False Shopping

A few years ago I bought a "nice" toaster. It was an attempt to replace the super-cheap $11 Venture special I'd been using and genially hating for a decade. The new toaster had everything—it was well built, it was stylish, it had several nifty features including a "bagel mode" that only toasted one side of whatever it was toasting. You could even pick it up when it was in operation without scorching your hands.

...And I hate it even more than the old one. The reason: it does everything well except toast. It leaves stripes on bread, toasts the top of the bread more than the bottom, and only three of its ten settings are useful—the rest might as well be called "don't toast at all" and "turn the outer layers to carbon and start the bread on fire."  

My toaster illustrates part of the utility of Amazon. Even though I didn't buy it from Amazon, I wrote not one but two scathing indictments (several months apart) of my awful new toaster, to warn future innocents about to be duped by its perfidious enticements. It was satisfying to express the depth of my disdain.

But I live with it. Know why? Because it's a toaster. And toast isn't that important to me. I consider myself stuck with it. The $42 is gone, the bad choice is made, and I'm not throwing any more cabbage at that problem.

I wish I had a better toaster, but I'll have to wait until this toaster breaks before I get to try again.

I stand corrected
I said a couple of days ago that the image quality of the OM-D is extra-nice. I didn't expect this to be a disputable statement. I thought anybody—in fact, the way I unfortunately chose to phrase it, "anybody with a brain"—would agree.

Not so. I heard from one TOP reader who decidedly does not like the image quality of the OM-D. He considers it poor. We explored the issue at adequate length, and it seems he's done due diligence—he uses it on the right settings, uses it with good lenses, and has compared his camera to other OM-D's to make sure he doesn't have a faulty sample. And he has a brain. He just thinks the image quality is lousy.

I told him he should sell his OM-D and move on.

Here's my take on that. When something is important to you, it's worthwhile getting it right. And getting it right sometimes involves missteps and mistakes. With these important things, that's part of shopping.

I'm sure a lot of civilians out there in the world have the same relationship to cameras as I have to toasters. They do a little research, buy the one that turns their head, and then they're stuck with it for a while. Like it? Don't like it? Whatever. It's just a camera. They've spent the money. The deed is done. Deal with it until it breaks.

With things that are important to us, though (for me, that includes music-reproducing equipment, cameras, and cars, although that doesn't matter...whatever is most important to you is what I'm talking about, whether it be your riding mower or the color of your living room walls or your fly-fishing rod), sometimes you have to do two things: 1) try a few different options to get a feel for what's out there; and 2) make a false start or two.

It's not wasted money. If you buy the wrong thing, you've learned something. It's just part of your journey to the right thing.

It doesn't register as a true loss to me if I buy the wrong amplifier for my new speakers and have to sell it again...even if I have to lose a little money. That's still money well spent. I learned all about that amplifier firsthand. That it falls short was something I needed to know. And now I know. What's important to me is that I end up with an amp that pleases me. I want to get to the end of that particular road. Whatever helps get me there is good.

I find it somehow amusing but wholly appropriate and completely understandable that my neighbor is the same way with the decor of her house. She keeps trying new things, keeps tweaking even little things. That's because she's an interior decorator. She's really good at it, too. Her house is like her laboratory. It would have been fine for me about four iterations ago. Somehow she keeps making it look better and better. It's hardly recognizable as the house my former neighbors lived in, the old couple she bought the house from. And she's still not done. The money she spent doing something she later replaced has absolutely not been wasted, I would argue. Yes, it's expensive to keep changing the decor around. But it's her thing. It's what's important to her.

I don't pretend to understand why that one reader doesn't like the IQ of the OM-D. But that doesn't matter. The important thing is, he doesn't. And in that case, my advice is: bail out, and try again. Bottom line, he should have a camera that pleases him. It's not important what I think of its image quality, and it's not important whether the whole rest of the world agrees with me: it's important what he thinks.

Cameras might be like toasters to some people. Not if it's your thing.

The magic of reacquaintance
There's a corollary to this that I would be remiss not to mention, too: if something works for you—if you get along with it and it pleases you—stick with it. Don't be fickle. Don't keep shopping after the shopping is finished, after the quest has been successful. There's no reason to shop just to shop.

Granted, I don't take my own advice here, but I'm a special case...I make my living writing about cameras, so I don't have the option of sticking with one thing for a long time. (I wish I did, sometimes.) I have to try new things as part of my job. So unless you're a camera reviewer too, don't use me as a role model here.

And if you think you're largely happy with your existing camera, but you're getting your head turned by new products? If little nagging doubts are creeping in?

