Why I think an Aeroplan mile/point is worth 1.6 cents and if you should collect them with a credit card.

Aeroplan points, Air miles, HBC points, PetroPoints, etc, etc, all the way back to Club Z Points at Zellers. They seem like such a gimmick and just a way to influence your spending. The thing is, they are everywhere now and you can't really avoid it, so you might as well take advantage of it. I have calculated how much I think they are worth so read on.

I personally collect Air Miles and Aeroplan Points so I just talk about those. This posting is about Aeroplan Points specifically, but the same techniques can be used to figure out Air Miles. You can read these related articles...

• Collecting Air Miles and their Value
• Air Miles Versus Aeroplan Points
• Scotia Bank No Fee Money Back Visa Card Review
• TD Travel Visas

Note: I interchange the word points and miles throughout this article. They mean the same thing. An Aeroplan Point and an Aeroplan Mile are the same.

To calculate the value of an Aeroplan point I priced out a flight on their website using points and then priced out a similar flight the same day using Air Canada's website. From that, I determined an Aeroplan point is worth 1.6 cents/point. I will explain later how I came to this.

How to Collect Aeroplan Points

Aeroplan, first of all, is free and there are three different ways to collect.

• You can apply for an Aeroplan card and just keep it on you. If you shop at stores that are affiliated with them (Future Shop, Esso, etc) then you just hand them your card and you collect some points whenever you purchase something.
• You use it whenever you fly with Air Canada or some other Star Alliance member airline. You will receive a certain number of Aeroplan points whenever you fly somewhere. This is free as well.
• You apply for a CIBC Aeroplan VISA card. There is a fee for these cards. $29/year will give you the CIBC AeroClassic VISA card that will give you 1 point for every $2 you put on the card. $120/year will give you a CIBC AeroGold VISA card that will give you 1.5 points for every $1 you spend on it.

So you may get aeroplan miles on any purchase if you use your Visa and at Aeroplan affiliates you can "double dip" by collecting Aeroplan miles using your Aeropan card that they give you and paying for your actual purchase with your credit card and getting aeroplan miles from CIBC.

These points can later be used to buy flights, car rentals, hotels rooms, and a few other products. With flights and car rentals you will still have to pay the taxes, but the base fees are covered by the Aeroplan points.

So this is the basics of the system. Now I will discuss what they are actually worth.

What is Value of an Aeroplan Mile? (How I Figure Out How Much They Are Worth)

This is an interesting question. Basically, I went through the steps of booking a flight through Aeroplan and through the Air Canada website from Calgary to Victoria.

The cheapest price I could find for the flight was $321.54 including taxes (this was with the no baggage and other deduction options). With Aeroplan, it was 15,000 Aeroplan miles plus I had to pay $78.80 for taxes and other fees.

So I can assume my 15,000 Aeroplan miles were worth $242.74 (the difference in money out of my pocket). This means one Aeroplan mile is worth around 1.6 cents.

Note: Other products/rewards require more or less Aeroplan miles, which can make them worth more or less money than 1.6 cents/aeroplan point.

Basically, my advice is to check out how much money you "actually" save by using Aeroplan miles to purchase something and how many Aeroplan points it takes and plug it into this formula:
Aeroplan Miles Value = Money Saved / Aeroplan Miles Used

Should I Get a Aeroplan Visa Card or Upgrade My Existing One?

Should you pay the annual fee to get Aeroplan Miles? This depends on how much money you spend on your credit card and what you will use your miles for. The more you spend, the more likely an upgrade will be a good thing.

Now that we did our calculations above to see what an aeroplan point is worth we can figure this out. Ask yourself what you want to use it for. For me, it is flights.

I will show you whether you should upgrade for the flight example I did above. To calculate this I made a formula that took into account the annual fee and what the value of an aeroplan mile is to figure out how much money you would need to spend to at least recover the annual fee in aeroplan miles value. The formula for getting the $29 basic card is 58 / Aeroplan Miles Value. The formula for the $120 gold card is 80 / Aeroplan Miles Value. If you want to see how I figured these out, send me an email and I'll send you the proofs.

For example, if I value an Aeroplan mile at 1.6 cents, this is the formula:
58 / 0.016 = $3625
80 / 0.016 = $5000
This means that I would need to put $3625/year on my AeroClassic Visa card to make it worth the fee and $5000/year to upgrade to the AeroGold Visa card. Once you have spent those amounts, the extra aeroplan miles you have earned are valued at the same amount as the fee you have paid.

