Nestle Good Start Baby Formula

By C.M.

Okay so for years now we have been avoiding Nestle and their products because of their CEO's previous stance on water - he claimed water was a commodity, as opposed to a human right. Here at Product Reviews Canada we fully support water being a human right, and boycott any company who refuses to acknowledge that it is a human right.

See also

Water Wars / Boycotting Nestle Corporation

Nestle Boycott, holding water supplies hostage

Since then the Nestle Corp. and its CEO have softened their stance on water and now admits that water is a human right. So the boycott was successful.

Changes still need to be made to how Nestle operates and prevent them from hoarding water supplies in many countries, but this is a good start.

Thus, we at Product Reviews Canada are no longer boycotting Nestle at this time - but we reserve the right to resume a boycott if the company doesn't fix its evil ways and goes back to hoarding water.

Ahem.

Thus we can now talk about the following product:

Nestle Good Start Baby Formula

This was the 2nd formula my wife and I tried on Baby Richard and he gulps it down greedily. So that is certainly a good sign with respect to taste.

The formula in question is supposedly "designed to be easy to digest" and contains:

• Omega 3
• Omega 6
• Dietary Fibre

Along with a host of other vitamins and nutrients good for the growth of babies. The product comes as a ready-made formula, requiring no water to be added. Just warm it up to a suitable temperature (via holding the formula in your hand for 15 minutes before serving, or a similar method). Do not use a microwave!

We first tried Nestle Good Start Baby Formula because it came in a free package of baby supplies that Nestle uses to promote their products. (Offer only available in Canada.)

See Nestle Baby Program at

https://www.nestle-baby.ca/en/register/begin

Having tried it, and seeing that Baby Richard gulps it down, we earlier today bought more of the product having exhausted the free samples Nestle sent us.

Now we may try other products in the future so we have something to compare it to, but so far we have only tried this and the formula which was provided to us at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto. And thus far he seems to enjoy the Nestle formula more than the hospital formula.

So...

Nestle Formula 1
Hospital Formula 0

To be continued when we try other brands of formula...

Playtex Baby Soothers

By C.M.

So my wife and I purchased baby soothers today from Shoppers Drug Mart. The brand on the label was Playtex, which is usually known for making feminine hygiene products.

So we gave it to Baby Richard and...

He spat it out.

Tried several times to see if he liked it, but he was not going for it. Maybe because he was hungry at the time. Unclear why he did not like it, but he definitely went for the spitting it out approach.

We shall try again later to see if he has changed his mind, but for now it seems Richard simply doesn't like soothers. No fault on Playtex for that.

On the plus side, we chose this particular soother (not the one shown in the photo) because it is "clinically tested" to prevent deformations to the baby's front teeth.

However so far we are not going to be able to test that claim because Richard keeps spitting it out. We have to try again later.

To be continued...

Born Free Active Flow Baby Bottle

By C.M.

So we recently purchased a "Born Free ActiveFlow" baby bottle...

And we are not impressed. The bottle didn't come with the nipple part, and none of our other nipples from other bottles matched this particular bottle.

So my wife just threw the whole bottle out, calling it "useless", and quite annoyed at the fundamental waste of money when a company ships a product that has missing parts.

The bottle was, supposedly, designed to reduce colic and other issues, but now we will never get to test it because it was missing a rather important part - and my wife has no patience for products that are "useless" as a result.

I have decided to try contacting Born Free to see if they can send a replacement (it is too late to ask for a replacement part, the wife also took out the trash). So at this point we shall see if the company has a good reputation for customer service or if they are a trashy company not worth spending your money on.

Stay tuned...

The Price of Diapers, Cost Comparisons

By C.M. - June 2017.

So the wife and I decided to do some price analysis of diapers and the best places to buy them since we are expecting our first child within the coming weeks.

Thus we ended up comparing prices from various sources, including Costco, Rexall PharmaPlus (which presumably has similar prices to other pharmacies and grocery stores), and also a cloth diaper delivery company known as "Happy Nappy" (local to Toronto and the GTA).

Costco
$0.22 per diaper, 192 diapers = $37.99 + HST
                    $110 for 500 diapers

Rexall PharmaPlus
$0.61 per diaper, 24 diapers = $12.99 + HST
                    $305 for 500 diapers
or
$0.31 per diaper, 92 diapers = $24.99 + HST
                    $155 for 500 diapers

Shoppers Drug Mart
Unknown - For some silly reason Shoppers Drug Mart doesn't list diapers on their website, but they do list wipes. Really annoying. Maybe it varies by store???

Cloth Diaper Delivery from Happy Nappy
Impossible to do a proper price analysis as Happy Nappy charges a weekly rate of $23.87 + HST for whatever number of diapers you need - the amount is apparently unlimited.

