Reports by Consumers

Today we finally resolved the car seat issue. We went to le Carrousel du Parc which is a great store specializing in car seats and strollers. After speaking with the very friendly and knowledgeable lady, we ended up choosing a Britax Marathon, which is the best convertible car seat available in North America. So no more worrying about that - Kicky has a safe way to get home from the hospital now and we can travel without worrying about trying to borrow or rent a seat.

I have a very keen and sensitive sense of smell. It is genetic. As a child when my sister said something smelled like earwax, I knew exactly what she meant. We could describe people from church by saying. “You know who I am talking about. She smells like tissues and her husband smells like old cars and and mothballs.” “Oh, them!” Her daughter is carrying on the family nose, declaring the other day that she could not give her art project to the teacher because it smells like “old dust”.

The internet is about connecting individuals, businesses, governments and the key to its success has always been that it was developed on an open platform. Mobile devices and PDAs are now able to access the internet and regardless of whether you own an IBM compatible machine or a Macintosh computer, you are able to connect to the internet.

Specifically, MS previously had two version of Windows Mobile called "Mobile Smartphone Edition" and "Mobile Phone Edition". To clarify, the latter is the most fully featured version and includes a touch screen and the ability to create and edit Office documents. The former is the smaller footprint version that is designed for streamlined PDAs and examples of this include the Q and the Blackjack.

While I’d have a hard time saying I’m a fan of McDonald’s coffee, the new stuff they have is certainly much better than it used to be. It is definitely drinkable.

The FTC has released a rather massive set of statistics relating to fraud in their report; Consumer Fraud and Identity Theft Data January - December 2006. The section regarding Internet related fraud shows some marked increases compared to 2005.

Heather, I once worked in the fraud department of a major Aussie credit card bank. We saw 9 frauds a day and not one hit the news. On eBay 75,000 new people sign up every day. Sure there’s frauds but there’s steps you can take to reduce the risk too.

Second, all of your peripheral hardware (printers, scanners, PDAs, digital cameras, etc…) requires special software called “drivers” in order to work well with Windows. Many vendors simply have not released updated drivers for their products to work well with Vista. This will improve over time as vendors release those drivers for their current products.

I read that Maytag recalled 2.3 million dishwashers. Wow.

Everyone who has a backyard compost bin knows the problem: too many wet sloppy kitchen scraps makes for a methane-emitting, sludgy mess. Since methane is one of the worst of greenhouse gasses it can really take the edge of our self righteousness as composters. But where is the average inner suburban dweller to get the dry sawdust or leaves that most compost books advice should be added to the bin along with the mushy stuff?

As early as Monday, TV stations in Pittsburgh began running their consumer alert commercials. KDKA-TV took home a Pre-Sweeps Award for most gut-wrenching commercial as they reminded viewers that their consumer reporter, Yvonne Zanos, has done extensive research on so many household products. And let’s not forget that she’s helped viewers save money and get what they paid for!