Sharp VLA111U 8mm Viewcam with 3" Color LCD Screen

Sharp VLA111U 8mm Viewcam with 3

Sharp VLA111U 8mm Viewcam with 3" Color LCD Screen
Manufacturer: Sharp
Product Type: Photography

Editorial Review:
Product Description
This 3" Color LCD Screen Viewcam with 16x Optical Zoom is the most user friendly Viewcam. With full auto mode the user just has to point and shoot. Gamma Brightness Correction corrects for gradation in dark areas of an image to make an image brighter. Digital Picture Effects allows you to select from four digital picture effects to record the subject with a more dramatic effect.
Amazon.com Product Description
Sharp's unique camcorder design allows for optimal viewing while you are shooting or playing back video. The VL-A111U 8mm camcorder sports a large 3-inch LCD screen that can swivel 270 degrees independently of the actual lens for ease and flexibility of operation. Additional features include preset titling, fader, and digital picture effects such as black and white, sepia, solarizing, and negative.

Lens
The optical zoom has a power of 16x, letting you capture moments up close. The digital gamma control automatically corrects dark areas of an image to make the image brighter and clearer. There are four autoexposure settings you can use: sport, sunlight, dusk, and party. The 16:9 mode gives your video that special cinematic look by adding black bars to the top and bottom.

Inputs and Outputs
The standard RCA input-output and cable is included so you can hook the camcorder to a TV for convenient viewing or a VCR for dubbing to regular VHS.

Average customer rating: 2.0

interface poorly designed
Nice idea but disappointing
A Little Miracle
It isn't much

Lingo Euro 6 Electronic Language Translator

Manufacturer: Lingo Direct
Product Group: CE
Binding: Electronics
ASIN: B000059Z4L

Related Categories:

Foreign Language Translators

| Electronic Dictionaries, Thesauri & Translators | Office Electronics | Categories | Electronics

Amazon.com Product Description

Make European travel a breeze with the Lingo Euro 6-language electronic translator. The Euro stores 150,000 words, plus 3,000 useful phrases. Translate to and from English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.

This translator also features currency conversions, metric conversions, and local and world time. A calculator is also included, plus a data bank for storing names, telephone numbers, and memos. Entries are displayed on the 14-character dot-matrix LCD display with contrast control. The translator comes with one CR-2032 battery and a one-year warranty.

Customer Reviews:

interface poorly designed.......2004-04-09

I've used many electronic translators over the years. I bought this one as a fallback after Ectaco discontinued manufacturing reasonable one-language translators in its efforts to include too many languages in a single unit. This unit (the Lingo Euro 6 language translator) requires that you go through a time and date screen EVERY TIME you turn the unit on. It provides only a one-line display that produces only ONE word option per inquiry. It takes four (4) key strokes every time before you get to that one word (say, from English to French), and it takes five (5) key strokes to reset the translator EVERY TIME to translate a word going the opposite direction (say, from French to English). There are only 25,000 words per dictionary, which is fine if you want to translate "cat" and "dog," but the vocabulary is too rudimentary to translate anything more difficult, such as a foreign newspaper or exhibit descriptions at a museum. It is useless for translating words that have multiple meanings. No useage or context information is provided. There is so much emphasis on "Features" such as an alarm clock, a personal databank, a world time differential, a calculator, currency converter, metric-English measurements converter and so forth, that the unit thoroughly neglects its basic function: translation of foreign words in both directions. The keyboard interface is too cumbersome to use on a regular basis and the unit could best be described as a "toy" to play with, which probably accounts for its very low price.

Seven or eight years ago, you could easily buy reasonably-priced, useful one-language translators that contained lots of words and interpretive information. Franklin still makes an excellent English-Spanish translator with a huge vocabulary, verb conjugations and examples of use of the (proposed) foreign word in sentences. Ectaco once also manufactured a complete line of one-language translators jammed with lots of useful information, but they don't any longer, except for a speaks-English-only model that costs $400.00 and is designed primarily for Europeans wanting to speak English. The trend seems to be focused on jamming multiple languages into a single unit, with lots of extraneous non-essential marketing features, so that the translator becomes so cumbersome to use that it fails in its primary function. The other trend seems to be that new units are designed for foreign language speakers wanting to learn English, not for English speakers wanting to speak a foreign language. But whatever might be said of the current market of such devices, this particular unit is a toy designed for people who plan to see all of Western Europe in two weeks and who have no aspirations of actually communicating in the foreign language. A more language oriented traveler or business man would not find the Lingo Euro 6 a useful tool. A phrasebook or printed foreign language dictionary would be a far better choice.

Nice idea but disappointing.......2002-12-10

We used this on a recent trip to Europe. It's got about 6000 words per language which sounds like enough. However, they must have chosen a set based on common use rather than traveler use...we found almost no words on an Italian menu for example. Looking up a word requires: (1) turning it on (2) pressing translate (3) choosing the to and from language (4) selecting between word and phrase (5) typing some letters and scrolling to the word (6) pressing 'enter' -- enough steps that it really isn't faster than a phrase book or small dictionary. It has pre-formed phrases broken down by category. This sounds like a good idea but, in practice, you spend forever trying to figure out the correct category, scroll through the choices, then trying to guess another category. It also requires you to have a basic knowlege of verb forms as only the infinitives are provided and, if you do know what you are doing, it unfortunately doesn't provide gender of nouns (making it useless for students). On future trips, we're going back to pocket-sized phrase books/dictionaries.

A Little Miracle.......2001-10-30

I used the Lingo Euro 6 on my last trip to Europe and it was my little savior! It's small enough to fit into your shirt pocket, but large enough to feel comfortable while you type in your words. It translated beautifully and really helped me out when I needed it most!

It isn't much.......2001-06-19

Well, it isn't a Franklin product.

The problem with Lingo Euro 6 is its inability to identify a conjugated verb and then give you the infinitive. Another huge downside is that it doesn't conjugate verbs and has a much smaller vocabulary than the advertisment would have you believe.

As far as a tool to pick up the occasional word, it's fine. However, if you are studying any of those languages in-depth, you would be better off buying a 6 dollar dictionary.

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