I was an early adopter of the Flip video camera. Small, simple and inexpensive, the Flip yielded many interesting videos for me. I’ve urged many people to buy one of their own. Flip’s popularity was confirmed two years ago when Cisco, the wildly successful computer networking company purchased Flip for $500 million. Now comes the announcement that Cisco is discontinuing the Flip in a move to extricate itself from the computer electronics market. As this excellent video camera’s time as a consumer item winds down, look for discounted sales because the camera is an excellent piece of equipment that will last for many years. According to some explanations I’ve seen, consumers are now depending primarily on smart phones to capture video and no longer need a specialized device like the Flip.