[updated 9-2-09: for some reason over half of my review was truncated]

The short story is the camera fell out of my daughter’s pants pocket and broke. From this 2 1/2 foot drop the battery cover had a small crack and there was even a smaller crack in the bolt hole where the 2 halves of the case bolt together. Unfortunately, no one noticed these cracks until too late. She took the camera underwater and after a few minutes it stopped working.

I called Fujifilm US support and they said it was not warranted against dropping at all, and their site makes no such claim. They told me that for approx $80-$100 plus postage I could mail the one week old camera to them and they would try to repair it, but no guarantee it could be fixed. I declined this offer and now wish that I had purchased the more expensive Pentax W-60, which is on sale these days for a great price. My youngest daughter has that model and it has survived almost a year now!

Photo images: with strong contrast post adjustments you can get acceptable underwater photos.

[update: 17 Nov. 2009]

I am sure impressed with Amazon and will continue to buy from them! My daughter sent an email to Amazon telling them what happened, the camera broke, Fujifilm won’t replace it, etc. Amazon replied in a few days telling us that we could return it for a full refund. Fortunately I saved the original shipping box, but we got really busy for a month+ and forgot about it. A few weeks ago we sent the camera back with a note apologizing for being so late in returning it, and in less than 1 week we received in the mail a full refund credit at Amazon. Thanks!

Now what do folks think of the new Pentax WS80? (I won’t be buying the Fujifilm Z33 again.)
Rating: 2 / 5

It’s still operating so given that it’s probably made in China, I guess that’s worth something. Ask me in a year.
Rating: 5 / 5

The scenes in this game are beautiful, the music is wonderful, and the physics is mostly realistic, and the overall beauty and experience offered by this game reminds me of the “It’s a small world” ride at Disneyland. The game is enjoyable by kids and adults alike, and the whole family can play together if you have more than one controller.

There are 25 awesome levels (there are eight “Creator Curators”, and there are three levels per Creator Curator except the last which has four, adding up to 25). The description of this game says there are 50 levels, but that is probably counting the mini levels (mostly useless) and the included user-created levels. I didn’t like the user-created levels — some of them are playable, but they didn’t have the Disney-esque experience of the levels created by the game makers themselves.

One thing I didn’t like about the game is that the depiction of USA in this game isn’t that great. A construction site, a car wrecking yard, people speaking in ungrammatical English etc. LittleBigPlanet was made by a UK company.
Rating: 5 / 5