wrong thread

I adore the flip for the kind of uses you're talking about. It's the kind of dead easy that makes video something you can just do rather than having it be a big (pardon the pun) production.

Note that if she wants to start getting creative, the software that comes on the flip sucks giant rocks is really only good for things like trimming the start and end points of your clips and saving/sending/posting to youtube. But the raw clips are right there in a folder, so it's easy-peasy to pull the clips off the camera and into something like Movie Maker or iMovie, if she wants to play that way.

The newer model (the Mino) has mics on both front and back, so it's better at picking up sound in front of the camera than it used to be, but you still pick up too much of your own breathing and such. The Mino is rechargeable, whereas the Ultra runs on AAs -- I prefer rechargeable, but I know some people would rather use batteries in order to be able to have a spare. YMMV on that one.

eta: note that I have not yet dropped one into a lake.

The newer model (the Mino) has mics on both front and back

Oh that's good to know. My next one will probably be a Mino.

Oh! I know a woman who put a camera mount on her motorcycle handlebars so she could cruise around Bike Week shooting the scene with her flip. Not that I'd recommend a bike at age 9... but it's a fairly rugged little machine, what with being all solid-state and such.

The flip website indicates that the Ultra has a front microphone as well.

Dude, this is apropos of nothing, but I went to install my gigabit ethernet pci card (not realizing it was pci express) in my old desktop and good heavens was there a lot of dust in it. I dumped it all out on my desk thinking I'd be able to easily clean it up later, but I am sneezing like mad now. So, lots of dust, no gigabit ethernet. Otoh, the desktop should run better now.

Gudanov, Cashmere was using a Flip at the Madison F2F, and it did pretty well.

My DVD player has been acting up -- skipping and pausing randomly. I tried the lens cleaner thing -- the disk with little brushes on the bottom -- and it seemed to fix it for about eight hours of playback, but then it started skipping again. I've tried running it again, and each time I run it, the DVD plays cleanly for less and less time -- it's now down to about five minutes. Any ideas for other things I could try, or is it time to just admit that it's broken and get a new DVD player?

I got my new MacBook Pro!

I named it “vanderrohe”, because it’s sleek and of metal and glass, but I’m not sure the name will stick.

My desk has two tower PCs on it, one LCD monitor, an 8.5x11 or so flatbed scanner, and a keyboard. And stuff I can't convince myself to move away.

I need a printer. Enough that I'm considering buying one when I have no income. There's no desk space for it, even when I finally move one of the towers. I don't want to put anything on the floor if I don't have to, because of the cable snarls and the dust issue.

Looking at the Office Max page omnis linked to, there are no just inkjet printers for sale from Brother. Which made me think about a flatbed MFC, so I could lose the scanner too. And it can't hurt to have fax capabilities...

Anyone have MFC recs? It's either that or a small photo inkjet printer. Which I'm off to go look for.