In theory a newborn baby might use 8 diapers per day (they get changed quite often as they have not yet learned to control their bowels) a newborn would use 56 diapers per week. Possibly more/less.

It ends up being:

$0.48 per diaper, possibly 56 diapers = $23.87 + HST
                    $240 for 500 diapers or unlimited diapers over 8.9 weeks

Even if a baby ended up using 100 cloth diapers per week (which is a ridiculous amount, but lets use it for comparison purposes), the cost still ends up being more expensive than disposable diapers from Costco.

$0.27 per diaper, 100 diapers = $23.87 + HST
                    $240 for 890 or unlimited diapers over 8.9 weeks

What you are really paying for with Happy Nappy is the delivery and pickup convenience, which is why they can charge over double what Costco charges for disposable diapers.

In theory you can also feel like you are "saving the environment" since cloth diapers are reused again and again - ignoring that the cleaning agents used to clean the cloth diapers are harmful to the environment. So maybe don't brag about your environmental friendliness.

Still, if you are the type of person who wants to use cloth instead and wants the convenience of diapers delivered to your home, perhaps Happy Nappy is a good thing for you.

Even though cloth diapers are more work during changing time... so how are they more convenient?

What you really learn here is that when it comes to diapers, you save way more money when you buy in bulk from Costco.

The only problem then is what happens when your baby grows too fast and outgrows the diaper size before you can use all of them? So clearly you need to be careful you don't buy too many and end up not using them.

NOTE - TWINS, TRIPLETS, ETC

For someone who ends up having twins, triplets, or more babies - the cloth diaper delivery from Happy Nappy suddenly makes way more sense financially. Since the cost per week is the same regardless of whether you have 1 baby, 2 babies, 3 babies or more - the value of the Happy Nappy service dramatically improves. Just don't tell them how many babies you have though or they might try to charge you twice or thrice as much...

The Micro Air Conditioner that runs on Solar Power from your Window

What if you could buy an air conditioner that only weighs less than 10 lbs, fits in a small space in your window, and runs off of a solar panel that is on the rear of the air conditioner and facing the great outdoors?

It wouldn't be very powerful. The solar panel is small and only produces 10 Watts of power.

10 Watts of power, producing 100 BTUs of cooling. That isn't much, but here is the trick... you don't just buy 1. You buy one for every window in your home.

So if you have 5 windows in your home, you buy five of these micro air conditioners and put one in each window - producing 500 BTUs and cooling your home without a single cent of electricity from the grid.

Each micro air conditioner unit sells for $89 each and includes everything you need to install it in your window.

Pros

• Affordable, saves on electricity whereas conventional air conditioners cost way more on your electricity bill.
• Constantly cooling your home - even at night, using battery energy stored up from the day before.
• Because it cools your home constantly from multiple units it prevents your home from heating and cooling and heating and cooling cycles that a normal air conditioner goes through since most people only turn a conventional air conditioner on during time periods when it is more affordable electricity prices.
• Easy to transport, since it weighs less than 10 lbs.
• Easy to install. You just slide it into the gap of your window and window frame - and adjust the wings to make the window air tight.
• If you already own a conventional air conditioner you will save money on electricity costs.
• Perfect for people who want to live in an off the grid home.

Cons

There is one big problem with this product. It currently doesn't exist. We came up with the idea for the invention earlier today (June 21st 2017).

Slightly larger units producing 20 Watts of power / 200 BTUs and similar designs could be used to fill larger spaces in windows, providing even more cooling power.

The problem with conventional air conditioners is that even a small air conditioner uses 500 Watts of power and produces 5000 BTUs, but the amount of electricity being used and the subsequent cost is outrageous.

A single 500 Watt air conditioner costs the user 0.5 kWh per hour. During peak hours in Ontario (all electricity rates below are from Toronto Hydro, each kWh costs you 15.7 cents, but if you are running your air conditioner during peak hours for 25 hours per week it will cost you $1.9625 per week just for that amount of time being used*.

* You might also be running it during mid peak and off peak hours, costing 11.3 cents or 7.7 cents per kWh.

Do that for 25 weeks of the year for a single year and that is $98.125 (plus tax).

If you let your 500 Watt air conditioner run constantly for 28 days it would cost you the following:

100 Peak Hours at 15.7 cents per kWh = $7.85

120 Mid Peak Hours at 11.3 cents per kWh = $6.78

432 Off Peak Hours at 7.7 cents per kWh = $16.632

Total $29.262 for letting your 500 Watt air conditioner run constantly for 28 days. That doesn't seem like much after all, but it does add up over time. (And do you really need to run it constantly?)

Of course, the price skyrockets if you are using a 1000 Watt or 1500 Watt air conditioner, effectively doubling or tripling the costs.

