Casio Exilim

Casio® Exilim® EX-S770 Blue 7.2 MP Digital Camera (costco.ca)
320$+tax

This damn thing chipped after two months of use. Not just a scratch-a chip exposing the interior. Wasn't from a drop, either. Metal/plastic fatigue. Avoid this one.

Acer Aspire

Acer® Aspire™ AS5100-5540 English TL-50, 15.4-in. WXGA, 2GB, 120GB

(costo.ca)
1100$+tax

Good laptop overall. Comes with a built-in camera, which I recommend swivelling away from the user when not in use (I wouldn't chance it if someone manages to get a trojan onto your computer). Acer has a widget display, which allows you to check out battery life, cpu usage, etc. I never bothered with it, but some might get a kick out of it.

There's a built-in SD card reader, and three USB ports (which doesn't quite cut it in today's world). I typically always have a mouse, printer, and external memory (hard drive) that need full time affection and attention. Throw in a MP3 player or zip drive, and now you're compromising. No big worries. The speakers are adequate for listening to music while cleaning your room, but nothing beyond that.

Motorola 5.8GHz Cordless

Motorola E52 Series MD7251-3 5.8 GHz Cordless

(costo.ca)
120$+tax

Junk. Total junk. The signal could not penetrate more than two stories of wooden housing floor (I'm not talking about apartment concrete, I'm talking about a typical wood-based single family dwelling. Bah!

Daytek Portable DVD Player

Daytek PD-950 9-in. Portable DVD Player
(costco.ca)
160$+tax

I really like this DVD player. Very easy interface, although for some reason it automatically turned on Chinese subtitles when I played my boot-legged Little Britain DVDs. Less technology inclined peoples may not have been able to figure out how to turn off the closed captioning (it took a bit of trial-and-error and educated guessing to adjust the closed captioning).

The battery sticks out and is rather cumbersome, but once you get going the unit balances nicely. It includes a video output adaptor, AC and car adaptor, and two headphone outs (in case two people want to use headphones at once). Nice touch!

Uniden Cordless Phone System

Uniden® 5.8 GHz Corded/Cordless Phone System with Digital Answering System

(costco.ca)
192$

This package includes a cord-full base and three cordless phones with base chargers, and one of them waterproof (for all those bathtub conversations?). I haven't put the water-proof one to test yet, but perhaps boredom will prevail one day and we'll have some funny stories to tell.

This cordless set was a little more pricey (192$), but it includes an answering machine that picks up calls unanswered by call waiting. It also managed to show me the name of the person I didn't bother picking up with call waiting (sorry Jeremy), but this could simply be a feature of my telephone service, and have nothing to do with the cordless phone unit itself. The range trumps the last cordless phone I reviewed (not saying much). I confess I haven't tested the max range yet. I still have difficulty with the answering machine, as I have been given the personal recording, the default robo-voice recording, and static-screaching of a fax machine all within one minute of repeatedly redialing my number.

The ergodyamics of the phone gets three thumbs up. Once again however, I must rant at my disappointment for Uniden to include a built-in signal router so multiple units can all join the conversation.

SanDisk Sansa

SanDisk® Sansa™ 6 GB e270 MP3 Player
(costco.ca)
185$+tax

The next generation of Sansa's, this one boasts basically all the features of it's older brother. Unfortuantely it does not come with the protective pseudo leather jacket of it's predessor, so watch out!! Those LCD displays scratch like a cat in heat. Once again, the video playback is tilted 90 degrees out of sync with typical use.

One thing I neglected to mention last time is how awkward it is navigating around and opening up folders while viewing through windows, and it isn't straight forward naming albums and artists while accessing it through /My Computer/Removable Storage/ Sansa etc. I found it more convienent to download albums using bittorents, start playing the entire album with Windows Media Player, click 'Sync', and drag and drop the entire album. You can always delete the unwanted songs afterwards, as opposed to trying to add a single song and then adjust it's details. There is also a FM tuner and a voice recorder on it, but I am yet to test those features out.

Pentax Optio

Pentax® Optio L30 7.1 MP Digital Camera
(costco.ca)
294$

This is a very clever little camera that fits right into your hand. A very simple design, a quickly chargable lithium ion battery that lasted me for about 83 pictures and some videos. It's a 7.1 MP with 3X optical zoom, and a high sensitivity of ISO 3200, whatever the fuck that means. It creates quick time videos that go indefinetely, limited only by your memory chip. A drawback is you are unable to scroll through the pictures you've taken already, unless you completely turn the power on. All this does is pushes the lens out, which unnessarily sucks up a bit of battery energy, and there's always the slight risk of damaging the lens whenever it's open and erect.

Dell Inspiron

Dell� Inspiron� 1501 English TL50, 15.4-in. WXGA, 1GB, 80GB

(Costco.ca)

~1200$

This is probably the best Dell laptop I've seen to date. It was easy to add the extra monitor and extend the desktop (mind you, this is alot due to Windows XP). The extra video card worked to my liking as far as processing the extended desktop onto the monitor I keep at my desk.

The DVD writer worked like a charm. The built-in SD digital memory card reader further saves on extra USB cords cluttering things up. There were 4 USB ports, which finally meant I didn't have to do any unplugging or switching around. I always have my external hard drive, mouse, printer connected, and now I could keep my MP3 player charger plugged in.

