Haha, thanks for some of the kind words Wabbit, its good to meet someone who can take an argument with an objective stand and not feel offended. Would throughly enjoy this discussion.
Though I must say, the red color was tad too striking!
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I like the term "gadget-chasers". Good one Omre. This is just my opinion, but I do believe that all or most consumers are "gadget-chasers", the only difference is financial accessibility, or to put it blantly, disposable income. As for logical reasoning, and prioritizing of needs, people have a tendancy of self justification if disposble income facilitates. There is a difference between "needs" and wants", but if "wants" can be facilitated financially, the line in-between can be a tad blurry. Consumerism at work.
Let's avoid the moral dilemma of this discourse. For as Jesus loves you... He loves me too
. Peace Bro!
I fully, totally, absolutely agree there! It's sad but true, many consumers are "gadget-chasers", particularly accurate is the "tendency of self-justification". In psychology we term this as 'self-serving biases', which is unfortunately human nature unless consciously rectified. I must admit that sometimes, even I find myself exaggerating a strength of the camera I have, and after taking a step back, realize that these small differences are not too significant. The typical setting would be Navlem and I comparing Canon vs Sony... Haha.
The thing about financial accessibility is something I didn't consider in detail too, I'll come back to that later.
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It will be interesting if we part-take in a social experiment, and start a thread on "G1 or FZ28" or "G1 or Canon", just for example, and gather the responses. We may just see facets of our arguments presented by others. At the end of the day, values are perceived, and always multi-faceted.
I can only agree here to a small extent. I personally believe that this will not work. Yes, we will get multi-faceted opinions and it is probably the only minimal cost and reasonable test we can do. But my opinion of opinions is that opinions can never become facts without statistical testing (Very paradoxical!). At most, we can construct several hypotheses from these opinions, but it is difficult and costly to conduct a good statistical inferential test to prove these points.
This is the same problem with many review sites too. While some have attempted to be as objective as possible, I have not seen a site that acknowledges random errors due to small sample. For instance, most camera models are only tested with one copy of that camera, and each trial is probably only tested less than 3 times? While many don't report, but I don't believe they'd do a good one: for instance testing 20 sets of the same model, each trial done at least 5 times, which amounts to about 100 data-points for a good statistical analysis. It is probably too time and $$ costly for the amateur hobbyist or even the commercial sectors. Because of this, some reviews are awfully misleading, and often over-exaggerate small differences.
To sum it all up, I feel that we're actually agreeing from two different perspectives. The way I see it, your point of view is trying to exposit how Panasonic might be able to exploit the consumer market, despite potentially overlooking the points about their technical weaknesses. Whereas my point of view seems to be directed at the fact that, Panasonic's 4/3 system is not a wise system to step into at this moment, due to the lack of their lenses and sensor superiority, and thus to be a good system, Panasonic should develop their lenses.
Where both our views meet is due to the fact that most average consumers out there will not see the cost-vs-value being all the technical details than the slightly more 'hardcore amateur' people can see. Perhaps I should not even use cost-vs-value as some serious amateurs there are willing to spend on irrational buys - buying something only slightly better, but few times the price. And secondly, Panasonic is not definitely after being a good system, but being a profitable system, potentially sad but true.
I believe this is where your point about financial accessilibity really shows. However, I still feel that rational buying should not be simply about price-points, but cost-vs-benefit. This is where I will make one last disagreement against what you mentioned about entry level vs semi-pro cameras.
Just for convenience sake we'll re-iterate this example using the same Canon cameras mentioned above, but the argument applies through all system. You mentioned that due to the price-point, Canon 40D should be categorized as a entry level. You see, if we go by this point of view, we would have rated also that the new entry level Canon 500D become a semi-pro. If i'm not mistaken, it retails about only ~$150 dollars less than the current price of a semi-pro 50D. Trends have shown that for most electronics, their prices drop about 25% (correct me if I am wrong) approximately 3 to 6 months after launch.
That example was a little longer than I expected, but the point I'm trying to put across is, we should not categorize things, or even buy them based on simply price-point vs personal disposable income. I personally feel that doing so is rather uninformed or otherwise irrational. Even if someone is with tons of disposable income, it is still possible to get the best cost vs benefit out of your purchases. Again with the same example, why should anyone buy not buy a more "bang for bucks" semi-pro compared to a over-the-top priced latest model? Unless that individual get [mis-]persuaded by the salesman of course
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Once again, thanks for your time and effort Wabbit!