A single month of running a 1500 Watt air conditioner will cost $87.786 in electricity costs, roughly equal to the cost of the proposed $89 micro air conditioner - which a person could use 6 or more months per year with zero cost.

Slightly larger 20, 30 or 40 Watt air conditioners could still be made to be lightweight, producing more electricity - plus blocking out sunlight from your home - and producing 200, 300 or 400 BTUs of cooling.

"Micro air conditioners" do already exist - or at least they are called that. They still weigh between 26 and 74 lbs, and they are still pretty large and clunky. Clearly, their definition and my definition of the word "micro" differs. Why are they using the word micro to sell their products, when that word really doesn't represent what they are selling?

The air conditioning industry in my opinion should be thinking smaller, more efficient, and solar-powered.

In the future every window in a person's home could potentially be filled with a solar-powered air conditioner during the hottest months of the year - allowing people to cool their homes and keep them cool, using zero electricity from the grid.

How to Uninstall Chromium

By C.M.

This isn't so much a software review as a "how to get rid of annoying software guide".

So last year my wife installed a printer driver on my laptop and ever since then whenever I start my computer, a program called Chromium starts too.

Chromium - not to be confused with Google Chrome, which is a completely separate program.

So ever since then I have been annoyed whenever Chromium starts whenever my computer starts or restarts. It was just a fundamental annoyance.

I have tried uninstalling the program several times, but was always unsuccessful - until today when I finally got so annoyed I was determined to search for and find a solution.

In my Google search for how to get rid of the blasted annoying Chromium I came across a Microsoft Help Forum page on the same topic. Some poor schmuck was also trying to get rid of the annoying Chromium and was not getting much help from the Microsoft tech either...

See https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-other_settings/stop-chromium-from-autostarting/050611e2-31e5-478b-b536-131f6c3506be however it was useless and only serves to show how Microsoft techs apparently are clueless morons.

To summarize the poor schmuck explains how is trying to uninstall Chromium and this is how the Microsoft tech guy responds:

Hi,

Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community. I understand your concern and I am glad to assist you.

Sorry for the inconvenience caused.

Appreciate you for trying to fix the issue by yourself.

I would suggest you to try the fix below.

click on the Chrome icon in the task bar/system tray, find the ‘Let Chrome run…’ option and click/tap it to disable/toggle the checkmark off.

The behaviour can also be changed through the browser’s main settings page:
Click on the Chrome menu (or press Alt+E)

 Etc, etc.

Basically the tech guy had completely missed the point. This is not Chrome. This is Chromium, and Chromium is obviously not the same program and is rather annoying to uninstall.

So why is Chromium so difficult to uninstall you might ask?

#1. It isn't listed in the Program Files where you would normally Add / Remove Programs.

#2. When you do a search of installed programs, Chromium doesn't even come up.

#3. When you scroll down through installed programs you might find Chrome installed (if you have it) but you won't find Chromium listed as an officially installed program.

#4. Effectively, Chromium was installed as malware on my computer without my permission.

• It all dates back to my wife installing a printer driver and when doing so the program she installed included Chromium as a bonus.
• Normally when you install something like that they will sometimes ask if you want to install a bonus program and if you are smart you will remove the checkmark or X from the little box so you don't install an unnecessary and potentially annoying program.
• Unfortunately my wife did not do that and installed Chromium by accident. :(

#5. The Uninstall file for Chromium is actually just an useless dat file. (See further below.)

So how did I finally remove it from my computer?

Well, since I couldn't find the install folder and it was hidden somewhere so I had to do a search of the entire C drive of my laptop - the whole bloody thing, which takes awhile, but it was necessary to find the hidden files.

And thus I found all the shortcuts - including one in the Start Menu, which was causing Chromium to start every time my computer started or restarted.

I also found where all the Chromium files were hidden:

C:\Users\USERNAMEMAYVARY\AppData\Local\Chromium

(Note - Depending on how Chromium gets unintentionally installed on your computer, the location might vary. There are a lot of programs out there which like to sneak malware and bonus programs on to your computer.)

So I deleted all the Chromium files from the Start Menu, deleted all the shortcuts...

Within the C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Chromium location was a file marked Uninstall.

So I clicked it, figuring this seemed like a good idea. But as mentioned above, the Uninstall is actually just a dat file - and useless - which convinces me that Chromium is about as malware-esque as you can get, because they really don't want you uninstalling it.

So then I just had fun with the Delete button. I deleted everything in the Chromium folder, and then deleted the Chromium folder itself. Everything is now gone.

FINALLY!

Seriously, Chromium is annoying. I never used it as a program. I never wanted it. And getting rid of it is like getting rid of a cockroach, tick or Donald Trump - it is a lot harder to do than you expect.

Good luck to you!