Note: If the value you get from an Aeroplan mile is greater than 1.6 cents/mile, the amount you need to spend goes down. Just plug the value into the formula and you will see. Hotels, car rentals, vacations, etc might be a better deal.

This isn't the whole story either. There are other perks to these cards that I have not talked about. The AeroGold has better options for flights and other advantages so you should actually read up on it yourself. Sometimes there will be a feature to the card that will outweight the value I am talking about here (lower interest rate, other discounts, insurance coverage, etc.)

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Well, by the numbers this week was worse than last week. I was definitely more consistent though. I have written more articles that are sitting in draft pretty much done so I will be able to publish one a day to keep fresh content coming out on the site.

Here is this weeks graph and web traffic statistics. You can see I pretty much average around 16 unique visitors a day. Since two of these will be my access from work and from home I can assume it is 14 "actual" visitors.

Web Traffic Graph

Web Traffic

My Adsense revenue was pretty pathetic. $0.54 total.

Adsense Revenue for Week 7

Google Not Allow Same Ads to Appear Twice?

I tried to place the same horizontal text ads farther down in the page and they wouldn't show up. When I removed the ones already at the top, then they would appear. I'm thinking Google doesn't allow some ad styles to show up twice on the same page. Could someone verify this for me?

Reactionary Blogs

I have been seeing a lot of aeropland and airmiles Google searches directing traffic to my site so I wrote two more articles. One on the value of an Aeroplan point and the other comparing the two rewards programs and which one is better suited to collecting via a credit card.

I want to see if it attracts more traffic than before. Hopefully ad clicks increase as well.

Goals For The Upcoming Week

I'm going to start outlining this each week to help me to commit to gaining traffic to my site. This week I am going to publish an article every day and at the end of the week I will have 3 articles submitted to ezinearticles.com.

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My parents always had an Alberta Motorist's Association membership and I had never thought of getting one until recently.

I had always had a negative opinion about it after I moved to a larger city. Those really snowy, ugly days when I figured I would have my vehicle break-down were the days with the 2 hour tow truck waits anyways, so I figured I would never get my money out of it. Plus, I change my own tires if I get a flat because I don't have time to wait. This year, I decided to sign up again though and it has some other perks.

A membership costs around $80, so even if you use it once during the year for a tow or boost, it will probably pay for itself. But included with this, there are a ton of places that offer discounts for AMA members. Everything from my eye glasses, movie tickets, car rentals (North America and Europe), hotel discounts, and a lot of entertainment events.

For example, I live in Alberta and you can see the member benefits at this link.

The thing is, you need to pay attention and take advantage of it. For example, Lenscrafters gives 30% off an order for AMA members. Well a pair of glasses can run you $300 fairly easily. That's $100 right there.

So my rant isn't really to say how great AMA. It is basically insurance on your road activities, but this insurance can be free if you take into account the other discounts. Take a look at the discounts you get. If you can add them up to $80 you might as well get a membership.

Web Page for Alberta Motor Association

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Yeah, this article is a year too late, but I'm going to write it anyway. I decided it was time to get an mp3 player back in May and iPod is the defacto standard right now.

Personally, I was sold on the video that the iPod was now capable of. So I did a bit of research and found that there were tons selling on eBay for around 100 bucks less than retail (I still had to pay the shipping). So I ordered up a nice black 30 GB iPod and awaited its arrival.

I have to say it is an awesome little device. The interface is intuitive, the screen is bright, and the battery life is decent. The iTunes software isn't the best, but it does the trick.

Music

Nice and simple. Simply put your cd's in the drive, iTunes will import them, and then put them on your iPod when it's connected. It is simple to organize your music as well. If you want to re-categorize an album, you can just select all the songs and change them all at once.

Video

Unfortunatley you can only play mp4 or the quicktime format of video. If you have a good collection of video already as avi or mpeg format you are going to have to convert it or redownload it in the right format. Finding a good freeware video encoder is annoying and most are a $40 license.

The video for the most part looks awesome though. You only get a couple hours of battery life out of your iPod when playing video, but the screen is nice and bright and it works well when you are in an airplane or taking transit.

I find the best video are the cartoons (Family Guy, Simpsons, etc.). The colors are so bright, it makes it really easy to see.

