I’ve been an Amazon Prime member for about 6 years. I’ve purchased some crap from Amazon over those years. But experience has taught me well. I’ve learned what to look for and what to avoid. I’m now skilled in the art of parsing Amazon reviews and avoiding shady sellers. This year I’ve purchased some truly great products and I thought I’d share them.1
300 lb Wheelbarrow | $166
This Rubbermaid wheelbarrow was so amazing that the 3-man delivery team that brought it to my door fawned all over it.
I purchased my Fujitsu ScanSnap 1550m from Amazon about 7 years ago. I’ve scanned thousands of pages, photos, business cards and receipts with it. In those 7 years I replaced the roller once. So, when ScanSnap announced the new ix500 model I knew it would be great.1
It didn’t take long for me to convince myself to upgrade. It required one single update to the software that enabled wireless scanning to my Mac.
I think David has pretty much sold me on upgrading my ScanSnap. Now if only there was a vibrant used ScanSnap market to sell my gently loved S510M.
Doug Engelbart made this review possible and probably made the personal computer a viable market.
The mouse has been around since the 60’s and I’ve used one since the 80’s. The mouse changed the way we interacted with computers and is still one of the strangest yet natural ways to interact with a GUI.1 I still prefer a good mouse to a track pad.
The Ground Rules Like a keyboard, mouse quality is subjective.
My current setup is a Retina Macbook Pro with 27" Thunderbolt display. While I love the extra headspace the Thrunderbolt display offers, the available ports on the back are kind of pathetic. There’s one FireWire 800 port and zero USB3 ports.
That’s why I jumped at the $300 Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock when it was introduced. I’ve now lived with mine for about 3 weeks so I feel comfortable writing a review.
The popSlate looks incredible. It almost seems too good to be true. It’s an iPhone case with an interactive E-Ink back. Take a picture and set the E-Ink on the back to display it.
By way of Mike Rundle
I live on the outskirts of the boonies. We lose power more than I care to recall so I’ve become familiar with finding my way through the house in near darkness. We’re clever enough to stash cheap flashlights around the house but I decided I wanted an “upgrade” to something that could be used to direct ships off shore.
I picked up my first Nitecore flashlight which are compact, incredibly bright and well regarded amongst photon lovers.
I guess this is part of my blogroll series, but there are a few folks that cost me a lot of money. These are people with opinions I trust that also like the kind of stuff I like. Be warned, if you follow them, you will likely spend more money than if you do not.
Rob Agcaoili
Shawn Blanc
Jeff Hunsberger
Eddie Smith
David Sparks
Brett Terpstra
Tools and Toys
Two new cases have found a place in the Macdrifter house: The Devicewear iPad Case and the Minisuit iPhone Clipster Case.1
The Devicewear iPad case is $37. That’s not terribly cheap but it has all the bases covered for my needs. The case is faux leather exterior with a soft velvet interior. It fits the iPad 3 nicely with all of the requisite cutouts. What makes it stand out is that it is a great rotating stand as well.
I constantly use a few of the hardware keys on my MacBook. The Volume, Play/Pause and Mission Control are developing some serious wear marks. But I never use the rest. This means I have to be annoyed by a modifier key if I want to use the F-keys for anything else.1 There’s an easy solution to this problem.
I set the keyboard preference to use standard F-keys instead of hardware controls.
