Adam Curry invited to meet the Queen. Ballmer’s keynote panned. Ballmer promised Win 7 this year. Meanwhile top Windows exec warns that it probably won’t ship in 2009. Yahoo deal skunked. Sun downgraded by Goldman. Stock sinks. Lenovo looks as if it is trouble. Sony has nifty looking new laptop. OLPC falling apart. Layoffs coming. New Dish Network device has what appears to be a SlingCatcher built-in. Cell chip will be used by Toshiba in their new TVs. Cisco story continues. I am dubious. Memorex is in the news with a lame Cnet story. Dell moving Irish operation to Poland.
Click to listen:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
After doing a poll on both twitter and friendfeed in which I asked what brand of point-and-shoot digital camera people would buy at around the $200 price point, I learned that a profound number of people use/love/recommend Canon products. I went ahead and picked up the 10MP Canon PowerShot SD790 IS for a mere $179. Add a couple 4GB SDHC cards, an extra battery, an extended warranty and I was off and running!
This Camera is hands down one of the most impressive and surprising devices I have picked up in a long time. The form factor is great and with the 3″ PureColor LCD screen reviewing photos and video is a snap. The SD790 has a very intuitive interface and a great deal of very hand menu options. I could go on and on about this little device but I will let the PowerShot speak for itself. Below is both a photo gallery I put together on Flickr as well as a video I shot and uploaded to Youtube. (Note: The video is also available in high-res on Flickr, just click any of the thumbnails below to view the entire set)
* If you visit the youtube or flickr page you can view the video in high resolution.
According to the manual the battery should take slightly over 2 hours to charge completely. I clocked it at 1hour, 48minutes. At the time of writing this review I have shot roughly 150 photos and recorded almost 10 minutes of audio/video (850MB) and much to my surprise the battery is still 2/3 full. I have not charged it since I opened the box, needless to say the extra battery was probably overkill.
Syncing on the Mac is as simple as plugging the PowerShot in and iPhoto takes care of all the rest. With my Windows box the sync process was also seamless. Windows XP knew exactly what it was and what it needed to do. **NOTE: I did NOT install ANY of the software prior to sync’ing the camera, not even a driver. XP had it all natively. Pops right up in explorer and I can manage easily from there.
All-in-all I really couldn’t have asked for a better camera for the money. With 10MP, built-in image stabilization and audio/video capture quality like this I am highly recommending this camera to anyone who is looking for an affordable point-and-shoot.