A Portable Movie Player

Another cool option is to buy the A/V cable for the iPod (it's cheap on eBay). Now your iPod has become a portable digital movie player. Just plug one end of the A/V into the iPod and the RCA jacks on the other end into a television or monitor. You can watch the movies on a bigger screen then. You'll want to make sure you leave your video as a higher resolution if you plan on doing this. A video that looks good on an iPod won't necessarily look good on a bigger screen.

Photos

Another use for the iPod is as a photo storage device. If you ever want to do a bit of a slideshow you can load your photos up and have the A/V cable I mentioned above to hook up to a t.v. It even lets you play music as the slideshow happens.

Photo Storage Device

Apple has a nifty little device to connect you digital camera to your iPod. It lets you copy all your photos across from the camera to your iPod. Then view them (if they are in JPEG format. RAW won't work). If you are on a longer holiday and need to clear up some space on your memory card. This is a great way to do it. Plus, with the larger screen of your iPod, you can see if the picture is a throw away or not.

Screen is Easily Scratched

This is one bad feature of the iPod. Fortunately, the screen is so bright and crisp that it overcomes a lot of the scratch annoyances. The one I purchased one eBay came with a few scratches so I found a site online that described how to remove them.

Basically, it involved Brasso (a brass polishing oil) and a cloth. It worked reasonably well, so if you are interesting in cleaning up your iPod try it out. Keep in mind, it is oily so be careful using it. Just put a bit on a cloth and rub the the face of the iPod in circular motions for awhile and see if it smooths out some of those marks.

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This was the second lens I every purchased for my camera. I was waiting on my 18-200mm Nikon VR to arrive and all I had was a 10-20mm Sigma wide-angle. I was going nuts because all I could take was wide-angle shots. Anyhow, this fille the gap nicely and I would definitely recommend it as a lens to have period.

I bought mine used with a clear filter for protection for $100 Canadian. You can buy them brand new for under $200. So they aren't really that pricy.

They are a fixed focal length so you can't zoom in or out, which makes them not very flexible for a lot of situations, but what it lacks in zoom it makes up for in lens speed.

The 1.8 in the specification indicates its maximum aperture. This is how large the opening can go inside the lens to let in light. 1.8 is rather large and means that you don't need as fast a shutter speed to expose the photo properly. It also means that you can have more defined field of focus. The farther you get away from the in-focus subject in the picture the more out of focus everything else will look.

Faster Shutter Speeds

Because you can achieve faster shutter speeds with this lens, you can now take shots in darker places and without a flash where you would have needed a flash. Those inside shots at your home or at a restaurant will look a lot more natural and you won't have to worry about camera shake.

Field of Focus

With the larger aperture, everything outside of your focus area will be really out of focus. Portrait shots look a lot nicer, because the person is in focus and everything else is so much more blurred that is doesn't distract you from the subject.

Check out this photo below. This was a little glass filled with m&m's at a wedding reception I was recently at. There was a center piece not even a foot behind it, but I wanted to focus on the m&m's. I set my aperture to 1.8 and just snapped away. Notice I didn't have to use a flash either. The background just fades away to something not noticeable.

m&m's With a Large Aperture

Summary

Bottom line, this is an awesome little lens for the price. It's cheap, amazingly sharp, and fast. It is one of those great lenses for the amateur and the professional. If you are just starting out, it will give you a great feel as to why the professionals shell out the big dollars for the fast lenses in other sizes.

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My wife surprised me this year and bought me a Nintendo DS Lite. I know, I know. I'm 27 years old and still playing video games (kid's video games in fact). But I have to say, this this is an incredible little piece of technology.

I have been playing all the classics I grew up with and the games for it now are still pretty good for my own standards. True 3 dimensional graphics make the sports and first person shooters pretty good.

The DS features two bright LCD screens. There is a touch screen and microphone as well. It lets you play the older Gameboy Advance games as well as the new ones for the NDS.

Wireless

What makes it so neat is that the DS has other features as well. There is wireless connectivity built into this thing. You can purchase the Opera web browser on eBay (it is only available in retail in Europe and Japan) and be able to surf the net wirelessly.

Decent Sound

I have to say the sound is pretty decent out of its little speakers. It even can give a bit of "surround" feel to it. It seems like some of the better quality games (Nintendo ones) really make it work well too. I was playing Mario the other night and there was a plant creature off the side of my screen so it wasn't even visible and the sound felt like it was coming from about 3 inches to the left of the screen. Really adds to the game.

