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“I have been torn between buying the Minolta Dimage X...”

written by York. on 01/05/2002

Good Points
Good looking, photo quality good.

Bad Points
mp3 funtion really silly, front cover appears to cover flash.

General Comments
I have been torn between buying the Minolta Dimage X and the Fuji finepix 50i digital cameras for the past week and finally decided on the 50i (although the minolta looks cooler, the 50i is supposed to deliver better quality pictures). The only problem is finding the camera for the right price (I live in Europe). In continental europe, the stores want EUR 750. In the UK only 3 stores carry the product (exclusive agreement with Fuji): Dixons, Curries and PC World. Of these 3 Curries is the cheapest (GBP 359 incl. tax / EUR 588) but none of the stores are allowed to ship internationally so I have to get a friend to buy it for me. The product may be good but the company's distribution policy really sucks. Talk about price fixing! As far as the camera goes... if you can get the 40i at a good price go for it: there is no difference between the 50i and the 40i, except that Fuji decided to copy Sony's consumer-unfriendly approach to making proprietory hardware incorporated in the 50i (meaning that Fuji can charge any price they want on the spare parts without fear of competition!). Since I am a typical sucker I will probably buy the 50i if only because the Curries price is not bad. As a final note, the mp3 function is truly silly. Think of it as a waste of R&D costs which have to be recuperated in the camera's price.