That's simple: reacquaint. Do some concerted shooting with your old baby. Go through the IB again and see if there are any settings you don't quite understand.

The reasoning here is something Mark Power taught me long ago. When his students complained, he realized, it was just because their work was in the doldrums. When they were engaged with their work and enthusiastic about their pictures, the complaints disappeared. It really does work that way: if you find yourself feeling petulant about your previously much-loved camera, the cure is not to start reading reviews and thinking about replacing it; the cure is to get out and use it.

That's how we really get to love our cameras.

But don't think the false steps and false starts are something you have to live with. That's only true if you don't really care. Life's too short: as soon as you become convinced you really don't like something, it doesn't matter whether you "should" like it: it's time to move on.

Mike
(Thanks to ZZ)

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

John Krill: "About toasters: I recently saw an 'America's Test Kitchen' show that reviewed several toasters and not one was worth anything. Like your experience they just didn't toast very well. Turns out the best of the worst was a toaster that had an insulator on the outside of the toaster that protected you from the extreme temps that can be achieved on the exterior of the toasters. Turns out toasters are good at burning you, not the toast."

Mike replies: That's funny. Maybe toasters really are the engineering equivalent of what the common cold is to medicine: the unsolvable problem. We almost have the opposite problem with cameras: so many, many of which are so good.

Ken James: "Ha! Toasters seem to be emblematic of the, let's say situation, in our country. Toasters do matter to me; I like toast. Several years ago my old toaster died, so I went to buy another. I thought I got a bad one so I bought another.

"I ended up buying six, each more expensive than the last. None of them worked. Finally I bought one for over $100. I still have it because it kinda works, but just kinda. As long as one is not choosy about toast, it is okay.

"My mother had the same toaster for 40 years and it worked, and probably still does, perfectly. Oh well. Hey wait! I thought you were on a wheat-free diet!"

Mike replies: Nope. But I am happy to report that after three years of concerted and extensive self-experimentation, I have completely solved the diet problem. However, I need to wait until I've lost 50 or 60 lbs. before I write about it—I'm afraid I might lack credibility otherwise. Stay tuned.

Joe B (partial comment): "Now—for the don't live with something that does not work to your standards? Easy to say if your budget can support your experimentation."

Mike replies: Very true. It's one reason why I've always assumed that this attitude makes more sense with just those few things which are most important to you. I accepted 25 years ago that photography was just something that was going to soak up a certain amount of my money—$5,000 annually was my old number, in the days of film and photo paper expenses.

I suppose that the "depth" to which you can afford to be picky reflects both your attitudes and your means. I do have a relative who appears to treat every decision as though it were of infinite importance...she's an extraordinarily careful shopper who does lots and lots of research. It seems to me I also know people to whom nothing is important—they make purchases very casually and impulsively, even ones you would think should be important.

And where you fall is definitely tied to your means, it's true. I do understand that. I guess what I'm saying is that means are also tied to priorities....

Rob L: "This condenses my buying habits with cameras—sometimes I've bought something that I'm pretty sure isn't the right answer, just to figure out what the question is. It took going to Disney with just a Canon G12 to realize that tiny sensors and low light are not going to make me happy, and several Micro 4/3 cameras (three? four?) lead me to my beloved Fuji X100.

"But cameras are easier to do this with—if you buy used to begin with, you can generally not pay too high a learning fee as you rotate stock. But whatever it is—there is nothing more expensive than something that makes you hate what you love."

Mike replies: Your last statement is inscrutable to me. What do you mean by that?

Rob L responds: "I should have said—a $5 camera that makes you hate photography is a very expensive camera. A $2,500 camera that makes photography more enjoyable is cheap."

Zalman Stern: "The Toaster Rant is a favorite improvisational bit among myself and friends. ('When Generalissimo Francisco Franco was in power, the toasters worked.') There's also this now almost venerable piece of Computer Science humor.

"It does not seem that toasters are that difficult a technical problem or that the issue is gratuitous complexity. (Though I do support a lifetime ban from product design for the person who decided that what a toaster really needs is a series of shrill electronic beeps immediately after the loud "sproing" that pops up the toast.)

"I joke that my next project will be to build the Nest Thermostat of toasters. Might not be as silly an idea as it seems...."

Remi: "There's apparently one giant factory in China that makes toasters for most everybody under the sun. The outside changes, but the guts don't, hence they're all equally bad...."

