Musings of an Entrepreneur

                                                 

After my last digital camera met its untimely demise by falling in water, I started looking for a new digital camera. I have historically been a fan of the Canon Digital Elph series (Canon SDxxx) as they are extremely compact (around 5 ounces) and take beautiful pictures automatically with essentially no need to meddle with settings. However, I found repeatedly found myself frustrated by the limited zoom (around 3-4x optical depending on the camera) and the inability to zoom in videos.

My objective was to find a point-and-shoot camera that had a much better optical zoom, was easy to take pictures with and remained light. With such requirements, the range of cameras to look at was rather limited and Panasonic TZ5 rapidly rose to the top of the list. It’s a $240, 9 megapixel digital camera with a 10x optical zoom and a 3” LCD weighing slightly over 7 ounces. As I was about to buy it, Panasonic released the ZS3.

The ZS3 is essentially the next version of the TZ5. It’s a $400, 10 megapixel digital camera with a 12x optical zoom and a 3” LCD weighing 7.2 ounces. The camera is the best compact digital camera I ever used! The 12x zoom is unparalleled in a compact digital camera and works wonders. The optical image stabilization works extremely well whether you are zoomed in or not. You can even take effective pictures while walking. The automatic context detection setting automatically and intelligently figures out the context of your pictures – sceneries, low light, etc. – and adjusts accordingly. Picture quality is great. Video quality is also amazing – the best I have on a compact digital camera. Videos are taken in 720p in AVCHD and also have great sound quality. You can even zoom in and out while taking videos.

Note that you can easily convert AVCHD to AVI or other formats using Handbrake. You can also play back AVCHD in Windows Media Player by installing ffdshow then Haali Media Splitter.

If you are not price sensitive, this is the camera to get! Alternatively, for $160 less you can get the Panasonic TZ5. If you value size and weight over zoom, the best compact digital camera is the $240 Samsung SL820. It’s a 5.5 ounce, 12 megapixel digital camera with a 5x optical zoom, a 3” LCD and 720p video support.

The Panasonic ZS3 is the camera for me, but you can’t go wrong with any of these 3 choices. Enjoy!

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I am posting this from 30,000 above ground level thanks to Gogo Inflight available on select American Airlines, Virgin America and Delta flights (I am currently on American).

It’s $12.95 for the entire flight (and I got an extra 20% discount with a coupon from Gogo at the boarding of the flight). The connection has been very stable, disconnecting briefly only once during turbulence. I downloaded over 100Mb worth of files at a sustained 80kbs with peaks of 120kpbs.

I can’t wait for the service to be available on all flights!

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As both a movie buff and an avid gamer, I have both an Xbox 360 and a Netflix account. The November 19 revamp of Xbox Live brought Netflix “Watch Now” to the Xbox 360 and I love it!

There is no beating the instant gratification of watching TV show episodes one after the other. I took advantage of the opportunity to watch most of Season 1 of Jericho and Heroes in 2 days!

I had fears the video quality would be low, but it’s actually very good, even on a 58” screen.

Now they just need to expand the library to include all their movies and the service would be fantastic. To truly satisfy the road warrior in me, they should also allow me to watch movies from anywhere in the world on my laptop (after all, I have a US billing address). I would be willing to pay more for those two features – say $19.99 / month.

In fact if they did that, they would no longer need to ship DVDs, I would be satisfied by the Video on Demand (VOD) service.

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I have had a 17” MacBook Pro for nearly 2 years and it’s starting to show its age. Its Nvidia 8600M graphic card is not keeping up with new games. Outlook takes forever to load (I have 20Gb of PST files). The casing is all bruised up after 2 years of traveling with me every day and being dropped more than a few times.

Unfortunately, the MacBook Pro refresh announced on Tuesday was a huge disappointment:

• Apple did not update the 17” version!
• The 15” Macbook Pro has an Nvidia 9600M, I was hoping for a 9800M
• The 128Gb SSD does not seem faster or to increase battery life relative to the hard drive options

Unfortunately there are no other 17” on the market that weigh 6.5 pounds so I am stuck with my notebook for a while.

I hope they update it for MacWorld in January!

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We were evaluating webcams for doing video conferences over Skype between the OLX New York & Argentina offices and selected those two.

