TreadClimber

Bowflex has come out with a new piece of exercise equipment - the TreadClimber. It is a combination of an elliptical machine, stepper and normal treadmill. It has two separate tracks which move up and down in a way that is supposed to decrease the strain on your joints that occurs when walking and running on normal treadmills. The motion is very similar to an elliptical machine which I know from experience has such smooth movements that your joints rarely feel the treadmill pain. When I was on a business trip I kept seeing commercials for this product and looked into it. There are three models ranging from $1500 to $2500 - all too expensive for me and I knew that would be the case when I started my investigation. I was really just interested in the product since it seems like a really neat idea.
The TreadClimber can be changed into a normal stepper or treadmill as well by either locking the tracks to each other in some fashion (treadmill) or stepping on them with the moving components turned off (stepper). I thought this was pretty neat until something was made clear to me. The way you walk is different from the way you run and therefore you couldn't use the TreadClimber in treadmill mode to run as you run in a straight line (one foot in front of the other) and not side by side like when one walks. Therefore if you wanted to run in the winter in your home, you would still need a regular treadmill - that is unless it turns out the conclusions made here are wrong. Either way, I can't afford one (nor do I need one as I have an elliptical machine) but they seem neat.