Review: Ryobi One+ 18V Cordless Combo Kit

About a year ago, I wrote about getting the Ryobi One+ 18V Cordless Lithium-Ion 4-Piece Combo Kit. Once I got the kit, I put the tools to the test and was very pleased with it. I used the reciprocating saw (much larger than the 12V version) and the circular saw (again, larger than the 12V version) to remove a tree. Both tools worked acceptably. However, the circular saw started making a grinding noise, so it went in for service.

I've used my tools on and off since then and recently bought 2 more tools that go with the Ryobi One 18V line and am more than happy than the line of products. They aren't the most expensive products and aren't professional quality, but this kit has everything I need to do projects around the house. A few weeks back, I used a number of the tools to build a stand for our clothes dryer; I never had a circular saw before and never had a drill with so much power.

Pros

• Powerful tools for home use.
• Easy to swap batteries.
• Fairly long lasting batteries.
• Reconditioned saves a few bucks and probably doesn't make a big difference in quality.
• Magentic screw tray on the drill is handy.

Cons

• Flashlight is kind of pointless.
• Quality is questionable; the tools won't hold up on a job site.
• Circular saw is a little small; a 5 1/2" blade will barely cut through a 2x4. If you accidentally lift the saw, you won't cut through the bottom of the 2x4.
• Extended use of drill may give you blisters; the drill is a bit heavy and the grip could be more comfortable.

Summary

While I was originally just trying to replace my old cordless drill, I now realize that by not having the right tools, really hampered my ability to do projects. This combo kit provides the right pieces for a homeowner that needs to do small, weekend projects. There are more expensive kits and tools, but they may be overkill for people like me that occasionally do home projects. If you're in the market for a cordless drill, definitely consider a kit that has options for other tools. (I bought a jigsaw and a finish sander to go with the tool line.)

I know that Ryobi isn't the most trusted name in tools, but the versatility of the product line and low cost of this, make it a winner in my book.

Is more security a solution?

I just heard on the news that the TSA and local police were beefing up more security at the Detroit airport. For off, this sounds like closing the barn door after the horses have left. Second off, the flight didn't originate from Detroit (it didn't even originate in this country)! So adding more security in Detroit won't help flights coming into the airport. Wow, brilliant.

(I hope the news just got this wrong, because if someone actually decided this, it seems like a complete waste to me.)

End of "Sacrifice the Tree" Holiday

While Christmas was yesterday, I consider today the end of the holiday as it's when I started to see Christmas trees ready for recycling. While running today, I saw a number of trees at a local drop off facility. This seems like such a waste to me; forget the environmental impact (I'll get to that later), but if you went to the effort of finding a tree, lugging it home, putting decorations on it, and putting gifts under it, wouldn't you at least want to keep it for a few more days? I wonder if some people took the tree down right after the gifts were removed from beneath it?

In our local paper today, there was an article about recycling Christmas trees where Environmental Services Program Director Lynne France of Chula Vista said:

Christmas trees are not as environmentally horrible as everyone thinks, because they are plantation grown for the purpose of being a Christmas tree. It's not like they are cutting down old-growth forests to give you a Christmas tree.

Is she really that clueless or did that just make for a good quote? The cutting down of the trees isn't the only environmental impact. Consider that the trees are cut down (primarily) with chainsaws or other motorized equipment which burn fuel and contribute more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Then the trees are trucked from where they are grown/chopped down to Christmas tree lots which could be pretty far away. Then people drive to the lots to pick up the trees. After they're done with the trees, people either drive to dispose of them or have them picked up (for single family houses in the city of San Diego, those with trees can leave them at the curb and they'll be picked up with other green waste which shouldn't cause the Environmental Services folks to have to make another trip), then motorized equipment (chippers) are used to convert the trees into mulch. So, if you think that there is little environmental impact from the trees just because they were grown specifically for the purpose of being Christmas trees, you're clearly mistaken.

Programming extortion or poor estimating?

For a project we have at work, we needed to have some Java code written for encryption. The tool we have has example code for it, but it wasn't quite what I wanted. So, one of our developers got a quote from the company that put together the example to change the code to what I wanted as I don't know Java. The quote to modify the code was 4 hours @ $155/hour. While I don't have a problem with the hourly rate, I thought the 4 hours was utterly ridiculous as the example code was almost what we needed and the encryption libraries are already built into Java. In addition, getting $620 approved for this might have been more trouble than it was worth.

On Friday, I sat down, did some Google searches, installed NetBeans, and within an hour, I had the Java code working. Prior to this, I had never written a line of Java code. However, Java, like most languages I work with, has a very similar syntax that for my very small piece of code, was quite easy to understand.

So the high quote was one of three things. First, they might not have understood the request (I just double checked the email exchange and it seemed quite clear to me). Second, they could have been extremely poor at estimating. I've been writing software for many years now and my estimating is sometimes way off whack, but that is usually for big tasks and tasks where I'm starting from scratch, not sample code. My worst estimating that I ever did, I estimated 2 weeks (80 hours) to complete a bridge between a Mac application running as a native Intel application and a PowerPC plugin. Somehow I managed to complete this in less than 4 hours. However, I wasn't and am still not aware of any commercial shipping application that has this functionality besides what I wrote, so writing this was a complete unknown. Third, the quote could have been high because they may have thought we had no other option and when you're a monopoly, you can charge whatever you want.

Initially, I quickly jumped to the conclusion that the third option is what happened. After thinking about it and throwing out the other 2 options, I'd like to say that the 3rd option wasn't the real reason, but it is really hard to discount it.