Socal Stuff: Reviews by Donna Schwartz Mills

Christmas Gift Ideas from Nintendo

I got some good news from my friends at Nintendo: There will be 50% more Wii units on the market this Christmas, so (hopefully!) shortages should be a thing of the past.

The company has been putting out so many creative, interesting, cool games I'm having a tough time keeping up with them all.

The Wii Fit remains a must-have for adults and kids alike who could use a little nudge when it comes to exercise. My whole family's taste in games runs from the riotous Mario Kart for the Wii to the peaceful sea exploration of Endless Ocean.

I personally love playing with my Nintendo DS, because it's so portable. I enjoy it while I'm parked in the car waiting for school to get out, or when I'm sitting in the gym waiting for my daughter's workout to end, or when I'm sitting in the doctor's office, waiting for her pediatrician appointment. (Do you get the idea that I spend a lot of time waiting for my kid?)

 The DS has games that the whole family will love, some of which are turning into gaming classics (like the two Brain Age titles and Cooking Mama). Some of the games make use of the DS's built-in wi-fi, so everyone with one of the handheld devices can play together.

But a lot of people don't know that Nintendo and its partners offer a full range of titles that are targeted to adults, too.

There's a whole series of Personal Coach games for self improvement: There's My Weight Loss Coach and Let's Yoga (which I will review in a future post on my new Weight Loss blog) ... You can also use the DS to study for the SAT (a game I will be reviewing over at the Career Kids blog.)

That brings us to Personal Trainer Cooking, which hits the stores November 24. It's a step by step cooking game that talks you through over 240 recipes from around the world.

Whereas Cooking Mama is made for entertainment, this allows you to make real food. It's a great way to pull your kids into it, because it's interactive and a lot of fun.

You search for recipes by country or keyword, and it shows you how long it takes to prep, how many calories there are per serving and how easy it is to make. My favorite part are the tips that tell you how to choose produce (I'm always questioning myself on that!); plus information on the dish itself and the utensils you will need.

If you're looking at different ingredients for the recipe and you don't have something, you can tap on the screen and it will pull up a shopping list of all the items you need - and you can take your DS right into the store.

Then you can set it down and it will TELL you what to do - kind of like watching a cooking show on TV.

There's a facility to add your own notes to make the recipe your own, and the program will save it. You can also check some recipes as favorites.

I love that there is an education component for cooking with your kids: A world map and cultural background of a country's foods.

Of course, there are lots of cool new games for the Wii. I got a preview of the new Wii version of one of my daughter's favorite DS games, Animal Crossing. The Wii version is subtitled "City Folk" and it's kind of a kid-appropriate SimCity: You create your very own village for your animal characters.

Your village displays in real time: it follows the calendar. You see that the leaves are starting to change because it's autumn and if you play at night, it will be dark. You can make money by collecting fruits and shells and fish. You can write letters to other townspeople in the village - or over the Internet to your friends with Wii (the capability for Internet interactivity is one of the coolest features of the Wii). You can have up to three other friends in time.

This game comes with the Wii Speak microphone that sits on top of the TV and picks up everyone in the room, which can come in handy for other kinds of communication with Wii-owning friends and family in other households.

This is a game that is played by one person at a time per console. But up to four family members can have their own saved character files.

But if you're looking for something the entire family can play at once, you'll LOVE Wii Music, which allows up to four people at the same time. This one is a fun, creative collaborative music experience.

It's different from a lot of the other music games on the market (like Rock Band and Guitar Hero) because it's not competitive. You're not mimicking a song back to get a high score. - it's more like playing an actual instrument (with the use of the Wii remote and nunchuk - and if you have a Wii Fit, you can use it for adding rhythm!)

But it does take a little skill to get it to sound good - which is the ultimate goal here.

I like it for kids because there is an educational component to it, as the game gives you a history of the piece of music you're playing. You can have different parts or you can play with up to four people.

