated charcoal pulls chlorine (and other chemical) out of the water by binding to them. This is a completely different mechanism than what you normally associate with filtering, such as particles being caught in a mesh (which is essentially how the rest of the filter works in these, and so it's really only the odor and taste that is affected by the rate at which you let water through the Culligan). | ||
| CULLIGAN FM-15RDIY Replacement Water Filter | |
| "Great filter if you follow this little bit of advice..." | 2009-09-28 |
| At first, I did experience what a few of the other reviewers mentioned: after a short while the filter didn't appear to have any affect on the taste of the water.
The problem, I discovered, is that if you run the water through the filter too quickly (by opening up the tap all the way) the charcoal filter just can't do its job. As a rule of thumb, only allow enough flow through the filter so that it takes about 10-15 seconds to fill up a glass of water, and you'll have great tasting water. So, if you have high water pressure, make sure you don't open of the faucet all the way when filling a glass. There's just no way a filter as small as this can do its job properly at the max flow rate of most faucets. You really need a large in-line filter for that. Note that this only applies to the filter's odor and taste removal properties, because this involves a chemical reaction of sorts where activated charcoal pulls chlorine (and other chemical) out of the water by binding to them. This is a completely different mechanism than what you normally associate with filtering, such as particles being caught in a mesh (which is essentially how the rest of the filter works in these, and so it's really only the odor and taste that is affected by the rate at which you let water through the Cullgan). | ||
 | Apple Time Capsule 1TB Storage Drive (MB765LL/A) | |
| "Great router, good backup device, ok network disk" | 2009-09-05 |
| This product is basically three products: an airport extreme wireless router, a networked drive, and finally, with Leopard, a networked backup system. Overall, it's a very good product, but there are some serious limitation one should be aware of.
As a router, it is fantastic. Typical Apple ease of use, with all configuration done by a very intuitive GUI application. Unfortunately, it's not a great network drive. The drive appears to be internally connected using a very slow USB connection. You will find that even with a computer connected via Gb/s ethernet, transfer speeds will be limited to around 5-6 MB/s, tops. If you connect two Macs via fast ethernet, you can often get over 40 MB/s transfer speeds, so this is a rather large disappointment, especially for a device which will be getting a lot of use if you use Time Machine. Time Machine is great in theory, but has a few issues. First, it is a file-based differential backup. That means if even a single bit of a 1 GB file is changed, the ENTIRE file gets backed up. Not only does this take a lot of time, it quickly depletes your backup drive because the same data is added to the disk every regular backup. To get around this, you have to explicitly exclude backing up such files. Good candidates for exclusion are Mail and iDisk caches, as well as virtual machine disk images. There have also been numerous reports of Time Machine backups being susceptible to corruption. I've experienced this once, myself, after a backup was cancelled, so I can vouch that it happens. However, the problems can often be fixed by deleting the last backup. The next backup will take a long time as the computer must scan the full disk again, but the backups then continue on normally after that. Time Machine backups have their place, and come in very handy to recover accidentally deleted files. However, they should only be considered part of a larger backup scheme. They probably shouldn't be trusted for a full recovery, and won't be of any help if your computer's drive completely fails, anyway. (How are you going to run Time Machine if you can't boot your computer?) As such, you should image your entire drive regularly, in addition to using Time Machine. | ||
 | Apple Time Capsule 500 GB Network Backup Hard Drive (MB276LL/A) | |
| "Great router, good backup device, ok network disk" | 2009-09-05 |
| This product is basically three products: an airport extreme wireless router, a networked drive, and finally, with Leopard, a networked backup system. Overall, it's a very good product, but there are some serious limitation one should be aware of.