Mathew Hargreaves: "I know the history of toasters in the USA, expecially the popup types. Got a lot of the them to prove it. The reason the modern toasters do lousy toast is the slots are designed for bagels or thicker Texas Toast. So when normal bread is inserted and centered it is too far away from the elements. I found it takes two passes of toasting for this type of toaster to do its job. They may be energy efficient and cool-walled but doing toast with regular bread is not efficient. For regular toast, get a Toastmaster 1B-14 from the 1947–63 period. they are common and generally in good working order. Analyze a toaster just like a camera and the problem is revealed."

Toastmaster 1B-14 photo from an eBay auction.

Comments

[Pak-Ming Wan]

Amen. This is the kind of thinking I love. There are two things that you reminded me of here.

1. When I buy anything now, I almost always check reviews on Amazon.com and US sites above others, because US consumers can be so incredibly picky (and bold enough to post online stories of their poor selection of product!).

2. Re-acquaintance is important. After learning some new tricks and changing my workflow to Lightroom, I picked up my old Canon S95 and used it for a holiday -- and was more than pleasantly surprised. With some judicious post-processing, my judgement of the camera was changed, for the better.

Pak

[Nigel]

If you'd asked, many of us could have told you that neither cameras nor toasters are likely to be improved by having cabbages thrown at them.

[Tim Bray]

If that guy who didn’t like the OM-D wanted to publish his opinion, I bet it would kick off some lively debate, since that camera seems to provoke strong opinions, generally. You ought to offer him a guest spot, or if he’s already published something, link to it.

[Wolfgang Lonien]

I'm with you on the "it's not wasted" thought. Once I've bought a receiver. Tried to inform myself beforehand, and since there wasn't any internet to speak of yet, my main source of information was a German magazine called "stereoplay". They had a kind of "best of" list in each issue, with several categories and classes of equipment, in several "rating groups".

The one I went for was in their "Spitzenklasse IV" ("top class 4"), which was just above middle class, and "1" being the best under the really unaffordable high end stuff.

Needless to say, it wasn't good enough, at least not for me. But I kept it, and I had learned that from now on I would rather go for their top class "1" if I would ever replace it.

Used to be a musician during that time, so canned music wasn't that important for me - nothing compared with live performances anyway.

Today? Much like you, I could live with a pair of these... (it's the maker's website, where you can also buy them without middle-men involved - plus you can ship things back if you don't like it, which almost never happens there as my brother informed me)

[Richard Jones]

May I suggest you try skillet toast! I was introduced to that 20+ years ago. The next day I gave my toaster to Goodwill. (One less appliance to worry about!)

- Richard

[Hudson]

A friend has and uses his grandmothers toaster, it's the one she bought when they electrified the house, it is kinda a "A" frame design, with two flip out toast holders, on the bottom are the specs for the nichrome heating elements, it was broken when he go it.

He bought a roll of nichrome wire and following the instructions he wound a new set of elements, every 5 years or so one of the elements will burn out, he figures that the roll of nichrome just might outlast him.

-Hudson

[Patrick Dodds]

"Toast isn't that important to me." I can't imagine inhabiting a world in which toast isn't important. Toast is always there for you when everything else has let you down.

[icexe]

Here's an interesting twist. What if your toaster made perfectly toasted bagels, but lousy toasted bread?

[Joe B]

Mike,

Toasters sure- find the "perfect" toaster. I have found toaster ovens toast the poorest. A plain, simple toaster (the kind they have made for at least 70 years)toast the best. But ya can't top brown a muffin in a old style toaster.

Now- for the don't live with something that does not work to your standards? Easy to say if your budget can support your experimentation.

I bought a Jeep once because I always wanted one. Best off road vehicle around for a reasonable cost. But it had the worst reliability of any vehicle I have purchased in the last 30 years. I lived with it (so did the dealer) for 18 months while I suffered with it. At least the warranty covered all the problems. When I could finally afford another vehicle that Jeep was gone!

So, do your research, but sometimes wants overcome needs.

[John Brewton]

I don't own a toaster. I have a toaster oven. That's if you want it done correctly ;)

[rnewman]

I am a toastaphile (toastaholic?). Without my two slices of rye or sourdough in the AM, I feel deprived Mostly I use toaster ovens, as I also use them for things which don't require a full size oven (e.g. quesadillas for lunch). I have never, over many years, had one that was reliable-that would produce two slices of toast, fairly even in color, and the same on both sides. Or even the same doneness at a given setting. I have been through most of the major, and some not so major, brands without any success. I have done line voltage tests, oven temp tests, etc. with no significant indication of WHY? this inconsistency. I have finally come to the conclusion that its the Perversity of Inanimate Objects law in effect, and there is no cure.

