no dice

It seems that Best Buy is getting rid of the Panasonic Lumix FS3. They were sold out of it last week from what the salesperson said, but still advertising it for their pre-new years sale.

Chances are it's clearance which probably means it's going to be discontinued soon. It might be possible to find a Casio Exlim or the Panasonic somewhere else for comparable price but so far I've only seen refurbished versions available.

Back to the drawingboard!

New Camera in sight

Best buy has a sale going on the Panasonic Lumix fS3 at 109. It looks like it has all the basic features that I want, and all the features (resolution, zoom etc) of the Canon SD550 that it's replacing.

It has 3x zoom, 8mb (vs 7.1 on canon), video mode, flash sync, 2.8f, movie mode. I'm going to bestbuy later to take a look at it.

New digital camera

Need to get a new digital camera, not sure if I can wait for a decent camera phone to come out that has all the other features that I like (huge memory for music), decent organizer/calender, keyboard etc.

Because of the issues I've had with the Canon line where the lenses tend to fail somehow and won't extend/retract correctly, I've been considering other cameras such as the Olympus Stylus 1050SW (water proof and shockproof) or the Sony DSC-500 or the DSC-700. Issues with the Olympus is that it uses a different card storage technology than the ones I've used in the past (CF/SD) and the Sony uses a proprietary one, the memory stick.

Also those cameras have dumbed down controls, but the lens zoom mechanism is built into the camera. Maybe I should consider the Nikon S60 which has an encased zoom lense mechanism and uses sd cards.

Course I could go with the canon 1100is which is about 150, decisions decisions.

Nokia 97

Now this is a phone that is interesting. Much more so than the G1 or maybe the iPhone. Why? because it has a bit of memory (I do have a lot of music), a flash (though the iPhone seems to take decent pictures) and a high res camera, keyboard (though it does look funny).

Features that are common with all
a-GPS, digital camera (3.2 m on g1, 2m on iphone, 5.2m on n97), video camera (not on iPhone), keyboard (physical on g1, n97, virtual on iPhone), maps (nokia maps on n97, google maps on g1, iPhone)

Drawbacks that I can see so far is that it probably won't be subsidized in the US making it a hefty investment (at 600-700) compared to the 200 or so with the G1 and the iPhone.

Also developers have to make new gadgets for the symbian operating system. I wonder if the symbian is going to be a viable os since nokia has bought it, and I don't believe anyone else is developing phones for it besides Nokia.