As a router, it is fantastic. Typical Apple ease of use, with all configuration done by a very intuitive GUI application. Unfortunately, it's not a great network drive. The drive appears to be internally connected using a very slow USB connection. You will find that even with a computer connected via Gb/s ethernet, transfer speeds will be limited to around 5-6 MB/s, tops. If you connect two Macs via fast ethernet, you can often get over 40 MB/s transfer speeds, so this is a rather large disappointment, especially for a device which will be getting a lot of use if you use Time Machine. Time Machine is great in theory, but has a few issues. First, it is a file-based differential backup. That means if even a single bit of a 1 GB file is changed, the ENTIRE file gets backed up. Not only does this take a lot of time, it quickly depletes your backup drive because the same data is added to the disk every regular backup. To get around this, you have to explicitly exclude backing up such files. Good candidates for exclusion are Mail and iDisk caches, as well as virtual machine disk images. There have also been numerous reports of Time Machine backups being susceptible to corruption. I've experienced this once, myself, after a backup was cancelled, so I can vouch that it happens. However, the problems can often be fixed by deleting the last backup. The next backup will take a long time as the computer must scan the full disk again, but the backups then continue on normally after that. Time Machine backups have their place, and come in very handy to recover accidentally deleted files. However, they should only be considered part of a larger backup scheme. They probably shouldn't be trusted for a full recovery, and won't be of any help if your computer's drive completely fails, anyway. (How are you going to run Time Machine if you can't boot your computer?) As such, you should image your entire drive regularly, in addition to using Time Machine. | ||
 | Apple Time Capsule MB764LL/A Backup Drive (500GB) | |
| "Great router, good backup device, ok network disk" | 2009-09-05 |
| This product is basically three products: an airport extreme wireless router, a networked drive, and finally, with Leopard, a networked backup system. Overall, it's a very good product, but there are some serious limitation one should be aware of.
As a router, it is fantastic. Typical Apple ease of use, with all configuration done by a very intuitive GUI application. Unfortunately, it's not a great network drive. The drive appears to be internally connected using a very slow USB connection. You will find that even with a computer connected via Gb/s ethernet, transfer speeds will be limited to around 5-6 MB/s, tops. If you connect two Macs via fast ethernet, you can often get over 40 MB/s transfer speeds, so this is a rather large disappointment, especially for a device which will be getting a lot of use if you use Time Machine. Time Machine is great in theory, but has a few issues. First, it is a file-based differential backup. That means if even a single bit of a 1 GB file is changed, the ENTIRE file gets backed up. Not only does this take a lot of time, it quickly depletes your backup drive because the same data is added to the disk every regular backup. To get around this, you have to explicitly exclude backing up such files. Good candidates for exclusion are Mail and iDisk caches, as well as virtual machine disk images. There have also been numerous reports of Time Machine backups being susceptible to corruption. I've experienced this once, myself, after a backup was cancelled, so I can vouch that it happens. However, the problems can often be fixed by deleting the last backup. The next backup will take a long time as the computer must scan the full disk again, but the backups then continue on normally after that. Time Machine backups have their place, and come in very handy to recover accidentally deleted files. However, they should only be considered part of a larger backup scheme. They probably shouldn't be trusted for a full recovery, and won't be of any help if your computer's drive completely fails, anyway. (How are you going to run Time Machine if you can't boot your computer?) As such, you should image your entire drive regularly, in addition to using Time Machine. | ||
 | Apple Time Capsule 1Tb Network Backup Hard Drive (MB277LL/A) | |
| "Great router, good network disk, decent backup device" | 2009-08-23 |
| This product is basically three products: an airport extreme wireless router, a networked drive, and finally, with Leopard, a networked backup system. Overall, it's a very good product, but there are some serious limitation one should be aware of.
