Digital Blue: QX3 Microscope
by ThinkGeek
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Our Price: $143.99 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $33.00 (click here) Category: Digital Camera See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Digital Blue: QX3 Microscope
Customer Review: fantastic for stamp and coin collecting
Summary: 5 Stars
I've had mine for a few years now and it's one of the best tools for my coin and stamp collections.Customer Review: Careless software, noisy image sensor
Summary: 4 Stars
The software for Windows is rather careless. It is hard wired for rather low screen resolution, (it's either VGA or XGA), and sets the resolution "for you" like so much kid's software. Unfortunately, unlike every other software I've had that does it, it doesn't restore the video settings when you exit. I found a freeware program that restores the settings, and I now run it from inside a .BAT file, but this is careless. Intel needed to write better software than this to make a profit in the consumer products business. They didn't, and they had to bow out.The image sensor is also really noisy. I don't know if it's CCD or something cheaper. I suppose this was necessary to build it to a low price point. But it is annoying.
But, it is better then the optical microscope I had as a kid 30 years ago. But that one came with better prepared slides. The USB powering is very nice. The driver provided is TWAIN, so you could acquire images from image editing software if you choose.
Customer Review: Lots of fun for the money
Summary: 4 Stars
People giving this item a bad review have apparently never seen the quality of microscope (or telescope, for that matter) that you can usually get for [this price]; they're usually so bad as to be nearly completely worthless.On the other hand, we have had one of these for over a year, and we have had quite a bit of fun with it. It's NORMAL to have a hard time telling what you're looking at at 200x; things look very different there. And the depth of field at that kind of magnification is close to zero; you have to focus very carefully. This is not a problem specific to this unit, it's a problem with high magnification in general.
It is breakable, so you should't give it to a kid who's not capable of being careful with it.
In short, I think this is an excellent toy, fun for the kids and educational.
Customer Review: Intel Play QX3 on my iMac DV SE
Summary: 4 Stars
Bought this refurbished microscope for less than $40 via Amazon. Got it last night. By the look of the packaging, I would have thought that it was brand new. My six year old is having a blast with it, using our iMac and Mac OS X 10.1.Cons - this scope is discontinued. No Mac software bundled with the scope.
Pros - Inexpensive. Nicely designed. Like the fact that it is USB bus powered; eliminates yet another power cord. Works well under Mac OS X 10.1 with the open source (free) maccam sofware available via sourceforge (although maccam doesn't save Quicktime/time elapsed movies).
Haven't tested "Microscope 1.0" for Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar), which does seem to support creating Quicktime/time elapsed movies.
Customer Review: Great fun, great service
Summary: 4 Stars
I really like my QX3. It is worth the time it takes to make the fine adjustments. I bought mine several months ago, so when it stopped working I was disappointed. However, I just got on the company website and after only a couple of messages they determined the machine had malfunctioned. In two days they sent me a replacement and I am back in business. Their customer service was great and very patient with me. For the price, it is a wonderful toy.