Reviews Written By: A1Q0X1EE9790PWprovided by Amazon.com |
 | ||
![Wario Land: Shake It! [Wii]](product_images/4952000/wario-land-shake-it-wii_t-4952714.jpg) | Wario Land: Shake It! [Wii] | |
 | "Fun for Kids and Adults" | 2009-04-25 |
| My 4 1/2 year old loves this game, though he can't do the boss battles. I have to do those for him. The nice thing about this game is that even if you are fairly unskilled you can complete the level, but there's still a challenge for advanced players - trying to get all the extras. If you have a young kid who has an older sibling or adult to get him through the boss battles they will probably love it. Great looking and fun game. | ||
 | Philips 9" Digital Picture Frame (8.25" Viewable) (Milk) | |
 | "flawed yet I love it" | 2006-12-03 |
| The transfer software which runs on the desktop doesn't recognize my second hard drive, which is very bizarre. It's a perfectly normal hard drive but the software can't see that it has folders in it. Also, if you click on an album with a bunch of pictures in it, go get yourself a cup of coffee because it creates thumbnails for each picture and it's very, very slow. While you are getting the cup of coffee, the frame will almost certainly lock up. The transfer software seems to cause the frame to lock up very often. It locks up while deleting pictures, it locks up while copying pictures. Nice. Basically I found the software that ships with it to be entirely useless. Instead I used irfanview to resize 5,500 pictures to 720x540 and put them on a 1 GIG SD card instead. The UI for the frame itself is frustrating non-intuitive. So it takes a bit of effort to get it set up the way you like it. I definitely wouldn't give this to grandma and expect her to figure it out. Another disappointment. The "random" feature is only random within a album (album = folder). So if I have 20 folders with 200 pictures in each and I set it to random, I'll see all 200 pictures in the first folder displayed in a random order, then it moves on to the second folder. This wasn't acceptable so I moved all 5,500 pictures in one folder. The frame seems to handle that ok, though with that many pictures it takes around 5 seconds to start up before the slideshow kicks in. I don't find that excessive, and the transition time between pictures is short (at least when they are resized to 720x540). The transition effects are cute but I imagine that they would get old pretty quickly. They can be turned off. The method of handling vertically-oriented pictures is quite clever. It displays the picture oriented vertically and fills in the rest of the space with 4 more much smaller copies of the picture. That actually looks quite nice. Now on to the frame itself. It looks nice and modern and iPody. I was concerned when I booted the thing up and looked at the display for the first time. The text looked washed out and blurry. However, when you view actual pictures on it, they look very good. When I bought this frame it was labeled as a 9" screen. Now amazon has changed it to 8.5" screen. It is, in fact, an 8" screen. The entire frame measured diagonally is 11". So I'm not sure where they got "9 inches" from. Apparently no one at Philips knows how to use a ruler. Having said that, the picture is pretty big. It's just the right size if you are going to keep it on your desk next to your monitor. According to my wattmeter, the frame pulls 4 Watts when it's on and 0 Watts when it's off or on standby. Which means, if my calculations are correct, you could let it run continuously for a month and it would only cost you a quarter. The battery backup seems sorta useless, as I plan on keeping it on my desk. But it's kind of nice to be able to unplug it and not worry about losing your settings. My overall impression: after all my complaints, I still love it. I'm dinging it several notches for the terrible, terrible software on both the frame and the desktop and Philips' lying about the screen size. With all that, once you have it up and running it's pretty sweet. | ||
 | TOUCHPAD LOCKSET DOORKNOB, POLISHED BRASS | |
 | "One fatal flaw" | 2006-10-10 |
| This is almost a really neat item. I have had one on the door from my house to my garage for around 10 months. I love the convenience of not having to dig out a key to get into the house when I park my car. What is the fatal flaw? The door can be opened from the inside with the lock locked. Conventional door knobs do not let you turn the knob with the lock locked. You could argue that this is more secure as you won't forget to lock your door. I would argue that the 167th time that you step out into your garage for just a second and then have to enter the #$*ing combination to get back in because you forgot to unlock the door first, the idea of touchpad entry into your house loses almost all of its charm. | ||
