Some good points some bad points
592597
We have had two of this bottles for about 2 years now. Both are THERMOS brand but they are different designs. One is a Funtainer and came on its own (bought it in-store at Target), the Hello Kitty design. The lid and straw part has held up well, but the bottom part (plastic) shattered during the first week of use (what kind of kid does NOT drop things!) and has been superglued, taped etc many times.
The second one is a FooGo and came in rigid plastic wrapping, also bought at Target. This one does not have the issue of the Funtainer with the fragile bottom, but instead, the straw has been split in half for a while now. What is worse is that the straw insert is not made of 2 but 3 pieces, an absolutely bad design because you have to take all the pieces apart to wash and then put them togheter for use again, if you don't take all the pieces apart, you risk having soap in betweek the 2 big pieces or water that will never dry up because is caught in between the 2 tight surfaces.
If Thermos could only combine the 2 designs and make one with a good 2 piece-only straw and a more flexible plastic bottom then it would justify to pay $20 for a water bottle. Until then I will keep shopping for something that makes for sense and is durable as well.
On the good side, both bottle keep water very cold (I add ice in the morning before school) for several hours and we have not had any leaking issues when the lids are closed. It is easy to close the lids properly compared to other Contigo bottles (bpa free plastic) that I bought at Costco and are a leaking nightmare if not perfectly aligned and closed properly.
3963466
Design is overall good. Here are some critiques though:

1. Audio jack hardly fits with THREE of my earphones/headphones. Will try with others, but this is a major issue. My audio will disconnect very, very frequently.

2. the alignment of the front camera and the case are... unsatisfactory.
3643236
This book is difficult to assess as my review will show. It has some good points and some bad points. With prudent use it may well be worth getting.

Mismatch between photo and text.
The problem is the text below the photo didn't seem to have much to do with the photos in a number of cases.
Below a picture of 2 stallions fighting we are told that there are 3 Zebra species. Yes but what has this to do with the picture.

 There is a picture of a Zebra about almost up to the top of his front legs in water-- comment--Male zebra can be quite vicious. What is the connection and what is the context. Yes they can be vicious, especially when they fight to win a female, or when fighting off predators-- her brief comment I think is unfair and a half truth.

After birth, Zebra Foals and mother's spend time apart from other Zebra for the Foal to learn it's mother's stripe pattern-- true ( I am paraphrasing)
Photo.  Mare, foal and probably station at full gallop. This not the time the strip pattern is learned-- they need to be relatively still.
This fact is repeated later in the book with a somewhat puzzling photo

Another is of 2 stallions fighting, one upright, the other on its feet on the ground -- comment Zebra can live for 25-30 years in the wild ( not the comment I would have made for the photo.  Yes Zebra do live that long.
One could mention other mismatches of photo and information.
Personally I think there should be a reasonable connection between the photo and the facts. Yes it can be hard to get the right one-- but in this book there seems to be a big gap between the photos and the facts.

One obvious typo was that Zebra eat Brass

If you just read the captions much of the data is correct-- sometimes it could be better stated. Other times it gives the wrong impression,
My oersonal opinion is that there is to much mismatch between the photos and the captions for this to be a good book for children.
others may think I have been to harsh on the author

Violent images
If you have young children you may wish to avoid it. There are several images of stallions fighting-- the text doesn't tell you that, but I suspect some young children will guess that there is conflict between the two Zebra. If this is of concern to you, then this is another reason to avoid this book.

One reviewer-- A Prudent mom
Her comment was the author described a zebra " as a horse in drag- "- despite reading the book several times I found NO EVIDENCE for this statement.

The photos
Personally I liked the photos and was glad to have them.. For me the book was value for money for the photos.
It also had a photo of the now extinct Quagga Zebra ( there is some talk that selective breeding may bring it back. For me it was a pleasure to see the photo)

Using the photos as a source for a short story for your child.
If you read the book to you child , you may also use it as a source for a number of short stories. A number of the photos can be the source to build your story around-- like a mother with her foal, or a  zebra zigzagging as it runs , or zebra drinking, or of a Zebra family. There is plenty of potential here.you may tell the short to your child, if they are a bit older you may take turns adding details to the story.
You can decide at what age to talk about the photos with zebra fighting.
Most photos are good or very good and upscale well on my IPad Kindle Reader.

