Black piano finish

There is an ugly fashion trend among industrial designers:

black piano finish

This treatment is used on plastic cases for variety of gadgets. It gives a shiny feel for a few moments of the life of the gadget and fades away with scratches and dust. What looks good on maple or birch of a grand piano is not necessarily a desired effect on plastic. The Nouveau riche (French for "new rich"), or new money of this world like to present themselves among shiny objects. Cheap plastic looks more expensive.
It is an ergonomic error to make a television set or computer monitor frame shiny. Aside of cheap-ugly look, this causes annoying reflections from any source of light in the room.

Western Digital WDTV Media player

This media player from Western Digital is very interesting and worth trying. It does what the name implies: plays media files from attached USB devices. For more info see manufacturers information
The Good: it plays most picture and video formats including High Definition content as found on HD DVD and Blu-Ray discs. Backed-up DVDs are played well if the IFO file is made to skip ads and play the feature movie. There is no support for DVD menus. It reads large USB hard discs with NTFS format.
The Bad: It's HD compatibility stops at 24fps progressive scan or 30fps interlaced. Manufacturer does not specify maximum bit rate the processor can deliver. The unit hangs/freezes on some HD movies and needs power down to reset. Even if these movies fall within allowed specs of 24fps. User interface is very basic. This would not be a problem, but it is badly designed. The list of movies to pick shows only 10 items per screen leaving large unused top margin. This is very annoying while scrolling through the list of hundreds of items. The remote control is sometimes not responsive, it takes seconds! to react. To make a freeze-frame is a hit and miss.
Visual design has to be criticized too. It is in a shape of WD trademark book look-a-like, It would be just ok, but the use of black shiny plastic (black piano finish) makes it unacceptable. After normal use it gathers a lot of scratches and looks cheap. This is an inexpensive unit but why stick it to the buyer?

visual design	3	shiny plastic
engineering	4	good
ergonomics	3	user interface needs improvement
marketing	3	fair

Garmin Nuvi 1350

I will compare this unit with the older Nuvi 255W. The new unit is called "Ultra Slim". Slim as a brick, it is 16mm thick (~5/8") Well, older is even thicker. If you want to call something slim, make it 10mm or less.
The Bad:
The user interface has been changed, but not improved. In some cases there is a step back. Scrolling a map on old unit is easy, just slide your fingertip on a screen. In new model, touching a screen will produce annoying bubble displaying the location, this bubble obscures the map and can not be dismissed. More bad news, the map will center on the touched spot loosing the place. The new screen can not differentiate between tapping a screen or initiation of a drag to scroll the map.
Another setback is the displaying of numeric information. old unit will display six values at a time, while new unit will show only four forcing the driver to press scroll arrow to see more. This is outright DANGEROUS!
The Good:
Unit is less thick and slightly lighter. There is added feature showing lanes of traffic on multiline road before a turn, showing which lane to take.

visual design	4	good
engineering	4	good
ergonomics	3	user interface needs improvement
marketing	3	fair

Canon SD770 a case of marketing fraud

The bad:
I bought Canon SD770 camera for $300. The body has big engraving on the front: 10.0 MEGA PIXELS. Call me naive, but I expected this camera to produce 10 megapixel photographs! AS advertised. That would be a technical achievement to accomplish this with the lens as small as a shirt button. And all this for only $300? I tested it for a week doing a few hundreds images in different conditions. I promptly loaded pictures into my computer and tried to see them at 1:1 size on my 27" monitor. No surprise, no glory, just fuzzy image. Obviously the lens is not capable of resolving the resolution needed by an image sensor. I returned the camera for a full refund and made a fuss about being ripped off. Does Canon marketeers think of us that we are all stupid? Stupid enough to figure out that 10 is bigger than 8 so 10 meg camera is better than 5 meg? I understand that this camera has 10 meg sensor, but when I buy a camera... I expect to make pictures with it, not brag to my friends that "my is bigger than yours"

The good:
Six months later I saw this camera for $200. I bought it and use it as a pocket camera. It is NOT 10 megapixel camera, but for $200 it makes good pictures to watch on 1920x1080 TV screen. The DIGIC image processor very well exposes pictures even in difficult situations. For example taking a picture of a bronze statue against a white cloudy sky. The camera allows to see the detail in the dark subject ignoring very strong background light. The face recognition produces good exposure and good skin tones of people in the picture. Even image stabilization is helpfull. Buuilt-in flash produces well exposed images and excellent skin tones.

It is a waste for the processor to process 10 megapixels of nonexisting information in the picture. This camera would be very good with 6-7 megapixel sensor. The penalty for high pixel count is the noise in the picture and long times of image procesing.

visual design	5	excellent (silver model only)
engineering	5	excellent
ergonomics	4	good
marketing	0	misleading

Conclusion: hats off to Canon engineers, damn with Canon marketeers.

Noise Cancelling Headphones comparison

The comparison was done to select noise reduction headphones for noise inside airplane passenger cabin. The noise consist mostly of high frequencies generated by badly designed ventilation fans. Contrary to popular believes, jet engine noise is almost nonexistent inside passenger cabin in modern airliners.

Sony MDRNC60 Noise Cancelling Headphones.

According to Sony: They provide 16.5dB noise reduction at 200Hz
list price: $300   as reviewed: $210

visual design	4	good looking
engineering	4	good
ergonomics	3	earlobes do not fit iniside cans
marketing	4	fair

pros: good music quality, well built.
cons: Bose is better in noise reduction.

Bose QuietComfort 15 Acoustic Noise Cancelling headphones.

list price: $350   as reviewed: $350

visual design	3	cheap silver paint
engineering	5	good noise cancellation
ergonomics	4	good
marketing	0	consumer hostile price fixing

pros: better noise reduction than Sony.
cons: slight reverberation generated by low frequencies, cheap looking silver paint over black plastic, any scratch will look badly. Direct marketing, no price competition.

verdict: selected Bose for better noise reduction.

information is an enemy of advertising

I am opening this blog to share my experience with the technology products. Marketing buzz created by merchandisers is purposely distracting and makes it difficult to find information. Since me and my friends spend a lot of time researching product before selecting it for purchase I will post our findings there.


Site mission statement:

• care about environment - select quality products that last, instead of landfill candidates.
• avoid visual pollution - select good design and show bad trends and "fashions"
• seek technical excellence - prize well engineered products
• seek ergonomic design - test usability
• expose marketing fraud - debunk false and misleading marketing claims