 | COLEMAN Coleman Powermate PMS7000 Cordless Cold Heat Soldering Tool | |
 | "useless" | 2006-07-13 |
| If you can manage to get the thing to melt off a piece of solder, the solder is immediately repelled, so you can't actually get it to melt on the wire. I broke the tip after 10 minutes of frustration. | ||
 | Garmin StreetPilot i3 Vehicle Navigation GPS System | |
| "great GPS" | 2006-01-17 |
| My impression after using for 1 week: The screen is small but surprisingly easy to read and the 3D view, which I assumed was just a gimmick, actually makes it quite easy to navigate. The included 128 meg card was enough to fit detailed maps of all the states I'm at all likely to drive to anytime soon (Ontario, MI, IL, IN, OH). The the maximum memory card size it can handle is not listed in any of the specs, but one website I read claimed 2 gig, which should be enough to hold detailed maps of all of North America. Also includes major roads and routes for the whole US built in. Had no trouble acquiring satellites, even in heavy rain. Entering destination addresses with the scroll wheel is pretty easy. In fact, I think the fact that everything is done with a wheel that only scrolls up and down plus a back button really forced them to make the the device simple to use. I wish you could scroll the map around as you view it (when not driving), but i guess that's too much to ask for without some kind of joystick or touch screen I had a Pocket PC GPS mapping solution that was always annoyingly difficult to use so I rarely bothered with it. The i3, in contrast, is well thought out and a pleasure to use. I wouldn't switch back to a PDA based solution. | ||
 | Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire - Ginger & Fred, Vol. 1 | |
| "great stuff" | 2003-05-17 |
| You already know this is great music from watching the movies. About the only downside to this particular CD is a 16 minute (!) long version of "The Continental". Ok, so that's how long it lasts in the movie, but it doesn't hold up to repeated listenings. Other than that, great stuff. | ||
 | A.J. Croce - That's Me in the Bar | |
 | "good stuff" | 2003-05-10 |
| This album is different from his first, self-titled, album, which was more traditional sounding piano blues. He still has his raspy voice and piano based songs, but this album has a bit of a more "modern sound", with elements of jazz, country, and rockabilly in the songs. Because it's so different from the first album, it took a while for it to grow on me, but it eventually did. There are plenty of good songs with catchy melodies and reasonably interesting lyrics about hanging around in bars. | ||
 | Hot Club of Cowtown - Swingin' Stampede: The Hot Club Of Cowtown Playing Hot Jazz & Western Swing | |
| "a lot of fun" | 2003-05-03 |
| Unlike some modern hot jazz, they aren't trying to set any speed records, and instead take the tunes at their proper pace. The songs have a nice country tinge without being TOO country. Overall, the album has a great old timey sound, only without the low-fidelity. The best tracks are the songs, as opposed to the instrumentals, because although they are not technically great singers, they all have an appealing way with a vocal. This is stripped down, very fun album of hot jazz by way of Texas. | ||
 | Gin Blossoms - Congratulations...I'm Sorry | |
| "good garage rock" | 2003-05-01 |
| Nothing brilliant or particularly clever. Just good, solid melodic garage rock, like its predecessor, New Miserable Experience. Decent songs all, and if you liked NME you'll like this one as well. | ||
| Jude Cole - Start the Car | |
| "great collection of hooks" | 2003-05-01 |
| "Start the Car" was the only radio hit, but there isn't a song on the album that isn't instantly catchy. | ||
 | Crash Test Dummies - God Shuffled His Feet | |
| "witty lyrics and catchy tunes" | 2003-05-01 |
| Witty, literate lyrics and catchy tunes, sung by a distinctive voice. The Big Questions of God and Religion are a common theme of the lyrics, but they are more subtle than being explicitly for or against. All the songs are nearly as good as the two radio hits, "God Shuffled His Feet" and "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm". | ||
 | Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire - Ginger & Fred, Vol. 2 | |
| "Great songs, charmingly sung" | 2003-04-30 |
| Great music, but you already knew that from seeing the movies. Only "But where are You" and "Final" aren't keepers. The sound quality...well, it was copied off the movies, so it's neither better nor worse than you might expect. This CD has the most of the music from the movies, so that means of the songs have the song followed by a good 5 minutes of instrumental-with-tap-dancing. Personally, I like this, but if you want ONLY the songs, you may prefer a different collection. | ||
