Julianna Yau’s blog

Because I need to feed the geek in me.

 

SecondRotation for Your Electronic Crap

Disclaimer: this isn’t a paid post, although I am happy to be reimbursed by after the fact…

For the past year, I have been trying to sell my first-generation Nomad Jukebox Zen. Because it uses a hard drive (instead of flash memory) and is considered humongous by today’s standards (it’s about the size of a Walkman), no one would take it from me.

Through one of the 20+ blogs to which I’m subscribed, I discovered SecondRotation. I must admit I was skeptical about it at first, mainly because it seemed too good to be true. It was offering me $50US for the Zen, which was more than I expected to get from it (after posting it with no responses on Kijiji and Craigslist over several months). Subtract the$13 I paid for shipping, and it’s still a good deal.

After going through their price estimate system (which was very straightforward) and selecting my payment option (cheque or PayPal; I opted for PayPal), I printed a shipping label and received an auto-confirmation by email.

The confirmation email had a very puzzling “Expires On” date, which was five calendar days from the issue date.  I didn’t expect the package to be delivered to them by the expiration date, but sent it anyway. I also contacted SecondRotation through their website to ask about the expiration date, but have yet to hear anything back from them. That was the only blip in the communication process.

I received an email about a-week-and-a-half later, indicating that they had received the Zen and would be inspecting it to ensure it matches the description I provided. Oddly enough, the tracking number from Canada Post still doesn’t reflect that the package has been delivered.

Twenty minutes later, I received an email from SecondRotation saying that they had completed the inspection and would be issuing my money in 5-10 business days. That was on a Friday.

The following Thursday, I received two emais from SecondRotation, notifying me that they had sent the money to my PayPal account. I logged into PayPal, and confirmed the money was received.

Total time elapsed: 2-and-a-half weeks, including a 1-and-a-half week shipment time across the border.

Aside from the absence of free shipping for Canada, their main caveat is they aren’t accepting everything yet. I have a basic Creative webcam I want to unload, and although they accept Creative webcams, they don’t accept the model I have. They also accept many cell phone models, but seemingly only models sold in the US.

Now if only they would take my laserdisc player.

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Filed under : internet, technology
By Julianna Yau
On March 8, 2008
At 12:43 pm
Comments : 2
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First impressions of the Canon A720 IS

I received my new camera today yesterday and am both glad and sorry I waited so long to buy a new one. Although the price of a good digital camera has finally dropped into my price range, the difference between my new and old camera is astounding.

My old camera is the Pentax Optio LF33. Although it’s quite sufficient for snapshots, I have needed to do all sorts of extra things in the setup of my photos to get decent pictures of my sculptures. I can’t believe how much time I wasted to make up for the camera’s shortcomings.

The A720 passes my intuitive-use test, which basically involves me snubbing the manual (at least until I need to learn the more advanced features, and figure out what that button under the lens does). I did, however, need to pull it out of the box to figure out which way the batteries should be inserted. It wasn’t until later that I noticed the battery icons which were inside the casing, and further down than I expected. The icons were not visible from all angles when looking into the battery compartment.

Opening the cover for the batteries and SD card was quite easy…the first time. The second time, I couldn’t remember how I did it and had that squinty, furrowed eyebrow face while I wondered what I did the first time.

The test picture of one of my sculptures turned out very well, considering it was a “candid” shot rather than one setup against a backdrop and with more controlled light:

Test photo - Alabaster Sculpture

This is much better than the “candid” photos using the Pentax Optio (no flash on left; with flash on right) with equivalent manual settings:

Test photo - No flash Test photo - with flash

The video feature was a bit frustrating because I initially thought the audio was…well, crap. It turns out that you get static in the background of videos shot with the A720 in some players. It seems Kaffeine (the default player for my installation of OpenSUSE) is one of those players. The video was fine in other players, and I need to figure out how to add a watermark to my videos.

The only thing I miss is having a swivel-display. The Pentax Optio had a display which would fold and twist in many ways.

The A720 has an exposed display, so I’m a bit paranoid about using it before my magical screen skin arrives in the mail. I need to learn to order those at the same time I order new gadgets, because I’m one of those crazy people who are terrified of scratching displays/screens.

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Filed under : reviews, technology
By Julianna Yau
On January 10, 2008
At 6:04 am
Comments :1
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