Stylish Stylus

During my short vacation to India, I proudly showcased my Olympus E500 Digital SLR camera to all my friends and family members. As expected, everyone was awestruck. But my younger brother claimed my older camera, the Mju 400 which was so dear to me for years. He was right... why do I need this little camera when I have a bigger one.

The bigger one was good for major shootouts. But if I go for a small party or a casual outing, this bigger one was too clumsy and embarrassing to take out from its even bigger bag. Moreover, my wife wanted a gift on our wedding anniversary. As those wise people say, whenever you buy gifts to your own family, make sure you buy something useful for yourself. So I decided to buy another small point and shoot camera.

The buying process starts from deciding on the brand. The experience with my E500 had only increased my love for Olympus. So I didn't even consider other brands. Now need to decide on the model as Olympus had a lot of options. The Stylus (Mju) series seemed to be a better option as they were slim, stylish and weather proof. The different versions of that added more confusions but after reading lots of reviews and user comments from various sites, decided on the 760. The optical zoom was less (3x compared to 5x of some other models), but everything else looked great including the price.

I preferred buying it from Amazon, as they had better deals and free shipping with no taxes. Selected the pink color (Remember... its for my wife!) and got it for $199.94. I placed the order today and I am not waiting for it to arrive to write about it... I trust both Amazon and Olympus and I am sure things will go great.

I have its specs at http://wayfarer.bizhat.com/about/camera.html

Being a Movie Maker

I was never a fan of video cameras (and I am still not), even though I had used them a couple of times. Carrying a video camera on a vacation or function spoils the whole idea of enjoying that occasion as we end up in holding the camera and recording all nice events. Besides, it takes lot of effort to edit the output and store/organize them properly due to the huge size of these video files.


But when I decided to visit my home country for the first time from US, I felt like buying a small handycam to capture the scenes from here, so that it will be more fun for my friends and family to know our life here. A better option than listening to my boring narrations as they can fast forward or skip any time. :) And, my younger brother wanted a gift from me and this served both the purposes.


Since I was never into camcorders, I knew nothing about them. The buying process started with extensive research on the net and I learnt lot of new things. First of all I had to choose the type of recording medium. Built-in hard disk were the new trends, but many people on discussion forums and reviews reported that it is still not very proven and quality will be less as they had to compress the output. DVDs were popular but they also had this same quality issue. I was not interested in tapes, as I thought they are very cumbersome and require conversion devices to get the video transferred into computer. I was wrong and there were these mini DV tapes which records video in digital format. Then I learnt that there is something called firewire port (like USB ports but with higher transfer rates) in computers and buy buying an additional firewire cable it is possible to transfer videos from these tapes to computer easily.


I compared various models from Canon and Sony after knocking out JVC and other brands from the list. The actual user comments from various online store sites helped in getting the right feel of the products early enough to make a wise buying decision. Due to the noise issue, Canon ZR850 was knocked out in the last minute and decided on the Sony DCR-HC38.
Visited various stores like Frys, Best Buy, Walmart and Circuit City near Irving (Dallas, USA) to actually feel the product and get the details of their deals. Also compared prices from popular online stores like Amazon, B&H, etc and finally got the better deal from Amazon with free shipping and no taxes.



Since the free shipping takes more days to deliver, I was bit worried about getting it delivered before my vacation. But it did arrive just two days before my travel and I was really surprised to know that how easy it has become to shoot quality videos with this tiny camcorder. I spent a whole day shooting all near by places and used the firewire cable to transfer the video to my laptop using Sony's software that came with the camera. The files were in avi format, and for the first time I used almost all the features of Windows Movie Maker that came along with my Vista, to make a not so bad video. Adding titles, effects and background music was a breeze and the final output in wmv format was more compact than I thought.

I have its specs at http://wayfarer.bizhat.com/about/camcorder.html

Going SLR

The transition from point and shoot digital camera to SLR was obvious. But the buying process wasn’t that easy as I thought. I am sure my wife will never forget those days I spent in front of the computer every evening reading reviews after reviews to decide on my first major camera purchase. Also the long discussions I had with my friends who owned SLRs... asking the same questions again and again.

Canon's Rebel XT and XTi versions were in the last list along with Olympus Evolt E500. The two lens kit and the better price together with features that helps a novice with SLR photography made sure that Olympus got my bet.

Since the research process took more time than expected, I had to buy the camera as soon as possible to get ready for my first big vacation trip from here to Las Vegas and Canyons. I had placed this camera in the shopping cart of Amazon, few days back only to find it out of stock when I finally decided to buy. My hopes on the prices of these cameras to come down also seemed diminishing when I noticed prices going up in some online stores. So I rushed to Circuit City shop where I had examined this camera before. I had to spend some tensed moments at the store when they insisted that I need to place the order online first to get the better deal. I did that from the connected computer in the store and got my package right there. Within no time, I was into exploring its details and got immediately hooked into this new gadget.

I have all the details of this camera at http://wayfarer.bizhat.com/about/cameraslr.html

My First Personal Laptop

Once you have a desktop of your own, the next thing you wanted to have will be a laptop. And these days the laptops are no more a status symbol which only hi-fi guys can afford. But I never had a compelling reason to buy one as I had good desktops at both office and home. And I knew that laptops are much cheaper and better in US than in India. So I kept telling myself that I will buy my first laptop when I reach US one day.

When I landed here few months back, company gave me a laptop to work. This was the first time I was using a laptop for my day to day work. It wasn’t that exciting as I thought and soon I started having wrist pain. The only advantage I found was the mobility (which is of course the main purpose of laptops) that helps me use my computer from any where. Now I use external keyboard and mouse to make working on laptops more comfortable. I even wear a wrist-pad to reduce pain and also to prevent things like carpel tunnel syndrome.

Now that my wife is also here, need for another computer came into my thoughts. There were lots of things to consider when I was finally ready to buy my first laptop. The biggest question was whether I should wait for Vista to launch so that laptops come with pre-loaded Vista. This was important as the Vista was much dependent on hardware capabilities and I should not end up having a laptop that cannot support latest OS. The next thing was the screen size. I never liked those bigger laptops which makes carrying them around very difficult though the screen helps in better movie watching experience. But I wanted a wide screen where the screen can accommodate all my ‘Code Window’ even though the ‘Properties Window’ is made visible in Visual Studio.

Regarding the brand, I never had a second thought. Dell was the number one choice for value for money. It had good and reliable laptops at very reasonable price. Deals2Buy (http://www.deals2buy.com) had many Dell deals displayed regularly and I kept watching till Dell started shipping laptops with Vista.

I also compared different editions of Vista and found Business as the best one that suites me. Ultimate had extra features like bit encryption which I am not going to use any way.

On 2007 January 28, Dell site started displaying laptops with Vista. So I placed the order online from home. I chose the ‘Dell Inspiron E1405’, which was smaller and had RoadReady design. The Dell site offered choosing components and I picked the best available options in each section. But the next day when I discussed this with my colleague I noticed that I missed to notice the processor type. It was ‘Core Duo’ and not Core 2 Duo’. I called Dell immediately and requested for a change and the additional cost was just 50 dollars.


So here is the final specification:
Dell Inspiron E1405 Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5200 (1.6GHz / 2MB L2 Cache / 533MHz FSB), 14.1 inch wide screen LCD Panel, 2GB RAM and 120 GB Hard Disk, with Genuine Windows Vista Business. I have the complete details at http://wayfarer.bizhat.com/about/laptop1.html

On 2007 February 05, this laptop got delivered at my apartment here in Dallas and I immediately fell in love with that. I will write more about my usage experience later on.