Product Reviews to Save Time, Restore Sanity, and Boost Your Career
So many products claim to save busy moms time and money. Here's our take on the best bets for making your home more efficient and your career more successful. Not to mention book picks for the time-starved.
The best pocket camcorder for one mom isn't always the best pocket camcorder for her best friend. Please share your favorite -- and least favorite -- pocket camcorder. Yes, the videocamera on your BlackBerry counts!
The Amazon Kindle 2 electronic book reader is one of the must-have gadgets for working moms and business travelers. With the Kindle 2, you can catch up on newspapers or the latest bestselling novel. Or, the Amazon Kindle 2 ebook reader will read aloud to your children when your voice goes hoarse or you overload on Junie B. Jones.
It's not easy to come up with great working mother gifts. Many working moms are too busy or distracted to tell you what baubles they'd like. But these working mother gifts are surefire winners as well as practical. Try them for the working mom you know!
The best pocket camcorders combine the ease of a point-and-click camera with the crisp quality of video that you want to watch and share with friends. I prefer the Flip Mino, but the Flip Ultra is good for moms on a budget, with large fingers or whose children manhandle anything shiny. RCA's EZ205 pocket camcorder runs a distant third.
Parents looking for an affordable, everyday camcorder can't do better than the Flip Ultra digital camcorder, the video equivalent of a point-and-click camera. The Flip Ultra is a simple, lightweight camera that captures up to an hour of clips and makes it a snap to record and work with video. I found the Flip Ultra digital camcorder easier to operate than its sleeker, smaller sibling, the Mino, which is almost too tiny.
The EZ205 is a bare-bones pocket digital camcorder by RCA that performs the basic video recording functions without any frills. Ease of use is the top selling point -- after taking the RCA digital camcorder out of the box, you can immediately record, upload and email videos. The RCA Small Wonder line of simple and lightweight digital video cameras was designed for moms. If you can't afford a Flip Ultra or Mino, the RCA digital camcorder certainly beats that bulky camera you left at home.
The Flip Mino camcorder is just what you need in your pocket or purse to capture special family moments. Traditional digital camcorders are simply too bulky to carry on a daily basis. But the Flip Mino camcorder is light and small enough to take everywhere. The video quality is clear on a computer screen and the ability to capture still pictures is fabulous for parents with uncooperative photo subjects. Bottom line: the Flip Mino camcorder is well adapted to a busy mom's lifestyle.
My preschooler is a picky eater, like many. So my review of the clickety click lunch box was a joy. She loved the characters on the lunch box and fork, and for once was excited to take out her food at daycare. I packed fruit in a separate container from pasta, so no parts of Her Majesty's lunch touched. I was just relieved to send lunch to school in a container made of safe plastics.
A kid's lunchbox should be safe. Worried about plastic leaching chemicals into food, I trashed the old containers I was using as a kid's lunchbox. Instead, I used the smallest glass storage containers Pyrex makes -- no leaks, and microwave safe. They might be heavy for a kindergartener's back, but are perfect if you take them into the classroom yourself.
