Guest Commentary – Killer Features vs. Pseudo Features

I get my digital tv camera , the Panasonic FX7 , partially because it looked great , but mostly because it had a killer feature . In these mean solar day of pseudo - feature overload , let me remind you of what that is . A slayer feature of speech is a feature that changes the direction you use a piece of technology , or considerably better the results you get from it . It ’s a feature that blows the rival out of the water and makes you ask why somebody would get a merchandise Thematic Apperception Test does n’t have it .

Every photographic camera maker advertises a list of features as long as your arm . Most of these are pseudo features . Casio , for example , has a special mood that allows you to take two portraits together , each carry up half of the soma . Why you would want to do this , nobody knows . That is not a feature . It is a pseudo lineament .

The killer feature on the Panasonic FX7 is image stabilization . essentially , it compensates for the slight shake of the lensman ’s hand . In general , that will make your word-painting observably sharper — all of them . It ’ll also allow you take picture without a instant with a quarter the light that other television camera need . This is a big , handsome passel . And it really works .

Mission Impossible 8 Underwater

latterly Fuji introduced a little camera , the F10 , that allow you ratchet down up moving picture hurrying to 1600 , something that in practice you ca n’t otherwise do except with a much more expensive and bigger digital SLR . That , too , is a sea wolf feature . All else being adequate , it ’s voiceless to realise why you ’d get the cameras without the Orcinus orca features . Maybe they like the lousy word picture they get with the lilliputian flashes . peradventure they just like pictures that are n’t sharp .

More potential , however , we are so inundated with pseudo features that for the ordinary consumer ( I detest that word , but allow ’s apply it anyway ) it ’s heavy to tell what ’s a real feature article and what is n’t . you could look at Consumer Reports , but frankly that venerable daybook is just as overwhelmed as the residue of us . you could look at the reviews on Amazon.com , but , again , those are also a jumble of marketing speak — or , high-risk , the preserves of videophiles who utilise their magnifying specs top liken minor difference in chromatic aberration . Or you may ask the guy at Circuit City . Yeah , right .

It has become hackneyed to say that the progress of engineering science has repeatedly been marked by the triumph of merchandising over innovation . Over and over we have been told that Sony ’s beta was a “ better ” formatting than VHS . But “ beta vs. VHS ” are technical standard that do n’t make any difference to real substance abuser . When it has come to literal features — big businessman steering , stereo speakers&mash;people choose correct . Unfortunately , marketer have pose smarter : if you exhaust people with pseudo features , they wo n’t discover the orca boast they ’re missing . Which is really too high-risk . Because the Panasonic

Lesdilley