Unfortunately there is no external volume control, which means the computer must be turned on in order to adjust the volume. Annoying if you're ever trying to start up in a quiet setting.

Garmin 60CX Handheld GPS System with TFT Colour Display

Garmin� GPSMAP� 60CX Handheld GPS System with TFT Colour Display
(Costco.ca)

400$

Very easy user interface. It was straightforward plotting data points into the memory. Calculating displacement, vectors and distance wasn't as easy as it could have been.

HP LaserJet 2600N Printer

Hewlett Packard LaserJet 2600N Printer
(Costco.ca)

450$

A decent overall computer. Easy to set up, unfortunately it does not automatically do double-sided printing-the print out must be fed back into the machine halfway through.

SanDisk Sansa 4GB MP3 Player

SanDisk� Sansa� 4 GB e260 MP3 Player With Travel Case Kit

(Costco.ca)

170$

This is the first hand-held portable video player I've reviewed, and it was indeed a fun toy.

It comes with a leather case & protective plastic screen cover-very important for today's hard-plastic for casing society.

In order to see videos one has to convert an .avi or .mpeg file using the enclosed software, which I give a 4/5 for user interface. The files are then split into typically 8 minute file segments. After each video segment was completed, the screen would automatically bring you to the video folder you'd opened the first one from, and highlight the proceeding file. Kinda like a retarded dog would bring you one slipper, and then wait at the other slipper looking at you to ask you to bring it over as well. There is no option for selecting several videos at once (as one might assume seeing how each movie you convert is broken down into 8 minute videos). The only benefit I found with the 8 minute break-down is that fast forwarding and rewinding was cumbersome, so I found myself scrolling through 8 minute 'chapters' of a movie. Definetly some work required.

The video displays 90 degrees to how everything else is displayed, for reasons unknown to me. All this means is that you have to hold the player sideways while watching. Ironically the fast-forward and rewind buttons are now misaligned. An analogy would be holding a video game controller sideways and still trying to play. Keep in mind with videos your not typically adjusting as often as a song, but still, no excuse for poor user-friendly interface.

Unfortunately the computer interface did not allow for editing song names or creating playlists. Songs could only be deleted (not copied) from the player. Perhaps this is some attempt at appeasing the copy-right gods. Personally, creating playlists is an issue for me, so I wasn't happy with this.

The only playlist I could create was the default 'Go' List, which unfortunately on several occasions I deleted all songs from. If you scroll down the songs in your 'go' list, the very bottom one is a great song called 'clear go list'. Yeah. Reminded me of the Far Side cartoon with the fat kid in the airplane, with his hand on the seat features, "Volume up, volume down, flight attendant, light on, light off, wings stay on, wings fall off".

Recharging the player is done through a USB cord. Essentially this limits the player for vacation trips where you're not planning on bringing your computer. Although a bright side to this is you have an extremely standard AC power adaptor in the sense that if you're in a kenyan internet cafe, you can always plug in your USB cord and give it a quick charge.

goLite Portable Light Therapy

goLite� P2 Portable Light Therapy

(Costco.ca)

195$

This was recommended to me to fight winter-depression. The theory is (which I believe) that we need sunlight on our skin to produce certain hormones and feelings, which gets neglected during the winter months of limited-sunlight. Indoor lighting typically is not off the full spectrum the sun provides. Anyone with exotic lizards or other pets have perhaps bought special lights for their pets, as they are not living outdoors.

So this portable unit carrys about a 30 minute charge, and has an adjustable light intensity level. It throughs out an intense blue glare. It has an LCD clock display, and can be set up to give off light as an alarm. However, I could never figure out how to do that. It has an automatic shut-off switch.

Personally I could not tell that big of a difference using it, but depression is a pretty subjective feeling, and there's typically too many variables in my life to narrow it down to how well a light shines on me.

Acer 19 Inch LCD Monitor

Acer� AL1916W Asd 19-in. LCD Monitor

(Costco.ca)

220$ + tax

Pretty solid monitor, simplistic, easy to assemble base of black hard plastic, comes with the VGA & AC adaptor cables. Five function buttons are at the bottom, but truthfully I never touched them. I'm not very knowledgeable about graphics and video cards, but it worked out when I plugged it into my laptop and managed to extend my windows desktop onto it. Adjusting the right size desktop to the LCD monitor was done completely through windows, never using the buttons on the monitor itself.

VTech 2.4 GHz Cordless Phone

VTech� 2.4 GHz VT20-2431 Expandable Cordless Phone

(Costco.ca)

120$+tax

Haven't had much experience with this snazzy-looking toy yet. It's more complicated to set up than one would expect-you have to search through the menu on the base unit for the base ID, then program it into the hand set. Not impossible.

Calls can be picked up either with the handset or the base via a speakerphone. Both have caller id menus, which double as options features. There is an overwhelming array of extra buttoms to press, and it isn't always intuitive which one picks up the call and which one ends it. You can have 2 separate phone lines coming through the phone, so the handset accomodates this with separate accept call buttons.

One of the features I like is the built-in intercom. If you have multiple handsets, you can page and communicate walkie-talkie style, presumably. I only had the one handset & base, but I could page the base and someone could pick up via the speaker phone built into the base.

Unfortunately, costco.ca doesn't appear to sell the expandable extra handsets.