Stylus

Nintendo was incredibly bright and actually packed two of these things in the box, because I am sure I will lose one. There is a handy place to store in on the underside as well. I have to admit, that at first, I was wondering how the stylus would work for games. I have adapted pretty well though. The first person shooters (James Bond, Metroid Hunters) are worth learning it because it gives you precise control over your aim.

It seems you always have the option to not use the stylus, which I like as well. My wife bought me a poker game first and I thought this would be a perfect stylus style game (and it is), but when you are in the middle of a poker tournament and want to go fast, it is still better to use the buttons.

Hacking

If you purchase a supercard and flashcart you can load up a lot of "homebrew" software that can do everything from play video, music, and pictures to a basic organizer PDA software. I have found email clients as well. There are even freeware games that are being distributed that are remakes of classics like Hexen and Heretic. Note: This is the device to play pirated games as well.

Price

The price is quiet reasonable for this thing. Only $150 Canadian and I'm sure it will drop in the future. The kicker is the games though. If you can get a Supercard and not feel guilty, then you won't have to be shelling out cash all the time for games. But even so, the games start at $40 and go down, so it is still very reasonable.

Sony PSP Versus Nintendo DS

I wanted a PSP, mainly because it is a more powerful system and it had the two games I really wanted, NHL 2007 and Grand Theft Auto. However, my friends advised me against it. It starts at $250 and there are very few games after that. That is the most disappointing thing with the PSP for them, is the lack of good quality titles. Secondly, you can't hack a PSP easily so you have to shell out the cash every time you want to try out a game.

The DS has a lot more development going on it seems. I don't know why this is. PSP is a slick system. Perhaps time will change things. I would be tempted to buy one if the price dropped on them and some more titles came out.

Best Games So Far

Of the ones I have tried I would recommend these games.

• Mario DS - a classic
• New Super Mario Brothers - awesome remake of another classic
• Pac'n'Roll - this is a cool idea and fun to play. You use your styles to roll Pacman in a 3d world. Sounds like it would be weird, but it plays amazingly well.
• Madden 2007 - need a football title
• Metroid Prime Hunters - 3d shooter done quite well. You have to train your self to use the stylus for precise control, but after that it's awesome.
• Mario Kart DS - another classic you can't beat. Plus you can play online with friends or against server-matched opponents based on your level.
• World Championship Poker - I like poker, but I always think the game will get boring after awhile. There is a bit of a campaign. You walk around and are only allowed into certain casinos, but when you earn enough money you can get into the other ones. You need to win certain tournaments, you can go to a loan shark for money, buy clothes and jewellery, and play a number of other casino games.
• Brain Age - lots of fun

Keep in mind that I am a platformer and sports fan.

NHL Hockey????

My biggest beef so far is that EA Sports has not released an NHL game for this thing. Their Madden 2007 was quite well done and fun to play so I don't understand why they can't port an NHL game as well. The only option we have is to get NHL 2002 for the Gameboy Advance and put it in there.

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My hard drive is making the weirdest noises lately and I'm constantly living in fear of the big hard drive crash with all my life along with it. Yeah, I know, I'm pathetic. But with 30 Gigs of pictures, email dating back to 2001, a giant email address book, resumes, cover letters, company research, and everything else I can't think of all being stored in one place would be really inconvenient to lose.

So I went out and bought a Western Digital 160GB IDE hard drive for $70 two nights ago. I found out that IDE is the old standard and SATA is what everyone is using. No worries though, they still have lots of the old in stock.

I got home began the process of doing a fresh install of Windows XP Professional. Mine was one of the original copies given to me in the spring of 2002.

Install Hard Drive

This was simple. Open up the box and find a spot to put the drive. Keep in mind you will need to use the IDE cable and there are typically only 2 and you haveto share them (2 devices on each one). You will want to find the extra cable connector and then find the extra power plugin and mount your hard drive so that both of these will reach.

You will also need to set you hardrive jumpers to Master or Slave if you are going to be sharing the IDE cable. If there was already another hard drive or DVD drive hooked up, then you will probably need to set it to Slave.

You Need to Disconnect Your Old Hard Drive

If there is already a Windows XP installation on the other hard drive, then you need to disconnect it. I just pull the power plugin out. Otherwise, when you try to do the install later, it can see the other Windows installation and stop you.

