Daniel

Reviews

On this page we'll collect reviews and opinions on a variety of products and places.

Electronics	Places	Cars
Canon S30 Pioneer DV333 Pioneer VSX-709RDS Philips 32PW8504 Sanyo Z2	Peru	Volvo 480ES Volvo V70

Canon S30

I got the camera as a present in February 2002 and so far it has done a good job. All the pictures in the Photo section are taken with the S30, but the Peru pictures in the Travel section are taken with an older Sony Mavica.
Pros:

Relatively small

Very good picture quality

Possible to record short video clips

Waterproof housing available

Cons:

Front cover feels a little fragile

Poor sound quality on video clips

Pioneer DV333

This DVD player is highly recommended. For what it costs it work very well, picture quality and sound are excellent. The only drawback is the remote control.

Pioneer VSX-709RDS

The Pioneer receiver works fine. It has enough controls on the front and connection options on the back. As with the DVD player the only bad thing is the remote, it feels a little on the cheap side compared to the rest of the unit.

Philips 32PW8504

This is a Philips 100Hz wide screen TV. It performs well in 16/9 mode but in 4/3 the edges are not quite straight, and vary with colour and brightness of the picture. The sound quality and remote control are good.

Sanyo Z2

This is our Sanyo Z2 home theatre LCD projector. Its well known for bringing good value for your money. The picture is (for the money) excellent. We use it for watching movies and TV. It has high resolution (720x1280) and is very quite (24db). Other features include a very powerful optical lens shift function. The only problem we have experienced is slight blurriness at the lower edges of the picture when the lens shift feature is used to its extreme, which we do in order to get an appealing installation.

Peru

Is an excellent place to visit, highly recommended, check out the Peru travel account for details.

Volvo 480ES

Was our first car, which we loved and hated. An example of some of our woes:

One day I heard strange noises from the back of the car, like liquid in a large container. I though it must be the gas in the gas tank but I was wondering why I hadn't heard it before. But after a while it started getting louder so I decided to check. As it turned out the bucket like space for the spare tire was full of water. It had leaked through somewhere in the rear door. A gallon of silicone later I had found and fixed the leak.

The fan only worked intermittently, and as time went on it got worse. The problem seemed to be in the electronic control circuit because a good hard bang on the dashboard would usually start it up again, for a while. Finally I decided to take out the control box and try to find the problem. After re-soldering some of the components with a soldering-iron I refitted the control box, no affect. I then sat down and re-soldered all the components, success! It worked again!

Two weeks after I fixed the fan the car next to us caught on fire and our Volvo was totaled.

Despite all our difficulties we liked the car and mourned its demise. But some good came out of it, we used the insurance money as a down payment on our apartment.

Charm: Reliability:

Volvo V70

Our third Volvo after the 480 ES and the V40. The V70 is the best one so far. Very comfortable and roomy. Alexanders baby carriage fits easily in the back, we've even been 3 adults, 2 babies and 2 carriages in the car, that's pretty good. But I still can't help but dream of the XC90.

Pros:

Good ride and handling.

Capable motor. (170Hp)

Roomy.

Cons:

Mileage.