NV7 targets the fundamentals

Samsung’s new NV line is easily the most serious attempt by the consumer electronics giant to crack the crowded space atop the digital camera market share heap, but it may be “too much too late.” The NV7, at roughly $450, is a technology tour de force, featuring 7 MP resolution, 7x optical zoom, requisite German optical partner lens and multiple image stabilization techniques all in a package well under an inch thick. It also has a new user interface.

The NV3 seems less interesting with a more standard 3x optical zoon and a more gimmicky integrated media player.

It will be very interesting to see how the digital photography review sites rate these.

Windows Me-too Photo

This may be the most difficult sell to come out of Redmond in ages. JPEG works. Its quality is excellent. Flash memory is ludicrously cheap; many consumers will run out of battery life before they run out of storage capacity. And pros are not going to use compressed files. Forget it.

I suppose this team will next move on to tackle Microsoft Wheel.

Pulling photos out of a hat

It will be interesting to see where pricing for the Presto photo printing service comes in. I think annual subscriptions are easier to swallow than monthly ones, particularly if a device is going to need consumables like the inkjet "photo mailbox" that Presto is planning. Presto is reminiscent of several previous attempts to entertain the lightly connected elderly or technophobes — WebTV, Cidco's MailStation and Ceiva, which still seems to be kicking around. Presto, though, seems like a product that is more attuned to its target demographic than Ceiva.

Presto's solution doesn't use the Internet, though, which leads me to believe that's using some kind of wireless network, which would be challenging to implement cost-effectively.