[raizans]

frying pans are great at making toast, and you'll have more counter space. =)

[Robert Roaldi]

I had a computer-controlled toaster once. I am not kidding, there was a microprocessor on board and it was expensive to buy in the stores. My ex worked for some big name-brand multinational appliance maker and got it for free. It was ok, no better than any other.

I think we have bad toasters for the same reason that we have round doorknobs when handles makes so much more sense. It's because we only have the illusion of competition in the retail marketplace. We just accept the mythology that we have it.

[Michael Matthews]

So it turns out I'm not the only person who will live for 11 years with a toaster he hates!

Why did toasters built in the 1950s seem to toast accurately, evenly, and nearly forever?

Have they all become victims of the compulsion to improve things until they become completely unusable?

Do any of your readers know of a toaster that works?

[expiring_frog]

The best toast I can remember was made in an oven. I'd argue the toasting problem is solved, as long as you use an oven and not a toaster. Of course that probably spells disaster for energy efficiency especially if you have a large oven.

[RobinP]

The toaster purchases were wrong because one was too cheap, the other too expensive. I reckon the best value is usually one or two up from the bottom of the range.
Hope that expensive Dyson doesn't come back too bite you in the bum at some future date - way too much money for a vacuum cleaner!

Just had a look at flickr images tagged OMD to see what you and your correspondent were talking about - it seems to have a certain soft, pastel, film look about it which I suppose will please some and annoy others. Certainly different to the hard digital look we've become accustomed to the last few years.

[Dana]

Hey Mike.....in Sam Shepard's play True West, one of the characters impresses and annoys his brother by stealing toasters from the neighbors.
I remember them commenting that none of them were very good
toasters. This could be an American thing: not just shopping but buying things that you don't really need and won't work.

[John Camp]

While I don't have a reply to your more philosophical ruminations, I do have a toaster. A Dualit. After spending years in toaster hell, I saw one that said it was chosen by the Queen of England as the royal toaster. I think it cost $250, but it has performed well. It does not have an auto pop-up, however, so you either have to know exactly how to set the timer, or you have to check the toast with the manual pop-up lever as the toasting proceeds. I think it would be just the thing for those who prefer prime lenses and manual focusing.

[Mark Alan Miller]

Toasters are bad because they don't need to be good. Other than Consumer Reports readers (and maybe Amazon fanatics) nobody checks out ratings on toasters beforehand. They buy one with appropriate features, at the right price, from a brand they trust. If it's bad, maybe next time they buy a different brand (probably made in the same factory.) Steam irons are even worse than toasters. They leak, tip over, scorch, have cords that fail, etc. They are pretty much all bad, even surprisingly expensive ones. But you need an iron, you go get one.

When I was a kid we had one of those fancy Sunbeams that had a motor that lowered and raised the toast. It worked great, but must have been hideously expensive. So I know it's possible to make a perfect toaster. It had already been done fifty years ago. It was such an elegant device, raising your toast smoothly instead of launching it towards the ceiling. I felt sorry for neighbors with lesser toasters.

Cameras are harder. I don't know what your friend's beef with the E-M5 was, unless he found the images oversharpened and excessively dramatic. I can see that, but all those settings are adjustable. You can make its images look as soft and smooth as any Nikon. It will still look like a Micro 4/3 image, and that may have not been good enough.

There are also people who will never be satisfied by any camera because it doesn't match up to their imaginary perfect camera. They will always be disappointed by reality. Why can't cameras focus perfectly every time and have massive zoom ranges, but fit in my pants pocket? Why not? I can't buy a camera that isn't perfect in every way.

[Dennis Ng]

For low cost it is important that it work to the point you buy it then you buy another one. As long as some one is buying (randomly), it is ok. Definitely not build too long or what they say build Not to last for this category.

Hence, "My mother had the same toaster for 40 years", bad idea to the toast maker. I bet she or the poster cannot buy that easily now.

The light bulb that last 100 year is not good from a business point of view. I told there were a design like that and quickly done with - the company not the light bulb.

[Andrew John]

Maybe there's nothing wrong with your toaster but with the bread you throw at it. Try some good bread (not easy in US I am told) and things might get better..?
Every camera is good at something but not at everything.

And, as Tim Bray said, i would be curious to know what that "guy" didn't like about the OMD. Oh, sorry, thats's not important; what's important is he doesn't like it. I'm still curious though...

[Chris]

When I left home for college in 1986, my parents gave me my deceased grandfather's toaster. I would guess that my grandfather had probably acquired the toaster in the mid to late 60's. It took a few weeks to tweek the darkness setting, but after that my toast has always been toasted just the way I like it.

