H'lo everybody,
Does anybody have any hands-on experience with purchasing a digital usb microscope for a child? EVERYBODY seems to be making these things now and the prices range from 50 to a thousand dollars. It seems like a REALLY great opportunity to get ripped off. No clear standards, no basis of comparison. My goal is to get one good enough so that my grandson can see single celled creatures moving around in pond scum. Is 150x enough, or do we need 200x? Issues: Magnification. Are the magnification ratios comparable between manufacturers. It seems that some manufacturers are getting high ratings by digital, rather than optical means. Is that fair? Or even by telling you to move the microscope away from the subject. Is there any way to get a handle on the quality of the optics? Will I care? If there is no change in OPTICAL magnification, then magnification boils down to lighting and resolution, right? Resolution: is megapixels the proper measure of resolution in these systems? Lighting. The microscope itself has led lights on it. Some 4, some 8. For higher magnfications, more light is needed. How much? More led's can raise the price substantially. Image capture: Some seem to contain a camera, some perhaps just to pass the image through to a computer. Not clear how this makes a difference, given that the "end user" is a computer, in any case. Stand: Stands are extra and range from 14 to 100 bucks. Does it make a difference Operating System: Many of these things seem to top out at Vista or XP. Seller: Lord, I would pay a little extra to deal with somebody who knew what they were doing! Anybody have any thoughts? Please assume that I haven't a clue what I am up to, here. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/nthompson http://www.cusf.org
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