In the end you have to decide what you want out of the book. In this case you really do need to read the book to your child, and if they are young decide what images are best avoided till they are a bit older.
1318856
After extensive review of lower end gps units with text to speech capability, I purchased this unit.  I returned the unit less than one week later after extensive testing in locations I knew well.

It has numerous good points, a few are clear and loud voice, good visibility screen, adjustable voice from main screen, good window mount, prompt return email from customer service, maps remarkably tracked what were basically gravel trails and logging roads near and just off of the North Shore Drive of Minnesota, auto change to night mode on screen, ability to drag the map from the screen to see what's ahead in each direction without zooming out, favorites for locations.

A negative was the POI's were not available for stops that were present in the location of interest, ie, coffee shop in the area wouldn't show up even though there was one in the area.  Though that's not what I purchased the unit for.

I obviously did purchase the unit for directions.  That's where it repeatedly failed, regardless of which of the four options were chosen, fastest route, shortest route, etc.  The unit failed most every time I used the device for navigation.  It continually chose indirect, more time consuming and undesirable routes to destinations.  I wanted to keep the unit.  However, it's a somewhat expensive gps purchase not to be able to use the navigation feature.  Maybe the 1412 would perform better in other areas of the country?
3515262
Some fresh ideas, and overall well written - let down by a few weak points in plot that could have been avoided.
3497778
On the positive side, Landon does a thorough job of exploring and presenting different ways to effectively write long sentences. But that's pretty much where the positive ends, and I have several major problems with this course:

1. I strongly disagree with Landon's premise that a focus on sentences is the key to efffective writing. In fact, I think he has it altogether backwards. It seems to me that any decent writer will first think about the overall messages of a document, will next work on structuring the document (chapters, sections, paragraphs, etc.), and will finally work on construction of sentences as the last step. And I think that good readers will approach reading the same way (distilling out ideas and arguments, not specific phrasings).

2. I also disagree with Landon's premise that longer sentences are generally to be preferred. The writing which I consider effective has a balanced mix of shorter and longer sentences. And I think that longer sentences are generally out of place in business and technical writing, so Landon fails to recognize that ideal sentence length depends on context, and his advice is often bad advice outside the context of writing fiction.

3. Landon doesn't seem to realize that the period at the end of the sentence is meant to give the reader the opportunity to pause and absorb what has been written to that point. Creating longer cumulative sentences by heaping on more and more content can put too much demand on the reader, to the point of being counterproductive. The richness that Landon seeks can often be achieved by using shorter sentences which flow well from one to the next. You don't have to do it all in one sentence -- ever heard of something called a paragraph?

4. The course is simply too long. Landon gives too many examples, has too much repetition, and spends too much time on ideas which are fairly obvious. In many cases, the content of two or three or even four lectures could easily have been combined into one lecture. Landon overexplains to an extent which makes the course very tedious, and I was in pain by around Lecture 8.

5. Given that writing is essentially an art (not a science), I find Landon's approach much too technical, with excessive use of arcane terminology. He has a gift for taking the fun out of writing. And I just don't see the need for all of this analysis -- do the best writers really take this sort of highly technical approach? I doubt it. I think the key to becoming a better writer is noticing and emulating the good writing of others, combined with lots of deliberate practice. Writing teachers may need to come up with this stuff to have something to 'teach', but that doesn't mean it's something students should 'learn'.

Landon begins to address some of my objections in the last two lectures, but it's a case of too little, too late. Moreover, the course should have been 12 lectures rather than 24, so a longer course isn't what was needed.

Considering all of these objections, I can give this course only 2 stars, and I can recommend it only to the (probably small) fraction of people who want to spend a lot of time looking (too) closely at different ways of writing long sentences. For everyone else, I think Landon's advice could be more harmful than helpful.
4234780
Maybe idealism just annoys me a little, but it had good points, which I agree with in general.  Good parts but definitely tends toward glossing things a little.
1032272
This phone set looks stylish and is pretty good as a concept. However, there are a few issues which the phone / handset has
1. Its buttons are not push buttons but click buttons like on a moto rokr. Makes it a pain to dial numbers.
2. The address book capacity is good but storing numbers in the address book is a chore. There should have been a way to sync those between the handsets and a PC
3. The battery life on these handsets was very bad with the original batteries which came along with the phone. It improved a lot once I replaced the batteries.
4. These phones are very conducive to damage due to dampness. One of the handset acts quirky during thunderstorms if I leave the windows open. I have also faced problems with that handset if I leave it next to the humidifier in winter. The other handset works fine.
3502112
There are some pros and cons. First positive:
- The design is beautiful, I liked the sound knob and the clock screen.
- It has FM radio with good tuning. It integrates many things together.
- Sound quality is good and it is really loud.
- Speaker phone is convenient and performs well.

