Transfer rates

I have been shooting with a Canon Alura and the transfer rates for tape video into the computer is really slow (real time). Does anyone have any experience with transfer rates using cameras with memory cards instead of tape? Something must be faster. . .

Transfer rate for any tape media audio or video is real time in all cases. Now digital files on an memory card the file transfer time is limited by the access time of the memory cards IC's and the transfer and is not in real time. The time of the transfer, is the time the computer takes to move or copy the file (very fast), a two gig file will still take twice the time of a one gig file, and is measured in minutes and seconds, not hours and minutes.