After marriage my wife complained, routinely, about that toaster because it doesn't have levers on it, you have to drop the toast on a switch inside and that causes it to automatically begin the toasting process. My wife had a hard time getting it to start, even though I can work it perfectly. However, over time my wife became as enamored with the toaster as I am.

I went through the same process with my children as well.

About a month ago I saw a new toaster that I believed would actually perform better than my toaster and texted a photo to my wife to see if she was interested. There was almost outrage over the suggestion of getting a new toaster.

In the mean time, I've spent at least a year's salary on photography equipment, and I'm about to liquidate a bunch of it to move "forward" once again.

Why can't the make cameras more like toasters?

[Russ]

Are we allowed to apply this to wives as well? :O

[I think it does, because, if you think of it, what I've said here is: try a number of options until you make the best choice for you; then, stick with it; and, if later you get your head turned, reacquaint with what you already have. Seems like that might be good advice for spouses as well, although I'm not in a position to offer advice. --Mike]

[Gordon Lewis]

As you have mentioned before, Mike (in reference to pencil sharpeners), it's truly amazing how many devices are incompetent at performing the one function they are supposedly designed to do. Not a week goes by that I don't encounter pens that skip, shaky tripods, stoves that won't light... You can imagine how I feel about products that have a long list of functions.

[Richard Alan Fox]

Please do not forget to write about that weight loss plan. I need help.

[Mike Rosiak]

This one works okay enough for me:

http://www.cuisinart.com/products/toasters/cpt-142.html

Makes my GF bread brown enough. And it's relatively cheap.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

I've pointed out to a number of people that especially on your first venture into a new area (digital photography, say, or good knives, or CD players) they're rather more likely to make a major mistake than later. (And the types of mistake differ somewhat also). This is an argument for trying the less drastic option first, if you're seriously considering both :-).

Strange about toasters. I do one to three runs of toasting every day if I'm eating at home. The two toasters my parents owned while I was growing up did a good enough job, and the two toaster ovens I have owned both do a good enough job (they're a little slow, but I use the fact that you can do open-face toasted cheese sandwiches in them, so I get a payoff for the slowness in that and related uses). I think of myself as having relatively clear opinions (evenness is important, consistency for a given bread is important, and I've never heard of one that doesn't need to be adjusted for each bread you use in it so I've given up hoping for that).

[Sean]

Our toaster is as old as our house! My Wife wants a shiny new toaster with all the bells and whistles. Its made me think hard about a replacement, but I know she'd take the toaster just to spite me.

(Our house, like my sense of humour, is twelve years old)

[Bahi]

I'm on at least my third normal-focal-length lens (43 mm-e, in this case) because that look turned out to be a favourite. I feel relaxed and comfortable shooting a normal lens and pleased with the results. I first realised it when a cheap AF Nikkor (a rebadged Nikon Series E) ended up as easily my most frequently used lens, even though I tended to shoot it at f/2.8, where it often performed badly.

I have my eye on the cheap and cheerful 35mm Nikkor f/1.8 DX, despite the CA and slightly nasty bokeh, but I do wonder about even that small change of focal length. When I try setting a zoom to 35mm, just for practice, I feel like I'm wearing a comfortable, familiar shirt that shrunk a little in the wash. Perhaps I'd get over it and would welcome the decent focus speed and useable metering (my current choice has neither) but, as you say, some things matter more than they should.

[Lynn]

Mike, the best toaster is... your griller. Follow the method in Delia's How To Cook Vol. 1 (BBC, 1998) and you'll be smiling. The summary: preheat grill on highest setting for 10mins. Put toast 2" under grill and toast both sides as desired, then stand toast vertically to let steam escape from bread, leaving toast crisp. Enjoy.

[Iain Dawson]

I bought an Olympus EPM2 a few months ago. For the first few days of ownership I really struggled with the menu system and was beginning to wonder if I had made the right decision. However, when all else fails read the instructions! Once I had discovered the “super control panel” , which gives you rapid access to most controls, I really started to enjoy using the camera. I doubt if reading the instructions will help with toasters though. Perhaps Dyson will invent one that works properly.

[Cmans]

Anyone else remember toasters with the color gradient scale or separate color chips where you slid the bar to the color of toast that you wanted, and got toast pretty much the color indicated? Seems to me the engineers back then actually tested these models before allowing them out of development. And I resented when toasters started showing up with very short cords with the literature that came with it claiming the short cord was for safety, (surely wasnt the price of copper)

BTW the toaster died at work not too long ago, so I made the magnanimous gesture of showing up with a $6 Rival purchased from the local big box. At the ridiculously low price of $6 i almost wish it did malfunction in a big way, just for the entertainment value ( Ha Ha! $6 toaster!), but it is still running strong. The same morning I showed up with it, someone else showed up with the same toaster from the same store LOL. Mine was already unpacked so she returned hers. It does work fine, but seemingly not as quickly as i recall the color- coded toasters of yore.

