Reviews by rin

rin says "Great when it works." about Bissell Healthy Home Vacuum

rin — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 22:04:31 GMT

I bought this Bissell Healthy Home vacuum a few months ago after reading recommendation comparing it to a dyson. Some complained it was heavy but I don't have a large space so it's not hard to move it around. It does an amazing job at sucking up the dirt. However shortly after using it, it wouldn't start again. I wasn't sure if it over heated or what the issue was. My brother managed to get it working later. It seems the hose wasn't on properly. My sisters and I tested it several times and it seemed like it was fitting properly. Well, it's a great vacuum if you can get it to work. But I had a hard time trying to put the hose back the into exact proper place to get it working....

rin says "Good bandwidth and connection with fibre optics" about Telus

rin — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:00:02 GMT

I'm using telus in Toronto (Ontario, Canada) with fibre optics connection at home and the connection is very good. It's always up. So far I've used it for almost 4 months and the only glitches are with the isp change so I need to reboot my router every few weeks. The bandwidth is very fast depending. They advertise 100mbps transfer rates but so far I haven't hit that high. Maybe because it has to be local network transfer. My home computers are not shared so I haven't tested. But download speeds have been as high as 600-800kps and upload speeds max at 500-550kps. There's also no bandwidth limit usage unlike some of the ISPs currently implementing.

The wait time at tech support isn't too long either depending on the time you call. It's best to call at night. After using fibre optics, it would be hard to go back to cable or dsl speeds.

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rin says "Good camera with great zoom and image stabilization" about Canon - PowerShot S3 IS Digital Camera

rin — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 06:11:38 GMT

I bought this camera for almost a year. It's pretty good. I've compared it with a few other cameras (panasonic 32x zoom and sony 25x zoom) and the zoom on Canon seems to be the best although it takes awhile for the zoom to focus. It requires a steady hand, but image stabilization is a plus. The Panasonic zoom turns blurry after around 10-20x and no matter how long you hold, the image won't become clear. Sony is clear up to around 12x or so

I've owned an old Canon SD300 from years back, however I seldom use it because the images are usually blurry when I take photos and the lighting is bad. S3 made most of my photos clear, but it takes a few seconds/minutes to focus at times depending how much zoom is used. And even night photos don't come out too bad. I highly recommend it for those who are looking for a camera with a large zoom size and clear photos (image stabilization). However night photos are a bit grainy.

I think maybe a Nikon would be my next purchase because it's hard to take motion......

rin says "Too political and boring compared to previous books" about Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

rin — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 06:04:29 GMT

I quite enjoyed the previous Harry Potter books and I usually finish a book within a few days to a week. However Order of the Pheonix took me over a month to finish it and not because it's thick. I found the story too dark and political. I came across a fanfic online which was more interesting than the original book. I haven't read the last book yet, however out of all the other books, this seems to be the most boring one so far.

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rin says "Great compact player. Very affordable" about Philips DVD Player

rin — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 06:00:06 GMT

I bought this DVD player 4 years ago and it still plays. However I guess it's getting a bit old so it takes a bit longer to load. However it plays almost anything I put in there. However with all the new codecs and features, buying a newer DVD player might be a better idea. For those who watch movies with subtitle and want HD quality video playback, you might want to try Pioneer DV-400 or Oppo DV980H. If you want something cheaper there's Philips 5962 which has usb feature.

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rin says "very irritating to use and time consuming" about Apple - iPod Video White (30 GB) Media Player

rin — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 05:50:58 GMT

I got this for free with a bank promotion. I'm not much of an ipod fan, but I wanted to give it a try since it was free. After trying it, I really find more reason to dislike ipods. I installed itunes and loaded in music. However some music I loaded in was from my external drive. So when I turned on itunes and plug in my ipod to add more songs without having my external drive connected, it couldn't detect my song in the ipod. Fine I can live with that.

Then I tried out the video feature. I had to convert them to mp4. I converted 60 of my tutorial files into mp4 from wmv with all the same settings. It loaded fine into itunes and plays, however when I try to transfer it to my ipod, only 1 video got transferred. The others wouldn't transfer and I have no idea why.

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rin says "Great hard drive. I highly recommend it" about Seagate FreeAgent Desktop 500 GB USB External Hard Drive

rin — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 05:44:12 GMT

I've owned this product for over a year and don't have any problems with it so far. It also comes with a 5 year warranty so I'm safe if it does crash. The drive is pretty quiet and the price is affordable.

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