Mini-Reviews
Preface
I strive to be an informed consumer, but I'm thwarted by how few first hand experiences can be found on the net: Instead I have
to resort to the writings of star-struck reviewers, many of whom spend only a few moments with a product, to make purchasing decisions.
To help others doing such a search, even if only a tiny amount, I've mini-reviewed a couple of products that I've lived with for a while either personally,
or through work. These are just first-hand accounts, and are generally not comparative studies (I haven't lived with or worked with the competitive products for
any period of time) - instead they are just an account of the value that I feel I have gotten out of a product for the price.
Sony P150 (virtually identical to the Sony P200) *** out of ***** (3 out of 5)
Extremely portable little 7+ megapixel camera with a quick focus and rapid recovery (the ability to take multiple shots close together). This camera fits easily in a shirt pocket.
Pros
- Very small
- Quick succession of shots
- Excellent picture quality for subjects approximately 5 to 9 feet from the camera, in good lighting
- Superb battery life
- Very speedy flash memory technology
Cons
- Like seemingly all P&S (point and shoot) cameras, numerous ideal situation pictures do not turn out. I keep dreaming that a tiny P&S style camera will offer SLR-type quality and
consistency, but thus far my dreams have been quashed. If you want consistently good quality pictures in all situations, consider one of the large lens SLR style
cameras (like the Canon Digital Rebel)
- Relatively weak flash leads to fade out at picture edges
- This is a seemingly irrelevant point, but the Canon S50 had a gravity sensor that sensed when you took pictures in different orientations, and would automatically rotate them
when downloading. This was a superb feature that I really miss, and of course the P150 doesn't feature it.
Doom 3 **** out of ****** (4 out of 5)
This is an absolutely fabulous game that is well worth the ~$70. Featuring cutting edge graphics and well over a dozen hours of solid gameplay, you'll be up many nights trying to get just a little further to see what is revealed.
Pros
- Extraordinary graphics on modern hardware. This is the current state of the art for indoor environments (FarCry is the state of the art for outdoor environments)
- This is a very large game that will entertain you for many hours. Furthermore it is inevitable that the "mod" community will extend the life of this game (For example I didn't care for Quake 3 at all, yet the free mod Urban Terror entertained me for hundreds of hours)
- Excellent use of atmospheric sound, making full use of surround sound equipment
- Faithful to the Doom franchise, with many gameplay elements that are reminiscent of that breakthrough game
- Huge, fascinating world with intricate details that will have you standing still just watching the machines move and the world operate
Cons
- Extremely demanding, particularly on the video card. On my gaming platform with a GeForce 4 Ti4400 I was forced to play at the lowest quality setting. While medium ran generally acceptable, some areas would slow to a choppy slideshow
- Very dark in places, however it is critical that you follow the suggestion on the box: It's much easier to see in dark areas if your play in a darkened room. Some have resorted to a "duct tape" patch that leaves your flashlight on perpetually, however I found that unnecessary
- If you play extended gaming sessions, gameplay can get a little monotonous. Certain gameplay elements start to feel "cheap" (such as the imps popping out of newly revealed closets when you pick up a piece of equipement)
- I played at the second skill level (the middle of the available original skill levels) and it was actually remarkably easy - with a shotgun and side stepping virtually all foes are a breeze, and I never had an issue running out of ammo or health
2003 Honda Odyssey EX **** 1/2 out of ****** (4.5 out of 5)
Before buying the Honda I rented a wide assortment of minivans for business travel, and test drove quite a few during the final decision week. At the time, about 9 months ago, I had no
doubt that the Honda was the best choice for what we were looking for (not to mention that getting a comparable set of features in competitors often boosted their seemingly discount price
far beyond the Honda). Since then the new Toyota Sienna came out which is a worthy competitor to the Honda. (Update: Honda refreshed the 2005 Odyssey, fixing most of the weaknesses. It is once again the
minivan to beat)
Pros
- Very powerful (240hp makes this deceptively fast for
such a large vehicle)
- Quiet
- Smooth, car-like ride. Easy handling - I was worried
about the difficulty of parking such a large vehicle, but it's extremely easy
to maneuver
- Excellent visibility all-around
- Good sounding stereo
- Thoughtful convenience features abound
- While Honda often gets tagged an "import", this van is domestically made - I bought a vehicle that
was made 90km from where I live
Cons
- The stereo has a digital volume (despite an analog style control),
and the increments between levels is annoyingly large - many times I've
either had to leave the stereo too low, or suffer with it too loud. This is something that you would think
is ridiculously picky at first, but when you have a sleeping infant daughter in the car and
the stereo is a little low, yet the next step is too loud, it hits home as a particularly ridiculous
limitation
- The driver's seat is somewhat uncomfortable despite
being highly adjustable
- The power doors have had several reliability issues,
such as refusing to close all of the way at times (requiring one to push it in
at the rear). Additionally there are some less intelligent features such as
the fact that if you put the vehicle in drive while a door is closing, the
door illogically stops closing (even if it's on the cusp of being fully closed)
- The automatic climate control puts the fan on low
even if the temperature is woefully inappropriate, such as on a cold winter
day and you call for a 24C interior - you lightly have freezing cold air
blowing on your hands until the engine heats up. The solution is to turn it off
until the engine heats up, but then you're defeating the purpose of automatic
climate control
- Honda is scheduled to come out with a fully revamped
Odyssey very shortly (Update: They came out with a refreshed model. There was no reason to fully
revamp as this is a superb vehicle)
- Not really a negative of this product, but a reality
of the segment- Large 3600lb vans slurp back fuel at a fairly rapid pace. If
you're buying a vehicle that will be both a daily commuter and a child
transport, get a station wagon or be ready to accept the considerable fuel
costs
- Our personal experience with the Honda service network has been very negative. Even an oil-change is a gruelling experience (and quite literally the only thing
done during the $50 oil change is that the oil is changed). Having said that, I've found the same to be true of Chrysler dealers here in the GTA.
