Lexar 1 gig cards on sale at amazon for 206

[cush]

I have two 512MB cards and was about to get one or two larger cards because I am going to the NORBA Nationals at Mt. Snow in a few weeks. Instead, I bought a 20 gig iPod and a card reader. I'll see how that goes for a while. As it stands, I have about 1900 songs loaded and about 15 gigs available. I'll post a report on how user friendly it is after I use that feature a few times.

Thanks for the heads up anyway!

cush

[Kokopeli]

Is very easy to use, but the transfer rate with the Belkin Card Reader is EXTREMELY slow (45+ minutes for a full 1GB card).

I have the 40GB iPod and the Belkin and two Lexar 40x 1GB cards. I usually fill one card up then shoot with the other while the first is DLing or I'll do the DL while driving, having a meal or even taking a nap so the slow speed doesn't bother me too much.
~Brian

[cush]

on the download time!

Is very easy to use, but the transfer rate with the Belkin Card Reader is EXTREMELY slow (45+ minutes for a full 1GB card).

I have the 40GB iPod and the Belkin and two Lexar 40x 1GB cards. I usually fill one card up then shoot with the other while the first is DLing or I'll do the DL while driving, having a meal or even taking a nap so the slow speed doesn't bother me too much.
~Brian

[Peter_AUS]

I have ordered a Vosonic X-Drive Pro VP300 (with out a drive as I have a 4 G drive I can use temporarily) which hopefuly will be here either tomorrow or Monday and will let you all know what I think about it. Might be another option. There is a newer model the VP3310 but it isn't available here yet and they don't know when it will be. Cost of the VP300 bare is $192.00Aus around $130US for those that might be interested in looking although I think it would be cheaper in the US, just couldn't find anyone that ships to Aus.

[stew]

Is very easy to use, but the transfer rate with the Belkin Card Reader is EXTREMELY slow (45+ minutes for a full 1GB card).

I have the 40GB iPod and the Belkin and two Lexar 40x 1GB cards. I usually fill one card up then shoot with the other while the first is DLing or I'll do the DL while driving, having a meal or even taking a nap so the slow speed doesn't bother me too much.
~Brian

Brian,

Excuse my ignorance, but you're saying the iPod can be used to save pictures from a digital camera as well as songs? I don't own an iPod, nor have i considered using such a device for picture storage. But that sounds like a great idea. I'm planning a trip to SE Asia or Australia this fall, and I want to bring a small, compact storage device... an iPod or something else similar might do the trick.

-Stew

[Sean Dempsey]

iPods can do it with a special Belkin card reader. It is very slow, as stated.

If you're gonna drop 3-400 for an iPod, might as well get a Digial Wallet instead. iPods top out at 40 gigs and are 500 dollars, you can get a much more user friendly digital wallet for that price, with more storage.

[Peter_AUS]

Ok, got the Vosonic X-Drive Pro VP300 today and put a 4G drive I had into it.

First impression, oblong box with a small lcd screen that isn't back lit. Feels reasonably solid, but is made of plastic. Installing hard drive was a breeze, 4 screws (5 supplied) slide in the cover which has the hard drive attached to it and put one screen in to hold the cover on. Fairly straight forward.

Problem I stuck was the drive was formated as NTFS format and it won't use that for file transferring. So had to work out way to format the drive. Tried everything in Windows 2000 still couldn't get it to format properly after 5 hours of trying. Don't give up, read the manual, which is only a few pages.

There is a small CD that comes with the box, so thought I would have a look on that.

Contained files to setup the drive (drivers) and written pdf and word file, so had a look and read there is a formating program on the CD. Well tried to work that out, wasn't all that straight forward, but got there eventually. One thing, need to reboot the system after you first connect the VP300 as it does automatically install as a USB device, but doesn't see itself correctly, this is mainly for Windows 200 and XP, ME is fine you can just connect and use the device.

When I got the Formating program on the CD to identify the device correctly after rebooting, it formatted in no time flat, compared with several hours using windows formatting of the drive, I found that interesting.

