A couple of years ago I posted a list of "much better" products. The idea was to point out (technology) products that are much better than the alternatives. There's a handful of new one's I've discovered that I thought I'd share. A couple of them already get a lot of popular press/praise, but I thought I'd add my voice to the chorus. The first one, while almost universally praised, is less widely known.
Fujitsu ScanScan s510m is much better than any other
document scanning solution I've seen. I got one of these in
January and it is amazing. You insert a piece of paper, and a moment
later a double sided PDF is in a directory of my choice. It's wicked
fast. Scanning a few sheets of paper takes a few seconds. Oh, and it
comes with FineReader, which is good OCR software. So far, I've
scanned around 1000 documents numbering 4000+ pages. Having quick
full text (though not quite perfect) access to bills, account
statements, and other paperwork is revolutionary. I came into this
device with high expectations and it has exceeded them.
Wii is much better than other video game systems, for
me. For most of these "much better" claims the "for me" part is
implicit, but at some level, I am making the assertion that these
things are "objectively" better. The Wii is great, but I can see it's
not for everyone. I've had it for a little more than a year now, and
it's about as good as a game system could be for me. I don't play it
a ton, but I play it some and it's a fun diversion for a few hours a
week.
iPhone is much better than most cell phones. I didn't
say it's way better than a Blackberry, which I used to have, but it
mostly is. As of now, the Blackberry was still a better email device.
The iPhone is an ok email device and a really good device in almost
every other way. Google Maps plus a really good browser is a potent
combination. Naturally the SDK announcement makes things even more
interesting.