As a router, it is fantastic. Typical Apple ease of use, with all configuration done by a very intuitive GUI application. Unfortunately, it's not a great network drive. The drive appears to be internally connected using a very slow USB connection. You will find that even with a computer connected via Gb/s ethernet, transfer speeds will be limited to around 5-6 MB/s, tops. If you connect two Macs via fast ethernet, you can often get over 40 MB/s transfer speeds, so this is a rather large disappointment, especially for a device which will be getting a lot of use if you use Time Machine. Time Machine is great in theory, but has a few issues. First, it is a file-based differential backup. That means if even a single bit of a 1 GB file is changed, the ENTIRE file gets backed up. Not only does this take a lot of time, it quickly depletes your backup drive because the same data is added to the disk every regular backup. To get around this, you have to explicitly exclude backing up such files. Good candidates for exclusion are Mail and iDisk caches, as well as virtual machine disk images. There have also been numerous reports of Time Machine backups being susceptible to corruption. I've experienced this once, myself, after a backup was cancelled, so I can vouch that it happens. However, the problems can often be fixed by deleting the last backup. The next backup will take a long time as the computer must scan the full disk again, but the backups then continue on normally after that. Time Machine backups have their place, and come in very handy to recover accidentally deleted files. However, they should only be considered part of a larger backup scheme. They probably shouldn't be trusted for a full recovery, and won't be of any help if your computer's drive completely fails, anyway. (How are you going to run Time Machine if you can't boot your computer?) As such, you should image your entire drive regularly, in addition to using Time Machine. | ||
 | Canon VIXIA HFS100 HD Flash Memory Camcorder w/10x Optical Zoom | |
| "Perfect in almost every way, except dynamic range" | 2009-07-29 |
| Be very skeptical of anybody who claims to be knowledgeable about video cameras, and then states this Canon to be near-professional quality. There is one huge difference between this camera and a professional-level one: dynamic range. In the race to put a 5 MP sticker on this to entice consumers, Canon needlessly sacrificed image quality for still resolution. This is done all the time in consumer digital cameras, but it's really a shame when its done on a video camera, because there's no point in having more resolution on the chip than that needed for 1080 video. The result of the poor dynamic range is harsh lighting. For example, if you take this camera outside, you'll notice that the resulting video has highlights washed out to white and shadows to black. A cloudy day will turn into high noon on a clear day when you look at the video. Unfortunately, there aren't too many better options out there, given that everybody is playing the same ridiculous resolution game on the consumer video cameras. However, you might take a look at the Panasonic three-chip cameras. While they aren't as sharp as the Canon, they have better dynamic range (according to video testing sites) and from what I've seen I think they produce better video, overall, especially in outdoor scenes with a lot of tonal range. Why four stars despite the above complaints? First, as I said, this is par for the course these days in consumer video. The companies assume we're all idiots who only buy based on the pixel count. Second, everything else about this camera is superb. The video is sharp, color excellent, and it's actually quite good in low light. The autofocus is fast. For nicely lit indoor scenes, the results really are remarkably good, bordering on professional. Take it outdoors, however, and any illusions of this camera being anywhere near professional-level quality go away. You really have to work with the manual exposure to get good results, and you can forget about capturing shadow details on a scene with direct sunlight. | ||
 | iClean LCD Screen and Lens Cleaner Travel Kit - AI ICLN-S | |
 | "Finally, a screen cleaner that works." | 2009-07-21 |
| Not only did this product not leave a single streak on my glossy MacBook Pro screen, but it did a perfect job cleaning something I was worried I'd never clean off: tree sap. I bought this after stupidly sitting under a pine tree while working on my laptop, and it was covered with tiny little drops of sap. After one cleaning, the screen was indistinguishable from new. One tip: if you spray too much it will saturate the cloth and you'll have a tough time getting the streaks to come out. But rest assured, when you wipe all the gel off, it is truly streak free. Three or four sprays is all it takes to do the entire screen, so just don't overdo it and you'll likely be very pleased with this. UPDATE: I actually understand what the (few) negative reviewers are talking about. After using this for a week, the product DOES leave a residue. It's not permanent (i.e. you can wipe it off) and you only notice it on glossy screens in direct sunlight, but it's there. I believe this is the polymer coating they are talking about. It basically reflects, and so it's a bit noticeable against an antireflective-coated glossy screen. Again, it's not permantent but it does really hinder the display visibility in bright lighting. I'm still happy with the product, but would probably drop my rating to 3 or 4 if Amazon would allow that retroactively. | ||
