And the “Most Superfluous Message” Oscar goes to …

I won’t tell you where I saw this, but I will tell you that it confirms my suspicions about the level of critical thinking that many people put into their software …

Define necessary … sheesh …

Shame on Lexar for a Horrible Product

I needed a thumb drive quickly a few nights ago to bring some movies to a friend who is ill. So I popped out to WalMart (open past 10, so they win) and scanned all the offerings. It had to be USB 3.0 at least, and it had to be reasonably priced for the size. I found a Lexar USB 3.0 64GB for $38cad, which I considered acceptable.

I cracked the package and plugged it into my USB 3.0 hub, finding it disconcerting how flimsy the plastic business end felt. In fact, the whole thing felt flimsy, with unsatisfying action when extending and retracting the plug, and with it weighing essentially nothing. This is not a good thing with electronics, and it usually indicates minimal structural integrity. It really feels like one of those knock offs you find in a dollar store rather than a fairly expensive product from a well-known brand like Lexar.

So I soldiered on and copy the files over. One of the reasons I bought this particular model was the claim of up to 150MB/s read speeds, and it did pretty well in my tests.

 

That’s not bad at all. For a comparison, I checked the speed on a 32GB ADATA unit that feels like a high end thumb drive with high quality plastics and some weight, and of course a metal plug.

Note the marked difference in how the tabs stick up in the quality drive. So how does the cheaper, but much nicer drive fair in the same test?

The performance falls short, but that may very well have to do with the capacity of the drive, since higher capacity drives are typically able to stripe their writes (write in parallel since they might have twice as many raw chips), which makes a huge difference in sustained speeds. But the ergonomics are so much better that I would easily make such a trade.

Getting back to the story …

The drive feels terrible in hand, and plugging it in is universally scary since it feels like it is going to break every single time. The plastic lock that holds it extended is extremely weak, allowing it to pop shut at any resistance, so this is not the drive for awkward spaces, like behind a TV.

And speaking of TVs … the ultimate test was plugging it into my friend’s TV, which failed miserably. It kept popping the lock and so I eventually had to hold it tightly with thumb and forefinger to get it into the slot. It flashed once, but never registered as a thumb drive. We tried it several times, and tried another drive that came up instantly. So it definitely was incompatible with her TV.

So we tried a Bluray player and a DVD player, each of which had a USB plug on the front. None of them could recognize the drive. We gave up at that point.

At home, I checked it on a laptop and back on the same switch that wrote the files, and it was recognized both times.

Once wonders what sort of compatibility testing Lexar did for this cheap piece of crap?

It’s going back today, obviously …

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p.s. It is entirely possible that this design was commissioned by WalMart specifically.

If so, shame on Lexar for going along with it, and of course for the obvious lack of compatibility testing.

Published again in the Ottawa Citizen Newspaper

Get yours this Thursday to see all that is happening in Ottawa this weekend and for the next while. This is an image taken on rural roads near the suburb I live in.

A lovely day that was.

And once again I have to thank Robbi Hay, editor the Ourtown section of the Citizen, for using my work.

Panasonic loses mind?

Panasonic has the best game in town for lovers of dSLR styled mirrorless bodies. The G5 was amazing, as was the G6. But Panasonic really stepped up the game with the G7, giving us 80% of what we wanted, but most importantly cranking up the image quality with the newer sensor.

And then came the GX85 and G85 and our minds were partially blown. But the prices started to get crazy too.

I purchased the G5 and G6 kits for around 600 to 700 cad. This was considered a bargain and everyone knew that they were punching above their cost.

The GX85 was kind of expensive at 900, but the camera is a gem and I still have that one, with all the rest sold off in my trip back to dSLR land.

The G85 really annoyed me because it came out not long after I got my G7 and I felt like an idiot

I ended up preferring the GX85 over the G7 by a country mile and that was that.

However, the G85 costs around 1200, double what the G5 and G6 were costing in their day. So I never bothered, since the GX85 is still terrific and it is very compact. The D7200 and D600 fill my needs when I want to do serious photography, and I paid 2/3 of the cost of a new G85 for each of those dSLRs, with both crushing the G85 in low light.

And now comes the G9 … everything that the GH5 was for stills, and even more brilliance. Apparently the viewfinder is the true OVF replacement. And I’m sure that there are many more wonderful features (how does 20fps at full size grab you?)

Yet the cost has again more than doubled and I am finally over my love of the Panasonic bodies. I just don’t care any more, as they are gouging now.

C’est la vie I suppose …