To contrast with this, when we lived in London, Ontario, we got our Chrysler serviced at South West Chrysler Dodge: I have nothing but good things to say about them - even an oil change resulted in the tires being pressurized, all fluids topped up (and remaining washer fluid put in the trunk
for later use), a quick wash, etc. A very pleasant experience.
Canon S50 5 megapixel digital camera *** out of ***** (3 out of 5)
I've been somewhat disappointed with this camera - While it's taken a lot of great pictures (we're well over 1300 pictures taken so far),
a comparable number haven't turned out despite all of the conditions being right. Perhaps this is all just the flip side of having such a small, mobile
camera
Pros
- When the image is focused properly and with enough
light, it takes excellent short to mid distance pictures - great contrast, colours,
and amazing definition
- Very small - easily transportable: This is a camera
small enough that you'll actually bring it places. I've owned several very nice
cameras that took great pictures, but they were so large and unwiedly (and fragile)
that I never actually took them anywhere
- Durable
- Full manual controls for the enthusiast
- Easy to use software that is fairly comprehensive for getting the images off of the camera. I've always done touchups and such in external software
so I can't comment on that functionality
Cons
- The intelligent autofocus needs to go back to school.
A good percentage of pictures don't "turn-out" because of inappropriate
focus. I write this as a long-time photography enthusiast who's had
significant experience with SLRs with vastly superior autofocus. Even my
Minolta 5xi circa 1989 has vastly superior focusing abilities. Additionally
while it can focus upon close objects using the macro feature, the switching to macro
should be automatic. On the opposite end, it never seems to focus on infinity quite right -
landscape shots always seem to be slightly out of focus
- This camera needs a lot of light to be happy - with
such a tiny, "slow" lens, and an effective ISO 50 speed (you can set it higher,
however the image quality degrades substantially), just about anything
but a bright summer day requires a flash...
- ...but often it fails to properly take pictures with
the onboard flash, either over or underexposing
- A small but annoying quirk: When it's saving an image the processor is too busy
to do the automatic lens retraction process, so you basically have to sit there staring
at a blinking light until the image is saved to the flash card to be able to pack up
the camera
Sony DCR-TRV19 **** 1/2 out of ***** (4 1/2 out of 5)
Pros
- Excellent picture quality in bright situations, and
good image quality down to fairly low lighting
- Excellent image stabilization
- Extraordinary quality microphone (this is truly the
best sounding audio that I've ever heard a personal electronics microphone
capture-hearing the bell clink in a video of our cat makes you look to see if
she's coming running, just as doorbells or phones elicit a real-world
response)
- Very easy to use - intuitive interface
- Excellent multi-speed zoom and unzoom
- Long battery life even with the supplied unit, with
the option to get massive life batteries
Cons
- I literally have nothing that I can flag as a defect of this camera
Mozilla/Firefox Web Browser ****1/2 out of ***** (4 1/2 out of 5)
I've been a big fan of the Opera web browser for several years, enjoying built-in
user empowerment such as tabbed-browsing, block-up popping, script controls, image sourcing configurability, not to mention blazing-fast page
rendering. Lately my choice of primary browser has switched, changing to Mozilla (and then to the closely related
sibling, Firefox, and
I've been happily, and productively, using this browser for play and work for about two years now, and am extremely
satisifed.
Offering full compatibility with the overwhelming majority of websites, Mozilla offers many of the features of Opera and then
some - if you continue to use IE simply out of momentum, or about fear of being left-out of Microsoft extensions, you owe it to
yourself to give it a try: With some of the more powerful web standards, the majority of websites now are generally standards compliant,
and few actually require any specific functionality of Internet Explorer, and of course you can install and use Macromedia Flash, Adobe Acrobat,
Apple Quicktime -- they all work just fine in Mozilla. Microsoft has reactived the superlative Internet Explorer team, and Internet Explorer 7
promises some great things, but until it arrives Mozilla is the king of the block. Take a look at some of the fantastic extensions such as Adblock.
Pros
- Works perfectly with the overwhelming majority of websites
- Offers full control over pop-ups, image sources, scripts, and other advanced user controls
- Very secure - no need to download daily security updates
- All major plug-ins work great in it
- Cross platform - the same Mozilla from Windows to Apple to UNIX to Linux
Cons
- AOL has mostly pulled the plug on Mozilla, so development may slow down (though it's an open-source product so it won't stop)
- Fairly heavyweight when numerous sites are being browsed simultaneously