When you first put it in and play it walks you through a demo. You can create a video and rate it and create a virtual jacket for it. And if you have friends in other locations who have Wii music, you can send them your video - or they can add to it and send it back to you.

I think it will be especially fun in a party setting. In fact, I think I'll get one for my sister, so we can all play it together when we visit over Thanksgiving weekend.

Printing Pretty: The Epson Artisan 800

Brand loyalty - that's the goal of most consumer companies, and they put a lot of advertising dollars into creating it.

Of course, the best way to create a lifelong customer is to put out quality products at affordable prices.

Our family tends to stay with what we like. And when it comes to printers, we've always been a Hewlett-Packard family, dating back to the early 90's, when a friend working at HP helped us into a laser printer at an employee discount. That printer was a workhorse that we worked into the ground... and we've been buying HP ever since.

That laser replaced an old dot matrix model from Epson. Once we took possession of the HP laser, we barely gave Epson another thought.

But nearly twenty years later, Epson is still in business, has a reputation for terrific printers - and their new products are a far cry from that ancient dot matrix contraption.

Still, I did not expect to be swayed from my loyalty to HP when I opened the box of my new Artisan 800 All-In-One printer for home and business. Sure, its curvy black exterior looked sleek and sexy, especially compared with the bland white HP model I've been using the last five years. But I couldn't get that old dot matrix printer out of my mind...

...until I set this baby up.

WOWZAH. This printer ROCKS.

While not exactly "plug' n' play," setup was easy, thanks to extremely well written documentation. The only time I had a problem was when I tried connecting the wi-fi enabled printer to my wireless network, and that was because I tried to use an "advanced" method instead of the preferred setup (using an ethernet cable to connect the printer directly to your wireless router).

Fortunately, Epson provides its printer owners with several troubleshooting options. This is good, because I'm a little bit like my husband in that I like to figure it out myself (calling tech support is a last resort).

I went to their website and viewed a video that went through the process step by step, and voila! It was done.

I printed a test page and noticed how FAST this sucker goes, even in color -- up to 38 pages per minute (WAY faster than my old HP) - and this is a six-color process (instead of four), at a resolution of 4800 dpi.

"Our IT guy prefers Epson these days," my husband informed me.

And since I put it through its paces, I'm beginning to see why.

The Artisan has features I never knew I needed:

• It has separate trays for regular paper and photo paper, so you don't have to switch, as well as a tray for printing designs and text directly onto CD's.
• It handles all kinds of media for printing; you can bypass your computer and print directly from an SD card or camera.
• It not only prints photos beautifully, but it has a setting that will allow you to scan and restore photos that have faded.
• You can make photo enlargements right through the scanner.
• You can even print from video clips!
• The Artisan 800 has a built-in automatic document feeder, which is handy for multi-page copying, scanning or faxing
• You can purchase a duplex attachment to automatically create double-sided copies
• Ink is stored on six different color cartridges, so if you run low on one color, you only have to replace that (instead of the entire thing). And if you're running low on black, it will use the other color cartridges to create black ink (until you can put a new black one in).

The Artisan 800 has one feature that seems to have been designed to order for my family: You can create lined or graph paper at the touch of a button, which is a godsend for homework nights when your child tells you she's run out of paper and needs more NOW. (What? That's never happened to you?)

Another nifty feature allows you to turn your photos into coloring pages with a simple scan.

If there's any downside to using this printer it's that we have been having so much fun with it that we had to replace some of the ink rather quickly. Of course, there are now three family members using one printer instead of each of us using one of our own... and the first color we had to replace was the dark Cyan blue (which gives you an idea of how much of that notebook and graph paper my kid has been printing).

A full set of ink cartridges from Epson was a bit on the pricey side, compared to what I've been paying for the ones our HP uses. However, I checked them out over at Costco and found it was about the same as HP cartridges at OfficeMax. Epson claims their fast drying Claria high-definition ink is better quality and less likely to fade, so the extra cost is probably worth it (especially when printing photos).

The Artisan 800 - which retails for $299 - has turned us into Epson converts. Find out more here.