 | UPPAbaby Vista Eco-Friendly Stroller (color: Green Carlin) | |
 | "Good stroller, but a very rough ride on brick sidewalks" | 2009-07-16 |
| There are a lot of things to love about this stroller. For me, the best thing is that it's one of the few strollers designed for tall people. The handle extends to a reasonable length for a 6'4" person. There is no through-axle, but instead an arch that gives plenty of space for your feet when walking. On other strollers I'd end up kicking the stroller when walking. Another major point in favor of the Vista is that it allows for the baby to be rear-facing, even in the seat. This way you can talk to the little guy or girl while walking with them, and apparently research has shown this interaction to be important. I'm not sure it will ever make a difference in their development, in all honesty, but it's just really nice to be able to see and interact your kid while you're walking with them. Unfortunately, there is one major design flaw in this stroller that causes me to knock off a couple stars: the front "suspension" is terribly designed. The spring is far to heavy, and it takes me putting my (considerable) weight on the stroller to even begin to compress the front springs. Given that the wheels are made of very hard foam, the result is that the ride is extremely harsh when the stroller is in rear-facing mode such that the baby's weight (not to mention head) is over the front wheels. This isn't a big deal on smooth surfaces, but my poor kid gets bounced around quite a bit on the brick sidewalks where we live. So much so that he was grabbing the sides of the stroller. It's so bad that I have to avoid certain streets where we live. I certainly expected better engineering from such an expensive stroller. Another reason I can't give this a better rating is that the construction is a bit low-quality in areas. For example, both our wheels wobble. In fact, the fit and finish on most of the stroller is a bit lacking, with rivets and attachments loose and a lot of play in everything. | ||
 | Linksys 5-Port 10/100/1000 Gigabit Switch | |
| "Low quality junk that will die on you" | 2009-06-19 |
| You'll get the switch, you'll love it and write a great review. Then in a few weeks or months it will start going flakey. Eventually it will die completely. You'll hate it. Do us all a favor and wait a few months before you a write a breathless review about how great this is, and you'll save a lot of people trouble. Cisco should be sued over the uniformly poor quality of these switches.
Here's a hint: if a company like Cisco won't put their name front and center on a product, it's probably because they're cutting corners. LinkSys is the brand Cisco uses when they want to sell crap but don't want to tarnish their own image. Real IT people know the LinkSys is Cisco's code for "we really phoned in this one." | ||
 | Pampers Swaddlers Sensitive Diapers, Size 2 (12-18 Lbs) Economy Plus Pack (incl. 152 Diapers) | |
| "Fantastic diapers, but Amazon's price is too high" | 2009-06-08 |
| These diapers were a godsend. We had been using the hippie-dippie chlorine-free diapers from Seventh Generation, and every time our boy peed he'd leak all over himself. These never leaked once, and the urine indicator strip is really useful. Having said that, you can get smaller packs of these and yet pay less per diaper other stores. Amazon is selling these for about 34 cents per diaper, and you can get these at the local red store for about 29 cents per diaper in a box of 34. | ||
 | Pampers Swaddlers Sensitive Diapers, Size 1 (8-14lbs) Economy Plus Pack (incl. 180 Diapers) | |
| "Fantastic diapers, but Amazon's price is too high" | 2009-06-08 |
| These diapers were a godsend. We had been using the hippie-dippie chlorine-free diapers from Seventh Generation, and every time our boy peed he'd leak all over himself. These never leaked once, and the urine indicator strip is really useful. Having said that, you can get smaller packs of these and yet pay less per diaper other stores. Amazon is selling these for about 34 cents per diaper, and you can get these at the local red store for about 29 cents per diaper in a box of 34. | ||
 | Pampers Swaddlers Sensitive Diapers, Size N (Newborn) Economy Plus Pack (incl. 136 Diapers) | |
| "Fantastic diapers, but Amazon's price is too high" | 2009-06-08 |
| These diapers were a godsend. We had been using the hippie-dippie chlorine-free diapers from Seventh Generation, and every time our boy peed he'd leak all over himself. These never leaked once, and the urine indicator strip is really useful. Having said that, you can get smaller packs of these and yet pay less per diaper other stores. Amazon is selling these for about 34 cents per diaper, and you can get these at the local red store for about 29 cents per diaper in a box of 34. | ||
![TurboTax Deluxe Federal + State + eFile 2008 [DOWNLOAD]](product_images/4952000/turbotax-deluxe-federal-state_t-4952901.jpg) | TurboTax Deluxe Federal + State + eFile 2008 [DOWNLOAD] | |
| "Won't import from past year's online TurboTax" | 2009-04-15 |