[Jonathan]

Ha, I paid something like $7 for my toaster at the local cheapest drugstore in town some years ago. Works great or at least well enough and I have no urge to upgrade. No such luck with photo equipment, however.

[Peter Croft]

Hmmm. I've just moved houses and as my old fridge didn't survive the move, I bought a new one. I chose the currently trendy "upside down" type, freezer on the bottom.

I hate it! As a bachelor, I use a lot of frozen stuff and I'm forever having to bend down nearly to floor level. It was a bad choice for me but I didn't know it at the time.

I've been wondering what to do and this article makes me think I might go back to the retailer and ask what a 6 week old fridge would be worth as a trade in on a "right way up" model. It'll cost me a few hundred dollars, I think, but that's life. It'll be worth it to me.

[Ken]

I bought two "national name brand" toaster ovens from "big box store" in the past 5-7 years (different model each time). Each one caught fire after a few months of use (and the same way: the cheapo latch used to turn on the toaster would get stuck and it would get hotter and hotter...). Luckily we have a fire extinguisher in the kitchen. Needless to say, I will never buy another one again.

[Robert Hudyma]

Back in the 1970's as I was transitioning from my Nikon F to my Nikon F2 (and I still have them both and now an F3 too). I had always preferred home cooked meals to eating out. So when my wife and I moved into a large home that required extensive renovations we spent most of our renovation money on the kitchen.

Back then there was an article in the Sunday New York Times magazine about the "Ultimate" toaster oven. It was a DeLonghi toaster-oven for $119. At the time it was not yet available in Canada but after reading the review I was sold and I had to have one. I was delighted to find one in the store about a year later and I instantly took one home.

For a family of two people and one dog it was perfect.

Now over forty years have passed and my family is now two people and two dogs (all different except me).

That oven has been in daily use (with replaced heating elements and thermostat) for over forty years. It was so good that I bought another one and they are stacked. Most days I just use one of them but having a second one is perfect if I want to cook two different things (at a different temperature) or if people are coming over for dinner.

Realizing that these appliances have a limited life, over the years, I acquired two backups at neighborhood garage sales. If one of those ovens dies I have two ready to go (they cost me $5 and $10). I figure that I am set for life.

In all these years, there is only one limitation to this oven, if you are baking or roasting there is no timer. To this I have found a solution. I now have two Gralab darkroom timers next to the ovens.

When they buzz my dinner is ready.

The Gralab timers work great and everything is cooked with precision.

Tonight's people menu: General Tso's chicken breasts, with pan-roasted vegetables: medley of carrots, diakon and potato served with side-salad.

The dogs, will be eating the same without the General Tso sauce. And another thing too, having two dogs ensures that there are never any leftovers to eat. Tomorrow we will be eating something different for sure.

The DeLonghi toasts beautifully too.

Today, the DeLonghi is still available, the styling is different and I am unsure of the quality of the build. The Gralab timers are still in production, the darkroom timers have a Black dial (like mine in the kitchen) but the cooking ones have a light dial.

Alas, the Nikon F and F2 are no longer in production but they are built so well and get so little use today that they will both outlive me for sure.

[The Lazy Aussie]

It should be easier now, but the online reviews havmade it harder to make that first step. I get really put off by a single bad review, even in a sea of good ones. This applies to audiobooks, restaurants, cameras.I was all set to get a Dyson the other day, and despite the fact that most of the comments on your site were positive, the few negative ones have turned me off. I still have no vacuum cleaner.

[Steve Jacob]

Mike hits the nail of middle aged luxury consumer angst on the head again :-)

I also have a smart retro toaster that goes with my decor but makes so-so toast. It looks OK. It sorta works. I don't think about it.

But here's a thing. I am fussy about power tools. I don't get excited about them either, but it's worth paying for good handling, precision, predictability and reliability. You use them right, they will do what you intended every time, and last forever. It's a lesson I learned the hard way.

But I kept messing up with cameras because I did not apply the same logic. Cameras are too emotional. They are shiny beautiful man jewels we can't resist, any more than a diva can resist diamonds.

But a camera is just a tool, albeit one marketed as a luxury consumer good. Think "tool" and you are more likely to end up with something that works for you. The rest is practice.

All cameras now have a million options and great IQ, if they let you exploit it. What will annoy you most (I promise) is unpredictability. Menu and control settings that change by themselves, AF that doesn't QUITE nail it, controls you hit by accident, exposure that has a mind of it's own, something you cannot hold comfortably, or plain poor build quality.