The negative:
- The sound is loud but not very rich and high quality. I compared it with a sound bar without sub-woofer of the same price, the sound bar had only 5 watts output power while this iHome is 16 watts. The sound bar was much better and it only lacks the radio comparing to this product that I could use my cell phone to send the radio on it, and the size was fit to my desk so I chose the sound bar.
- The screen has only two brightness levels, dim and bright. Both of them was interacting my sleep and I had to put something in front of the screen to prevent the light.
- The usb charging power is a little low. When I use my cell phone with wifi and bluetooth being on it takes very long to charge it.
- It does not have a remote. Although if you use a cell phone you don't need a remote.
2827116
I do enjoy a lot of features of this clock, however there are a few things that I would change.

The things I enjoy are how small and lightweight this is. It's great especially when you consider you can eliminate a bedside lamp and use the light from this.

The biggest issues for me as follows:

The snooze is really hard to turn on. It says to tap the top gentle but I pretty much have to karate chop it for it to stop. I wish they had instead put a button, which would be a lot easier.

You can't adjust the alarm at all. Personally I think it comes on way too soon, and the actual noise is really unpleasant. I wish that there was an option to disable it or change the volume/tone.

I understand some of these features might be better on a higher upgraded model, but I really wish that I had known how quickly the noise comes on before I purchased it. I would have preferred to have light only.

Otherwise I do really enjoy having the light to way up to, especially on dark winter days.
1765935
It is great. But has few things i don't like.
1. Its a big annoying to change position. Takes a lot of time
2. Makes a lot of noise and people from the library almost slap me.
3. A bit unstable in bed
1542684
There are many good aspects to this book.  There are portions of it that are well-worth quoting.  But there are negative aspects as well.  The author's "examples" of how the angels have helped (or not helped him) are so generalized I have trouble relating to them.  One particularly poor example regarded the Angel of Materiality and Temptation. His example sounded like a case of "hindsight is 20/20", not that he was being tempted by this Angel.  Too much of this book is generalized like that for my liking.  However, as I said initially, there are many quotable nuggets in the book.
3515856
The basic Idea is very good. However, there are two problems with the product. First, to change the FM station it uses, you need to stop what you are playing and 'play' a short 'song' that is encoded with the right frequency. I found that to be a bad design. Second, the quality (or strength) of the transmition is poor in some cases.
1374247
The good and the bad. It has decent battery life and the sound quality on both ends is good. I've never had a need to use the secondary earpiece, so no opinion of that. Now for the bad  The eargel rotates on the earpiece and this makes it very difficult to tell the orientation of the answer, play, plus and minus buttons when it is in your ear. To help with orientation, I took a simple fingernail file and filed a small notch at the answer button. The last item is the biggest, it constantly disconnects from my phone and this happens with different phones. If I go out of range of the phone, the headpiece has a hard time automatically reconnecting when I am back in range. Also it frequently loses Bluetooth connection when I am in range. Sometimes it will reconnect and sometimes it won't, when it doesn't I have to turn the headpiece off and back on (which is also a challenge at times),  occasion  interacting with my phone may do it or simply wait until it decides to connect.
2107235
I normally don't write reviews.  However i want people to know this product has it good and bad points.  The good is that it works and is good that it extends the phone away from the windshield - so your phone is closer to the driver.  The bad thing is not catastrophic, but is kind of bad.  The arm where it connects to the suction cup became loose and wobbly - so the entire arm sways side to side a bit.  It did this a few days after i received it and installed it.
4670096
Two good things and two not good things. The look is very cute and the size is very roomy and comfortable.  I also really appreciate that they are cruelty free and vegan. Two things lower my rating. The arch support is not very good its too low.  The biggest problem is the insole is made out of a material that doesn't allow the bottom of my feet to breathe so the bottoms of my feet feel slightly moist all the time.  Its not a good feeling.
516739
Good:

- well put together
- good looking
- Fast processor with generous RAM
- nice screen

Poor:
- No Bluetooth
- Struggles with HD. The graphics card is poor.
- Weird touch panel that is not that useful.
- gets hot