When you connect it to the computer, it acts just like another drive and a CF card inserted in a side slot of which there are three different ones CF I/II, smard media and I think the other is for a sony card. CF card is a little tight to slide in, but that will probably ease up with use.

Disconnect the device after stopping the device in windows and try it out using the CF card attached to the device and you get a menu of either the hard drive or MP3 (bonus to me). Select copy and it copies the files over to the hard drive, creating a directory, in this case C001 (does that itself no choice) and the directories on the cf card are copied over.

I used a generic 256 Meg card I have and then compared transfering the files from the hard drive to computer (same files), and then copied from CF card in the device directly to the computer and then again same files using a normal USB2.0 card reader I purchased recently (I know but good to have a back up, only cost $25 and is a 8 in 1 card reader).

So what I found with transferring.

235meg of files (54 in total) which were the raw and thm files from CF to device took 6m 15s.
Then from Device to Computer took 4m 30s.
Then from USB card reader to computer took 4m 27s.

I found these to be acceptable figures. So roughly it would be about 25 minutes to copy a 1G card to the device and from the device to the computer it would be 17min and about the same for the normal card reader.

Plays MP3 files nicely, although it is a bit hard to work out the file names as it truncates them to 8 characters.

Roughly worked out about 500photos storage and 950 MP3 files, either or. I do plan on getting a much bigger hard drive but that will be in a month or two, no hurry for that.

500 photos for me would be more than enough.

What came with the device. The device itself of course with a lithium ion battery good for about 500 charges, power connection, power in car (cigarette lighter) connection to charge it, ear phones (basic ones), usb 2 cable which has normal connection one side and small connection to the device.

Problem I found the rubber cover for the phones and usb connection don't stay in place and will more than likely break off in the near future or I will cut it off. Mainly the usb doens't stay in place, and that is from just pulling out once, won't stay in. A grip but just a little one.

The lack of backlighting of LCD is a little hard to adjust to, I think it really needs a backlight on the device to read the writing easier, but I can live with that.

Simple buttons to use, large slim on off button under the LCD screen, up and down arrow either side of copy button. +/- for volume control, play button and stop button. All pretty simple to work out, without reading the manual fully.

Will update when used it for a while.

Cost here in Australia delivered within 36 hours of order by courier air express was $192Aus without a hard drive. Cost of Hard drive 30G here is $144.10Aus or 40G $179Aus. It can be purchased either bare (no drive which I bought), or with a drive up to 80G but I feel there might be a problem with a drive over 30G as it only likes drives that are fat 16 or fat 32 and there is a physical limit with drives using this formating.

Hope this info helps others who might be looking at more CF cards or a Digital Wallet.

I saw an iPod for the first time today and that was similar in size although it wasn't as thick as the Vosonic. And it was white. This one is greyish with silver top and buttons.

[Kokopeli]

Sorry it took me a couple days to reply, I somehow missed your post.

Yes, I'm saying that the iPod can store images and honestly, I love it. It allows me to take my music along with me while at the same time can be used as an image tank as well. I didn't see the need to purchase another device to do the same job (as Sean Dempsey suggested) when the iPod would do what I needed. I just wish I had known how slow it was before I bought the card reader, but in the end seeing as how I already owned an iPod, I would still go with the choice I made. If you are planning to go with this option, keep in mind that the reader doesn't work with the iPod Mini. You need the full sized iPod.

I should also mention that the transfer rate from the iPod to the computer is FAST. It uses firewire and just blazes!

I hope you enjoy your trip this fall!!
~Brian

[Kokopeli]

IF I had a a Powerbook to plug it in to. As it is now though, just putting the card into a reader not attached to a computer tends to be even slower than using the iPod. ;)

A laptop is on my list of things I want to get, but I just haven't broken down and bought one yet. I was looking into getting an image tank, but then I found the Belkin card reader attachment for my iPod and decided that would be the cheapest option. In this instance, cheapest wasn't the best, but it was the most affordable at the time.

8 more days...
~Brian