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As with all technology, a recent purchase of a modern DSLR is likely to result in quick disappointment as a newer model is announced, in increasingly shorter timeframes. To update the 350D, I bought a Canon EOS 500D in December. It’s an excellent camera with some fantastic features for the price. Yesterday, Canon announced the imminent arrival of the 500D‘s successor, the Canon EOS 550D. That camera is also known by its other moniker, the T2i.

The obvious focus of the new 550D is video capture, something the 500D already handled with aplomb. The camera is capable of 3.7 fps and an ISO range of 100-6400, expandable to an unusable 12800. Borrowing from its bigger EOS brothers, there’s a 63-zone metering system and 18MP image sensor backed by the DIGIC 4 Imaging Processor. Full 1080p HD video capture is possible, backed up by an interesting new feature for standard definition video recording: Movie Crop is capable of providing an almost 7x zoom into the field of view without any loss in image quality. Movie Crop is similar to the older digital zoom function found on cameras, though the difference is in the way the image is processed, being cropped and captured directly from the imaging sensor instead of a magnification of individual picture elements.

The Canon EOS 550D should be in stores in the USA within the next two months or so, costing about the same as the EOS 500D. More information can be found here.

I wasn’t an early adopter of the new Apple Magic Mouse. Overall, the Mighty Mouse with its single trackball in its wired and wireless variations has served me well. Though there is a lot of criticism leveled at that peripheral, I was quite comfortable using it and was even adept at left and right clicking at will. I found the shape quite comfortable and something that accentuated the experience of working with a Mac. Since my current black MacBook doesn’t have a multi-touch trackpad, I grabbed a Magic Mouse on a recent flyby of the local Apple store.

The Magic Mouse is sleek and attractive. Boxed in a clear perspex container, it exudes the charm a gadget costing more than ZAR 800 should. There are no unsightly wires and absolutely no button or trackpad to be seen. The smooth, curved surface contains a discreet Apple logo. The mouse is satisfyingly weighty and slides quite nicely on a smooth surface.

Setup on the MacBook running Snow Leopard was extremely simple: unpack the mouse, switch it on (batteries are already installed) and let the Bluetooth stacks communicate.

I was a bit apprehensive about the use of the touch interface on the mouse. Within minutes, I was scrolling easily through documents in Pages and web sites in Firefox. It’s an incredibly intuitive way of working. A brief stop in the Mouse preferences pane to change the function of the secondary button is the usual configuration change I make for every Apple mouse.

Moving the index finger across the length of the mouse enables scrolling top to bottom. Left to right scrolling is achieved by moving the index finger along the width of the mouse. A nice feature is the ability to zoom into the screen by pressing the ctrl key and scrolling upward. A sideways two-finger swipe assists scrolling through iPhoto libraries, for example. When not in use, the mouse powers down to help conserve the batteries – hopefully, these won’t need replacing too often.

The Magic Mouse enables an intuitive interaction with the Mac. I took to it without a minute’s hesitation and already find myself trying to scroll without using the scroll wheel on the G2S‘ Logitech mouse. Most certainly pricey, but an absolute joy to use. I’ll have to think about replacing the iMac‘s mouse next…