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Full user review
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2.5 stars
"Not so good."
Pros: It lights up
Cons: It does not do a good job.
Summary: I am writing here about the Ambient Devices Brookstone WeatherCast because it is not listed here on CNET as a separate product.
I bought the WeatherCast product from Brookstone as a Christmas gift for somebody else and am extremely disappointed.
The non-premium service is supposed to give a choice of 5 city locations closest to where it is used. The city selector gives NYC and POU for New York City and Poughkeepsie, and then SPR? PP? and NL? Where the hell are these places? Page 12 of the manual advises me to go to www.myambient.com for a list of cities in my area but the home page only shows menu choices for "my devices" "browse.devices" "browse.channels" and "support".
The city list is actually located at the URL http://www.ambientdevices.com/cat/weathercitylist.html
which I discovered after much wasted time.
I guess the good people at MyAmbient dot com believe that Springfield Mass. is closer to Northern NJ, than say Trenton or Atlantic City? Or perhaps it was cheaper to group city locations in series of 5 places regardless of what was closer to your actual physical location? Perhaps this was done to encourage frustrated users to sign up for the premium service!
At the time of this writing it is 10:43 on 3/05/08 and the NYC 5 day forecast (EXTENDED VIEW) shows for TODAY a HIGH of 33 and a LOW of 33! How can that be? The High and Low are the Same? Changing the mode to EXPANDED VIEW shows the current temperature as 21 degrees, which seems accurate.
To get local weather reports by zip code requires signing up for premium service which you must do by credit card before you even know how much the service cost. This is a "free" 3 month trial that requires your credit card number. You have to cancel the subscription manually later....
This product will surely make your yearn for the good ol' days where you just stuck your head out the window to see what the weather would be like. At least there were no monthly fees for that!
If you live downtown in a major Metropolitan area this product may be worth getting. But otherwise save the landfill space and and just watch the weather channel on TV or got to www.weather.com.