| Despite what their website says, the importing of prior year's tax returns is buggy if you used the online version last year. I decided to go with the desktop version after their online version kept hanging (probably due to overload near the end of the tax deadline). I downloaded this and found that it refused to import my TXF file from last years returns, despite the fact that I followed their online directions to a "T". This is incredibly frustrating, because the whole origin of this difficulty is their determination to make each year's program not open any other year's, except for importing as prior returns. (That's why each year has a different file suffix.) They are clearly more interesting is squeezing as much money as possible out of you than in providing a quality product. The only thing I can say in their favor is that after one hour and 10 minutes on hold, they finally gave me my money back... | ||
 | Harman Kardon AVR 247 Home Theater Receiver | |
| "Great sound, but beware of RF interference!" | 2008-01-16 |
| The sound quality is quite good, especially for an amp of this price point. However, this unit (and probably others in HK's line, I imagine) has a SERIOUS flaw that will especially affect those users that rely on over-the-air TV (either digital or analog). Somehow, despite their reputation, HK failed to properly shield the electronics in this amp, and as a result it creates a tremendous amount of radio interference. They allude indirectly to this on their website FAQ, in fact, in warning cable users to use properly shielded cables. Cable users! God forbid you should actually try to get a digital over-the-air broadcast. Apparently HK forgot about those users (which are increasing as digital TV comes online in cities). Over-the-air users have no way to shield themselves from the interference coming from this unit, and whenever I have this amp turned on, I lose digital TV reception.
Even if most people have cable these days, this is inexcusable for a company that makes *AV* receivers, and while HK was once a great manufacturer, they have clearly gone downhill in quality in some respects. The sound on this unit is good, but it will wreck your TV reception unless you have cable (and cable with a good strong signal, at that). | ||
 | Introduction to Probability | |
| "Great book, will get even better with the second edition" | 2007-12-18 |
| This book is generally excellent, with clear explanations and a good balance of rigor and practical application. You won't find proofs of everything, but you will find excellent guidance and intuition through the various topics, especially the fundamentals. The only significant complaint I have is that certain topics are covered too briefly (such as the central limit theorem or stochastic processes) or not at all (e.g. null hypothesis significance testing). Much of this will be rememedied in a second edition, which will include a welcome added chapter on estimation. We used a preliminary version of the chapter in the probability class for which the book was written, and it's fantastic. It was the most interesting part of the book, and I'm sorry that I didn't wait to buy the book when I could have gotten the final version. I hope the second edition also fleshes out the chapter on Markov chains, which are presented very tersely, and without the use of linear algebra. Studying Markov chains without using linear algebra is like studying differential equations without the Lapace transform; you can do it but it's much harder than it has to be. In the end, the terse coverage of certain topics is more than made up for by the fine handling of the basics, and I unreservedly recommend the book for anybody studying the topic for the first time. | ||
 | Capresso 560 Infinity Burr Grinder | |
| "A few major design flaws" | 2007-12-08 |
| At first it does a great job of producing a uniform grind. And then after a while it still does a good job, but now it's a different fineness of grind! After using a few times, the accumulated coffee dust must either misalign the burrs or something, but the fineness of the grind slowly changes as you go through the beans in the hopper. Then, after you clean it you start over again. A second, even bigger, flaw and one that is inexcusable is the fact that the delivery mechanism that takes coffee from the grinders to the bucket holds enough coffee for a single shot of espresso! In other words, when you grind enough coffee for one shot, you're not getting the coffee you just ground, you're getting the coffee that was ground up LAST time! Ridiculous. Apparently, they expect you to NOT use the capacity of the hopper and grind only what you plan to use all the way through the system every time. But then why have a hopper to begin with? Ground coffee does not do well when exposed to air, and so if you notice that subsequent cups of coffee made with this machine start to taste bad, you'll know why. Using this product correctly is incredibly inconvenient, and requires a lot of cleaning and dumping in beans every time you want to use it. As good as some of the features of this are, I can't recommend it. The folks who love it are probably not aware of the delivery mechanism issue and probably don't know that the perfect grind coming out of their beloved machine was probably ground the day before. | ||
 | Capresso 565.04 Infinity Burr Grinder, Brushed Chrome | |
| "Good, but a couple major design flaws" | 2007-12-08 |
| At first, I was very happy with this grinder. It does a great job of producing a uniform grind. But then I started to notice that the fineness of grind would slowly change as I went through several cups of coffee. With use, the accumulated coffee dust must either misalign the burrs or clog the teeth, but the fineness of the grind slowly changes as you go through the beans in the hopper. After you clean it you start all over again. After a while I learned to just adjust the grind to compensate for this.