 | The Stray Cats - The Best of the Stray Cats: Rock This Town | |
| "Great introduction to rockabilly" | 2003-04-30 |
| If you are new to rockabilly or the Stray Cats, this is a great introduction. Highlights are "Gene & Eddie" and "Stray Cat Strut", but there's not a bad tune in the bunch. | ||
 | Stray Cats - Original Cool | |
| "i'd rather listen to the originals" | 2003-04-30 |
| The Stray Cats are better instrumentalists than any of the rockabilly bands who's tunes they are covering this CD, but somehow this CD feels a little flacid. Granted, I knew it was all covers when I bought it, but I'd much prefer to hear some original tunes rather than just a great band phoning in some old rockabilly hits. | ||
![Squirrel Nut Zippers - Hot [ENHANCED CD]](product_images/1222000/1222657_thumb.jpg) | Squirrel Nut Zippers - Hot [ENHANCED CD] | |
| "great tunes, strange singing" | 2003-04-17 |
| The singing on this album is a bit...special. Katherine Whalen attempts to do a Billie Holliday impression. Sometimes it works, in a way, if you listen to it with an open mind. Nobody in the band can actually "sing" in any conventional sense. On one hand that detracts from the music, but on the other hand, it adds to their quirkiness. However, there's more to this album than quirkiness, namely some insanely catchy hot jazz/dixieland tunes. Only the songs "Twighlight" and "Flight of the Passing Fancy" are nothing special. You've certainly heard their radio hit "Hell" (In the afterlife). Almost every song on this album is actually MORE catchy than that. | ||
 | Joe Walsh - Songs for a Dying Planet | |
| "Classic 90's Joe Walsh" | 2003-04-16 |
| Despite the title of the album, there's not much "tree-hugging" here, just Joe showing off his typical knack for likeable, humorous lyrics and a catchy melody. Some songs just don't work, such as "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow", "Coyote Love", and If you are a fan of Joe in his synth-heavy phase, you won't be disapointed. | ||
| Tales from the Drones Club | |
| "ok but not as good as a Jeeves/Wooster story" | 2002-10-15 |
| A collection of reasonably amusing stories (with the exception of the hat story, which you can safely skip). However, the stories lack the spark of a good Jeeves and Wooster novel, so you will want to read all those first. | ||
 | Ansi/Iso C++ Professional Programmer's Handbook (Que Professional Series) | |
| "Great for intermediate/advanced C++ programers" | 2002-08-13 |
| This book is great for intermediate/advanced C++ programmers. Very readable and informative. I'd recommend it even if your compiler of choice is not terribly standard compliant, i.e. Visual C++. You'll learn more about the standard and refresh your memory on some things about C++ you've forgotten. | ||
 | Spike Jones - The Very Worst of Spike Jones | |
| "Would be better in Mono" | 2002-07-31 |
| Unfortunately, they attempted to turn the original mono recordings into stereo. The end result is terrible. It sounds like they added stereo simply by panning from the left to right channel occasionally, which is a very annoying effect if you are wearing headphones. It sounds like they also (unsuccessfully) tried to add some "depth" to the sound. I have heard other versions of some of these tunes in mono with a much "brighter" sound quality, and it sounded a lot better. It's a shame, because it really is a great collection of tunes. | ||
 | Sam Pacetti - Solitary Travel | |
| "excellent guitar work" | 2001-02-01 |
| I'm not a much of a fan of folk music, but this album features some good songwriting and excellent guitar work. You will especially enjoy this CD if you play guitar. I eagerly await a second album. | ||
 | Barenaked Ladies - Maroon | |
| "great catchy pop rock" | 2000-10-16 |
| Not a big fan of BNL's early stuff, but they had a few good songs. Thought Stunt was great though, and a week of listening to this album convinced me that it was better. Lots of catchy, simple, hooks with occassionally clever lyrics, and one painful groaner: ...Roman Polanski/if he was only given the chance-ski. Don't know that I'd want to hear an entire album of Kevin's singing, but it works great on the hidden track. Wish Ed had more vocals. Never Do Anything, Pinch Me, Humour of the Situation, and Hidden Sun are standouts. There really aren't any songs I have to skip over.... | ||
 | Joe Walsh - There Goes The Neighborhood | |
| "not bad" | 2000-01-04 |
| If you're a joe walsh fan you'll like it. Things, Down on The Farm, and Life of Illusion are great songs. | ||
| © 2009 GoSale.com (S2) |