I did not end up with a D800 and Xpro-1 because I was being logical, but I got lucky. These two cameras could not be more different, and it took me a while to figure out why I liked both of them so much. It's simply because they are both precise and predictable and put me back in charge of the process. If something does not come out the way I intended, I KNOW it was my fault.

[Adam Richardson]

I'm with John Camp: Get a Dualit. We bought ours almost 15 years ago and it still toasts as well as the day we got it. Yes it's expensive. No it doesn't automatically pop up (though I think that's a feature, the toast continues to be kept gently warmed by staying in the slots). Yes it needs to be warmed up a bit before serious toasting (kind of like a tube amp).

Toasters are like tripods - you might as well buy the expensive one first, as you'll end up there eventually, after having wasted money on cheap disposable ones first. (Though admittedly the situation is less extreme with toasters...)

[Ed]

You know what the trouble these days is. Photographer have no platform to share their photo's (I used to go to a photoclub). Soi all they do is look at their own pictures in a sort of onanistic way. They are concerned about a lot of things technical while they should be concerned about a lot of things artically. Great example is the Luminous Landscape test of the Sigma DP2 Merill. They compare the Meryll to a lot of camera's by showing 100% pixel peeped pictures and in those the Meryll shines. But they do tell the truth that this quality (as is true with any 30 Mpixel plus camera) can only be reached with discipline and dedication (the use the term "no pussy camera").

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/sigma_dp2m_review.shtml

Now a D800 is no camera for "pussies" as well. In order to reach it's full potential you need a lot of things as Pekka Potka (and I) explain in this rather suprising post.

http://www.pekkapotka.com/journal/2013/5/3/nikon-d800e-and-olympus-om-d.html

So let me tell you what I think is happening with a lot of photographers these days. Some are up to the task of using an LX3, OM-D, D7000, D800 and IQ180 to it's full potential and they achive great IQ and what is more important great pictures with any of these. The rest (and that unfortunatly is 99%) of the Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, what not crowd is simply not up to the task of using any camera to it's full potential. Is that new, no not at all. I restore (and scan) pictures for a living and when scanning family albums I see pictures being taken with the best the 60, 70 and 80th had to offer but in the wrong hands, well the results are less then excellent.

So Mike this time I disagree (and that is not happening to often I must say) 100%. If someone is not happy with the photographic quality of any modern camera. Wether it's a D800, an OM-D or a LX3 (or any other high end compact), he (or she) should either go to the service department because HIS camera has some issues (D800 backfocus anyone). Or he or she should join a local camera club. There they will find enthousiastic photographers (in my case Frans Bellen, my father Theo Kuipers and a professional photographer Dré Brenneker)

http://www.brenneker.nl/dre/

http://www.theo-kuipers.com/#Startpagina

(Frans seems to have no digital place on the web, a shame....was a great photographer in his days)

that tought me how to use a Nikon F and Nikon F3 (or better tried to teach me) and can also have a critical look at you camera and your performance with it.

This cost about 100 dollars a year and is a lot cheaper then running from camera hype du jour to camera hype du jour, and more fun as well.

Greets, Ed.

[Will]

"Life's too short: as soon as you become convinced you really don't like something, it doesn't matter whether you "should" like it: it's time to move on."

You really should apply this to your toaster, I imagine. How much do you spend on bagels, bread, frozen waffles, or anything else you put in the toaster? If it is anywhere near what it is in my house, then a truly unsatisfactory toaster (ie: one you take to Amazon to twice to rail against) is one that needs replacing. I'm with you that your camera is important to you and your toaster is not. But if the "upkeep cost" of the toaster, or the money spent on what goes into it, exceeds the cost of the toaster by 4 times or more in a single year, and a toaster lasts as long as they do, then you're simply throwing good money after bad every time you insufficiently toast something. Throw it on craigslist and sell it to someone that might not mind or might actually like the way it does what it does. Even if you get back only 40% what you paid for it, once you buy a new toaster (better researched? just different?), you're no longer wasting the money, at least as much, on what you decide to toast. For what it's worth, we have a KitchenAid toaster that we pretty much love. Nothing but normal setting and bagel setting, and a dial to adjust level of doneness. The only problem we've had is when we forget to adjust the heat setting to the thing we're toasting. I've also used a Breville at a friend's house that seemed like it would have cost a fortune, but man was that easily the greatest toast I ever had. That was a space-age toaster though, which automatically lifted the slices for peaking and then slid them back down for further toasting, all slow and robotic-like.