However, a second, even bigger, design flaw and one that is inexcusable is the fact that the delivery mechanism that takes coffee from the grinders to the bucket holds enough coffee for a single shot of espresso! In other words, when you grind enough coffee for one shot, you're not getting the coffee you just ground, you're getting the coffee that was ground up LAST time! Apparently, they expect you to not use the capacity of the hopper and grind only what you plan to use all the way through the system every time. But then why have a hopper to begin with? Ground coffee does not do well when exposed to air, and so if you notice that subsequent cups of coffee made with this machine start to taste bad, you'll know why. Using this product correctly is incredibly inconvenient, and requires a lot of cleaning and dumping in beans every time you want to use it. As good as some of the features of this are, I can't recommend it. The folks who love it are probably not aware of the delivery mechanism issue and probably don't know that the perfect grind coming out of their beloved machine was probably ground the day before. | ||
 | Olympus SP-560UZ 8MP Digital Camera with Dual Image Stabilized 18x Optical Zoom | |
| "Excellent build, but mediocre picture quality" | 2007-11-17 |
| I switched to this camera from a Canon A610 that died on me. The first thing I noticed with this camera is that the picture quality on my $200 Canon was better or equal than this $400 camera. The dynamic range is terrible, with skies often washed out to white. Like many "super-zoom" cameras competing on specs, it makes up for noise and dynamic range limitations in its small CCD by over-processing, and the images show signs of heavy noise reduction filtering, washing out details. Granted, this isn't a DSLR, but this isn't a cheap camera, either. It appears that they really pushed the boundaries of the CCD to get 8 MP, and used too small a CCD for this resolution. One thing I will add, after doing more research, is that this problem is common to some extent or another to all recent cameras in this market segment, such as the Canon S5. They are pushing the pixel counts so high, and the zoom ranges so far, that optical quality is suffering as a result. Another issue I found is that the autofocus algorithm is rather slow, especially at long focal lengths, and it often has difficulty with any scene movement. Worse, it will sometimes tell you it focused successfuly when it didn't. Part of this is the zoom, I'm sure, but even at Canon's autofocus performs far better. My experience in this regard is backed up by some very in-depth reviews on dpreview.com. I'm sorry to offend the Olympus fanboys around here who don't appear to enjoy the truth, but Olympus engineers can't violate the laws of solid state physics, and smaller pixels means less photoelectron capacity, and that means less dynamic range. Smaller pixels also means less signal to noise, and it shows. The fact of the matter is that they have pushed the pixel count too far for the size of the CCD, and you will get better images from a camera with fewer pixels, ironically. I have nothing against Olympus, or I wouldn't have purchased this. Glowing, breathless reviews by people who are so inexperienced they are amazed at mediocrity aren't useful. On the bright side, the build quality is supurb. Much better than the Canon S5, which I initially considered. The camera has a nice heft and a very solid feel in the hand. The materials are high quality all over, the one exception being a cheap and annoying rubber cover on the USB port. Another high point is the zoom and image stabilization. The range is exceptional, and essentially gives you everything from a wide-angle to a medium telephoto. Unfortunately, the cost of this is a lens that does not perform well at the extremes: at wide-angle its highly distorting, and at telephoto lengths there is significant chromatic aberration (color fringing) off center. In summary, I'd say Olympus put way too much effort into specmanship, and less into making the right engineering decisions. They clearly wanted to have 18x and 8MP printed on the box, and considered image quality a secondary concern. This may be endemic to all the brands of super-zoom cameras, but it doesn't change the fact that you don't get your money's worth where it counts with this camera: image quality. This is a huge shame, because in most every other aspect this is the nicest camera I've ever used. My advice: if you need the resolution afforded by 8 MP, you need to just suck it up and buy an SLR. Only they have large enough CCDs to handle such resolutions adequately, and this applies to all brands, not just Olympus. Otherwise, just get a 5 MP camera. The images will be just as good, if not better, and you'll save a lot of money. | ||