BIOS Settings

Reboot your computer and then go into your BIOS settings by hitting Delete or F1 when it is counting up your memory. You need to go find your hard drive settings. Most BIOS's now can auto-detect, but you might need to specify your drive.

Boot Your Computer

If you computer is capable of booting from a CD then you are good to go. Put you Windows XP Pro CD in the drive and boot the computer. If not, you will need to get a floppy disk with the boot files on them and a CD driver. You can Google to find these.

Once you are into your installation, it is pretty much straightforward from there. Just pick your settings and hit Next,Continue, Finish, or whatever until you're done.

When it's done, you reboot and login to XP for the first time.

Updates Galore

This is the long part. I had to apply updates 4 different times and each one takes a little while. The first time I booted into Windows XP, I ran Windows Update (in the Programs menu) and downloaded around 20 updates. Reboot. Then downloaded only a couple updates. Reboot. Then downloaded 76 updates, including Service Pack 2 and the .NET Framework. Reboot. Downloaded 5. And then I was done.

What a long process. If you are buying XP for the first time (chances are you aren't because Vista is coming out right away), I would definitely recommend making sure you have the Service Pack 2 edition already. This will save you some hours of pulling updates.

Afterwards

Lots to set up after the fact. I had to do the following.

1. Turn off the computer. Plug in the power to the old hard drive and boot up. had to make sure the old hard drive wasn't the "booting" hard drive.
2. Copy all important files from old hard drive to the new one.
3. Set up a user account with a password and enable Remote Desktop Connection for it.
4. Install latest drivers for any products I'm using (monitor,printer,ATI card,NVidia card, etc.)
5. Download my favorite apps...namely
   • Firefox
   • WinZip
   • Cole2k Video libraries
   • DivX
   • Java Runtime Environment
   • Azureus bittorrent client
   • Quicktime video player
   • Real Player
   • Macromedia Flash
   • Adobe Reader
   • WinSCP
   • Putty
   • iTunes
6. Change my monitor settings. Make sure you set the refresh rate to the highest possible one. It's easier on the eyes. I always have mine at 1024X768 at 75Hz refresh.
7. Set up all my other little settings in Windows. There is a lot.

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I'm just going to rant here. My brother-in-law started using this shaving cream a few months ago and I always borrow it when I'm visiting. It's an Italian brand shaving cream that you can buy at the Italian market in Edmonton, Canada. It's called Proraso. Comes in a green can.

Anyhow, it has menthol in it, so as soon as you put it on your face you have that cool, tingling sensation all over. You don't feel any burn when you are shaving or after. They also have an aftershave cream, but you don't even really need it because shaving cream is so good. It's only $5 too. I would recommend trying to find some and just try it out. For the price, it's probably the best you can buy.

When you see it, the labeling is entirely in Italian so you won't be able to read it either. Proraso - Schiuma Da Barba

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I was wanting to play my iPod in the car and went looking for possible products. I have an iPod Video (5th Generation iPod) and ended up buying the Griffin iTrip Auto.

I have been very please with it so far. It costs around $80 Canadian, but on eBay you can get it for a bit over $50.

Sound Quality

The sound quality is pretty good. Griffin's original iTrip is cordless and runs off the iPod's power so doesn't have a strong transmit power. The iTrip Auto runs off the car power (you need a spare cigarette lighter power port) so has lots of juice to transmit the signal. I can have the transmitter placed anywhere in my car and it works just fine.

Charges Too

This is the other reason I wanted the iTrip Auto. It charges while it is plugged in as well. Apple tries to rip you off with the video iPods by not even giving you an AC Adaptor or any other way to charge it than the USB cord which plugs into your computer. The Apple AC adaptor is $40 and so is the car charger I believe.

With the iTrip Auto, you already have the charger built in, so you don't have to worry. I then went and purchased an AC to DC converter on eBay for $10 and just take my iTrip into the house when traveling and plug it to charge it there.

This is off topic, but if you want another option for a wall charger, Kensington makes an universal international plugin adaptor with USB port. It is $40 on dell.ca, but you can get it for $20 sometimes on the Dell Days of Deals. This is the same price as the Apple wall adaptor and this one is a travel adaptor for different countries. There is no comparison and the unit is pretty small too.

Pick Your Station

Just pick your station, press the Select button, and tune your radio into it. It is that simple.

Not as Portable

The one bad point is that the iTrip Auto is reliant on being plugged in. If it isn't, it can't power the transmitter. So it is not portable like the older iTrip.

Where is the Backlight?