Baby, You Can Drive My Car: Chevy's New Traverse

"Mom, can we keep it?"

• -- My daughter, immediately after her first ride in the Chevy Traverse

My initial thought upon seeing the shiny new Traverse I was to drive for the next week was, "That thing is HUGE."

I had known I would be getting a crossover vehicle that seats seven, and I knew that GM was positioning it to compete with the Toyota Highlander, Ford Flex and Honda Pilot... but this baby felt a lot larger to me than my husband's Pilot. (It's about a foot longer, which explains how much roomier the interior feels; especially in the second and third-row seats.)

What I didn't know was how attractive it would be. Chevrolet has not been known recently for innovative styling on its vehicles -- but the Traverse is a beauty. I had it parked right next to a Lexus RX350 (which I think is the gold standard of luxury SUVs)... and I thought mine looked better.

I was reminded of a conversation I had with GM Vice Chairman Robert Lutz last year, who acknowledged that the company had erred by not paying enough attention to their products' quality or its styling -- especially when it came to the interiors.

So I was pleased to discover that Traverse is gorgeous inside, too. The model I drove was pretty nicely loaded: heated power leather seats and leather wrapped steering wheel, dual climate control, Bose audio system, OnStar service (which includes navigation).

The luxury extended to the rear seats as well: The second row seats were captain's chairs and my young passengers had their own climate control system and the ultimate kid amenity: rear seat DVD entertainment system (with wireless headsets AND a remote control), and a second moon roof. Is it any wonder my daughter wanted me to keep the car?

But I wasn't sure if I was going to enjoy driving it. I'm not really an SUV person. Aside from the issue of global warming, I have just always been more comfortable driving - and parking - smaller cars. However, now that my daughter is growing into a teenager... and I'm now  a part of a carpool... a larger vehicle makes sense to me.

The Traverse gets an estimated 17 miles per gallon in the city and 24 mpg on the highway, which isn't terrible (considering its size). It would be even better if Chevrolet comes out with a hybrid version (like its Tahoe, which gets similar mileage despite being a lot larger).

Mileage aside, I wondered if I could get used to driving such a large vehicle.

I discovered I could... and it didn't take any time at all.

For one thing, the Traverse is super easy to handle (that must be the "crossover" part of the equation -- driving it feels more like an auto than a truck). In fact, the turning radius is somewhat tighter than the little Volvo S60 I currently drive, making parking a snap.

Even better is a super cool ultrasonic rear parking assistance system, complete with rear view camera. Every time you go in reverse, an unobstructed camera view is superimposed on your rear view mirror. And as you back up, the system emits an audible beep every time you encounter something in your path.

I have to admit that the first time I saw this thing it kind of freaked me out. And then, I started to really like it. One of the things I DON'T like about my current car is its humongous blind spots that make reversing out of a parking space a dangerous proposition. While you can't rely totally on a rear view camera system like the one in the Traverse, it can help you see the stuff that wanders into your blind spots. This soon became my favorite feature on the vehicle.

My husband's favorite feature turned out to be the comfy seats. He's not the best passenger in the world, and wasn't too pleased to hear that I was the only one with permission to drive the Traverse. We took it out to Pomona over the weekend for our daughter's state gymnastics competition. The traffic on the way home was miserable, but my husband didn't mind - because he actually FELL ASLEEP. (In nearly 20 years, this is something he has NEVER done when I'm driving. He's usually too busy cringing to get that relaxed.)

We enjoyed the ride in the Traverse so much that I ended up doing all the driving for the rest of the weekend... and took over most of our group's daily carpool duties. (Sorry about that GM, but this should explain why I returned the car with nearly 800 additional miles in the space of a one week!)

With that much driving, I feel I really gave the Traverse a good test - and it passed. If I decide to get a crossover for my next car, this one will definitely be on my list.

Looking for a new car in SoCal? Or just an aficionado? I'm giving away a family four-pack of tickets to the Los Angeles Auto Show. Enter at SocalMom here.