They are 2 Megapixel, they work well in varying lighting conditions, the quality is great and they both cost around $100.

Buy the Pro 9000 if you have a screen or TV to place it on top of. Buy the Orbit AF if you are placing it on a desk and/or want the motorized tracking feature.

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I was having difficulty connecting to games both on the Xbox 360 and with my PC, but ever since I switched to the DGL 4500 and 4300, it’s been working extremely well.

I bought them at CircuitCity.com – respectively for $179 and $114.

Note that I had to upgrade the firmware on the DGL 4500 from 1.00 to 1.02 to solve an intermittent router reboot problem, so if you are not technically inclined, don’t need 802.11n or a very long range, you are probably better off with the 4300.

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I just bought a Dell XPS 420 with a 512Mb Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT, a 3.0 Ghz Core 2 Duo and 3Gb of DDR2 SDRAM at 800Mhz for $1,249 and it’s a phenomenal machine for the price. I hooked it up to my Dell 24” widescreen monitor and Company of Heroes runs flawlessly in 1920*1200 in full high resolution mode.

Highly recommended for price sensitive gamers everywhere!

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As many of you know, I have been a fan of the Xbox 360 for some time (see Report from the video game wars and Great game setup), but last week I bought a PS3!

With the recent price cut, the $399 40 Gb PS3 is an amazing deal. For $399 you get a Blu-ray player, built in wifi and free online playing. The equivalent would actually be more expensive on the Xbox – it’s $94 for the wifi connector, $179 for the HD-DVD player (not to mention it’s not as nicely integrated) and $59.99 per year for Xbox Live Gold.

Out of the box the PS3 looks good, there is no power adapter – it’s built into the console which is a huge improvement on the humongous power adapter of the Xbox 360 – and it’s quieter than the Xbox 360. On the negative side, the first thing it does is download a patch which takes forever to download and install. Once that was done, it ran smoothly. As a cinephile, I love the Blu-ray player which nicely complements the HD DVD player I already have for all the movies that are not available in both formats.

All that said, I only bought the PS3 because it finally has a game I really wanted to play: Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. It’s a third person adventure/action game which is probably best described as “Indiana Jones meets Gears of War.” It’s single player only with no coop, but it’s tons of fun.

Unfortunately for Sony, Drake’s Fortune is the only exclusive PS3 game I truly wanted to play. The Xbox 360 still has many more great exclusive games: Gears of War, Halo 3, Bioshock, Mass Effect. Most of the games available on both consoles come out first on the Xbox such as Oblivion IV and The Orange Box. Finally, with multiplayer working better on the Xbox and as more of my friends have Xboxes, I buy the multiplayer games available on both, such as Call of Duty 4, only on the Xbox 360.

Conclusion:

The Xbox 360 is still the better console for most hard core gamers with a stronger line up of games and a cheaper entry price. However, with the new lower price point and new games, Sony is finally back in the race.

It’s going to be interesting to watch the battle over the next few years. The competition can only be good for gamers. At the very least, I hope Microsoft will embed wifi in the console and drop the Xbox live fee.

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As the holidays are approaching, I am compelled to offer a few gift ideas :)

I had never flown a remote controlled helicopter before. The Esky LAMA comes pre-built and ready to fly out of the box. It’s fun, stable, easy to learn to fly and incredibly cheap at $69!

You can buy it at:
http://www.hobby-estore.com/esky-lama-2-rc-helicopter.html

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As it is clearly unbearable to have to split the screen with friends for games of Halo, Call of Duty and Gears of War, I decided to install 3 plasma TVs side by side in my bedroom, each with its own Xbox 360 :)

As part of the process, I extensively researched all of the TV options on the market. The Samsung FP-T5884 provides by far the best price/performance ratio on the market: 58” screen, 1080p, 1920*1080 resolution, 3 HDMI slots and a 15,000:1 contrast ratio for $3,100 including shipping!

I also bought a 63” Samsung FP-T6374 to join the 50” Panasonic I already had. I bought the two Samsungs from LCDTVs.com. I highly recommend them: the price is low, they are friendly, and the TV was delivered 2 days after I ordered it with free shipping!

Most importantly, the gaming experience is gaming to none!

Non sequitur: I hope Call of Duty 4 is going to be great (it’s coming out today)!

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