If it is powered from the cigarette lighter, there is endless power. I don't know why they didn't put a backlight on the LCD display for the station selector. I know you don't use it often, but when I'm on road trips, I frequently go through towns where I need to adjust it because of interference. You have to turn on the interior light of the car to see what the station is set to. This is minor but would have been nice.

Summary

Overall, I would say it is a good buy. If you don't care for it to be that portable and you would like a car charger then this is a great two in one. Don't buy it in the store though, find one one eBay or a discount electroncis dealer online for a better price.

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I just received my Supercard DS One the other day and I have to say I am quite disappointed. However, it was my own fault for not researching it more.

I ordered it from GamerSection.ca. These guys have been awesome. They were easy to get a hold of (email,phone,MSN,Yahoo) when I did have my problems and quick to exchange and fix my DSOne. Also, if you are looking to avoid taxes and import duties because you live in Canada, these guys are located here in Quebec.

Disclaimer

I will be talking about the SuperCard which can and is used to play pirated games. It is also used to play homebrew applications including games, mp3's, videos, books, organizers, picture viewers, and the list goes on. This is up to you to use at your own risk. I support the video game industry half-heartedly. I do buy games, but I do download them as well. I am more interested in having a full-featured handheld so that is why I purchased a SuperCard for myself.

Now about the card itself.

No Gameboy Advance Games and Just Plain Less Compatible

So I ordered it because it is the latest version of the card. It is a Slot-1 solution. This means that you get one DS Cart sized card that slides into the top slot of your DS. There is a little spot to slide a microSD card into the SuperCard that stores all your data.

I thought this would be awesome, because then I wouldn't need the FlashCart for Slot-2 (which costs more), the Gameboy Advance slot on the bottom of the NDS. But I found out that Gameboy Advance games will currently only load from that slot. So now I can't play GBA games. Then I found out that some homebrew applications also work this way as does the Opera Web Browser (which you can't buy in North America). So none of them will load from the DS One.

There doesn't look like anyone is developing hacks or fixes to this yet either, so if you buy a DSOne or any other Slot-1 solution, be prepared to not play GBA games, use the Opera browser, and have less compatibility with some homebrew applications.

I can't guarantee this, but I wasn't able to get any emulators running on my DSOne either. I know they work on the Slot-2 solutions, but there is no information on running them from Slot-1 yet. This is for playing SNES, Genesis, and other classic system games. I imagine there will be development to fix this in the near future though.

I know, I know. Who plays GBA stuff anymore anyways? Well I do. I like a few of the classics. There still isn't an EA Sports hockey game for the NDS yet, so NHL 2002 for GBA is the only one available. All the classic Mario games are on the GBA, plus some of my favourites (Ghouls'n'Ghosts, Street Fighter, Metroid,Tony Hawk,etc). There are lot of GBA games I wanted to try that you can't even buy anymore as well. You can still find them online in GBA rom collections or on eBay. Ghouls'n'Ghosts and NHL 2002 are two that I was never able to find in the stores here (how is there not a copy of NHL 2002 in a store in Calgary???).

Flaky???

When I first got the card, I loaded it up with some Nintendo DS games and the basic firmware provided on the Supercard site. Pretty soon I was playing games and such, but I did notice they would freeze periodically. I would have to reboot the system to fix it. This was a minor annoyance and then became more and more frequent.

Then I started to notice that it wouldn't boot into the SuperCard screen when I would start the DS. This is how you access the software on the flash card in the first place. It would boot straight into the Nintendo DS's main screen and I couldn't do anything.

Overall it was very frustrating, so I returned it.

Exchanging It

GamersSection.ca has been awesome about it. They let me ship it back to them regular post ($1.00 for shipping) first of all. They tested it and kept me up to date on the process the whole time. Then they let me choose to exchange it for something else or replace it with the same thing. So now I have a Supercard Lite and Superkey on order. It is an older version, but still costs a bit more (around $20 more than the DSOne).

Beware as well. I was told the Supercard Lite Rumble does not run GBA games either.

Summary

I would not recommend the DSOne to anyone. It was flaky (which other people have complained about I have since realized) and is far less compatible. At the time of this article, this is the case. This might change and you might want to look at it then.

If you just want to play DS Games and DS homebrew that doesn't require a Slot-2 flashcart, then go ahead and buy it, because it is cheaper than the alternatives, but if you notice any freeze-ups, exchange it right away.

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