A good idea?

You may know by now that I am a sucker for cool and odd gadgets, even if I don't actually go out and buy them. However, while at the local Staples on Monday, I decided to 'bite the bullet' and buy a digital photo frame. Well, it was a decent Kodak model and at a reasonable price. So I thought, 'what the heck', and brought my new toy home. Was it a wise purchase? Therein lies a tale. It is a very nicely packaged and designed piece of kit and is no bother at all to setup and use. After turning it on and inserting a memory card direct from my camera, it began it's slide show and impressed me with the clarity and sharpness of the result. The ability to show my short snatches of video with sound was an added bonus that 'spiced up' the whole experience. I mounted it on the wall just like any other frame and really didn't mind the fact that the power cable was showing. Here's a good point though - most people's walls tend to be light colours - make the power cable white for goodness sake. The only down side that I could see was that the angle of view was very restricted - just a few degrees off centre and the images became too dark and almost impossible to see. In addition, after a few hours of running, I began to wonder what the point of it was - who was looking at the pictures? The death knell to my photo frame was my son's comment when he came home from work - 'Man, that looks real tacky. Are you going to get one of those waterfall pictures that move as well?' Sorry to say, next day Staples had the unit back. Was it a poor product? No, not at all, it worked well and did what the blurb said it would. My feeling is that it is a niche product that has applications for some but not all people. Certainly not me, unfortunately. I suppose that when the larger (24" and up) models become more available at a reasonable price, we may see more market penetration. Until then, the regular photo frames will do me nicely. I can always view my images on the computer screen or TV if I want to.