In this regard, toasters can be very much unlike cameras. Once you buy a camera and memory cards/batteries, your only costs are printing costs if you decide to do that (or, I suppose software, if you don't like what you already have). A toaster literally eats money, daily for many people. A subpar but serviceable camera at least isn't wasting more money every time you decide to use it. A toaster, I fear, is.

[YS]

Oh, I do like that quote from Rob L. I'm stealing it!

[Paul Mc Cann]

I'd second the Dualit. Worth every penny. Our problem with toasters was that none lasted any length of time. The Dualit is about 10 years old now and still going strong. And spares are available for it.
Toasters are like most consumer machines, bought mostly on price, and there is nothing in this world that somebody can't make cheaper and worse. I mean how much in today's terms did your grand mother pay for that toaster way back in the 50's or 60's ?

For the man who finds the slots too wide try putting two slices in together and then flipping them when one side is done. Actually I like toast done on one side only.

[Shotslot]

My last toaster was the one I hurled, bellowing like an angry bear, towards the bottom garden when it messed up my breakfast one last time (I get very grumpy when I have low blood-sugar). That was 12 months ago and since then life has been much better in my kitchen because I use a grill. I still look wistfully at toasters when I see them in the supermarket, shiny charlatans that they are, and my wife regularly has to remind me of why I got rid of the last one...for me it all started when someone decided that toasters needed electronics in them. Toast is analogue food, plain and simple!

[Ade]

[engages boring story mode]

Years ago, I bought my first house and, as part of that, a new toaster and kettle to go with it. The toaster was great (and the kettle boiled water so not much wrong there either): perfectly toasted bread every time. But the kettle was blue and the toaster was green, because, while the kitchen utility manufacturers were working through a fad for strong primary colours at the time, the store didn't actually have matching colours in stock just then, and I NEEDED A TOASTER. Also, I didn't much care about having co-ordinated utilities.

But this drove my partner crazy. She put up with that toaster and suffered perfect toast every day until she finally found an excuse to buy a more stylish looking toaster and "recycle" the old one for her colleagues at work. (In fact, the new one was a chrome job somewhat reminiscent of the Toastmaster 1B-14 there. It had a matching kettle too, natch.)

Needless to say, as a device for toasting bread, it was an abject failure. It would perhaps have rated highly for burning bread, at least half the time or across half the slice. But it couldn't reward you with decent toast any more than it could boil water (unless you were to drop it in the bath with you). Lived with that lemon for at least five years because there was no point wasting more bread on what was, hey, just bread.

Over a decade of married life later, we are now on an extremely stylish and retro Dualit toaster (and matching kettle - http://www.flickr.com/photos/big-bubbles/6700056641), for which one pays a small fortune for the privilege of popping up one's own toast manually with a lever. It does an ... acceptable job of making toast. Rarely perfect, but you don't need to bin it too often either. (It does bagels too - although I hate having bagels toasted only on one side.)

But there is not a single occasion I use it that I don't bitterly regret the loss of that nasty green toaster and its wonderful, perfect toast.

I was going to ask what one should do in situations like these, where the object is shared but the owners value different aspects of it. But then I realised that the only answer would be to buy two toasters (one of which must be kept in the basement out of sight of decent people, because it doesn't match the kitchen).

[Malcolm Leader]

I gave up on pop-up toasters 25 years ago. The solution is a small toaster oven. Makes toast perfectly and does many other jobs well. When the toast is done I put the butter on, close the door for 30 seconds, and I have perfectly browned and buttered toast every time.

[Ken James]

There probably will be a huge surge of ebaying to get that Toastmaster 1B-14. It is the toaster I grew up with and miss greatly

[christian]

Hi Mike,

Just what do you mean by "I'm sure a lot of civilians out there..." or better, why do you use the term 'civilians.' what's the purpose??? I must tell you that I find it offensive. I am not a particularly patriotic guy. I don't wear an American flag in my lapel, or even fly the flag on the fourth of July. I have lived through a few wars though, and served a couple plus decades in the Marine Corps, and for whatever the reason I find the use of the term 'civilians' outside of its meaning as being a non-combatant very offensive. To me the use implies that you as a photographer, view yourself as a heroic fighter for the cause of photography, and the rest of the 'population' as beneath contempt......?

[Is that how soldiers view the people they're fighting for? "Beneath contempt"? No disrespect meant, but somehow I don't think you've quite thought through what you're saying here.... --Mike]

[Øyvind:D]

The on and off switching of my Kenwood toaster killed 2 USB TB-harddisks. I now do not have any toaster, no working TB-USB harddisks, but I invested in surge-arrester for computers and the TV, just in case.