 | Monster Cable HDMI 400 High Resolution A/V Cable - 2 Meters | |
| "Worthless scam" | 2007-10-14 |
| One MIGHT argue that cable quality could affect a digital audio signal due to clock timing issues, but for video as long as the signal gets there without losing bits, all adequate cables are the same. (And I think most receivers reclock the digital audio, anyway.) As long as the cables provide enough shielding to avoid actual data loss, interference has no effect on a digital signal. I really can't believe that fooling and lying to people has become a valid business model in this country. If you buy these cables you are being taken, plain and simple, by a company that thinks providing you with an illusion of quality is more profitable than providing you with real value. Until people become more skeptical, they are right. | ||
 | MONSTER CABLE HDMI400 Audio/Video Cable for HDTV | |
| "Worthless scam" | 2007-10-14 |
| One MIGHT argue that cable quality could affect a digital audio signal due to clock timing issues, but for video as long as the signal gets there without losing bits, all adequate cables are the same. (And I think most receivers reclock the digital audio, anyway.) As long as the cables provide enough shielding to avoid actual data loss, interference has no effect on a digital signal. I really can't believe that fooling and lying to people has become a valid business model in this country. If you buy these cables you are being taken, plain and simple, by a company that thinks providing you with an illusion of quality is more profitable than providing you with real value. Until people become more skeptical, they are right. | ||
 | Monster Cable HDMI 400 High Resolution A/V Cable - 1 Meter | |
| "Worthless scam" | 2007-10-14 |
| One MIGHT argue that cable quality could affect a digital audio signal due to clock timing issues, but for video as long as the signal gets there without losing bits, all adequate cables are the same. (And I think most receivers reclock the digital audio, anyway.) As long as the cables provide enough shielding to avoid actual data loss, interference has no effect on a digital signal. I really can't believe that fooling and lying to people has become a valid business model in this country. If you buy these cables you are being taken, plain and simple, by a company that thinks providing you with an illusion of quality is more profitable than providing you with real value. Until people become more skeptical, they are right. | ||
 | Monster Cable HDMI 400 High Resolution A/V Cable - 4 Meters | |
| "Worthless scam" | 2007-10-14 |
| One MIGHT argue that cable quality could affect a digital audio signal due to clock timing issues, but for video as long as the signal gets there without losing bits, all adequate cables are the same. (And I think most receivers reclock the digital audio, anyway.) As long as the cables provide enough shielding to avoid actual data loss, interference has no effect on a digital signal. I really can't believe that fooling and lying to people has become a valid business model in this country. If you buy these cables you are being taken, plain and simple, by a company that thinks providing you with an illusion of quality is more profitable than providing you with real value. Until people become more skeptical, they are right. | ||
 | SanDisk SDMX4-6144 Sansa e270 6 GB MP3 Player with SD Expansion Slot | |
| "Excellent sound, terrible for video" | 2007-08-22 |
| Forget about the video functionality. It crashes often, and even when it works it's so small as to be pointless. But the sound is fantastic. Sound quality is a variable that's often forgotten when shopping for MP3 players, but quite a variable it is from experience. This player has better sound than my ipod, and much better sound than my Insignia player. Just because it's digital doesn't mean the quality can't vary. Clearly they used good components in these, and the sound is crisp and without distortion. (I'm listening on a pair of high end in-ear phones.) | ||
 | SanDisk Sansa e250 SDMX4-2048-A70 2 GB MP3 Player - Black | |
| "Excellent sound, terrible for video" | 2007-08-22 |
| Forget about the video functionality. It crashes often, and even when it works it's so small as to be pointless. But the sound is fantastic. Sound quality is a variable that's often forgotten when shopping for MP3 players, but quite a variable it is from experience. This player has better sound than my ipod, and much better sound than my Insignia player. Just because it's digital doesn't mean the quality can't vary. Clearly they used good components in these, and the sound is crisp and without distortion. (I'm listening on a pair of high end in-ear phones.) | ||
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