I have an ipod and the idea of using it to store stuff on the run is appealing, but for the sake of a few hundred quid I'd rather have the security of a little colour monitor.
Calvers
On Thursday, Oct 30, 2003, at 23:15 Europe/London, Alex Black wrote:
Hi Folks
I promised to post some thoughts on the Belkin Reader and apologies for
the tardiness of this follow up. Having used it for a week, I can pass
on a few of my thoughts. Tests were done using a Nikon D100/D1X with 512
& 1GIG Lexar Pro card, iPod Mark III running updater 2.1
Build quality is fine but to maintain sleek form Belkin have tucked the
connector jack in the reader so that you have to fiddle to get it out
and then align it with the ipod port which just seems a little
unnecessary. I'm not convinced of the choice of triple-A batteries,
seems more a consumer market idea, AA are available in higher capacity
and in remote places.. The unit did indeed run out of power through a
day's usage and I kept finding that either the reader or the iPod would
die letting the process down. I have a Griffin car charger which I ended
up just plugging into the lighter socket but it was a pest and I was
tempted to hurl the thing after the fourth time it died in a week with
little warning.
Transfer speeds were hugely variable and I'm told that I didn't have a
final production version so have not been able to note transfer speeds
in fairness but to give you an idea it did take me 37 mins to transfer
700mb worth of data. Belkin have acknowledged an issue and are working
with Apple to resolve it, that said I see on user forums that people who
have bought the product only recently are experiencing the same issue so
I'm left wondering. I should mention that you can't view the images on
the iPod and transferring data in any format is simple, the software
makes a mirror of the content of the DCIM directory on the CF card to
desktop if mounted in FW.
I think there are better solutions out there and if they can get the speed and battery life issues resolved, it could catch on amongst ipod users but for sole pro photo usage, I wouldn't have confidence in it.
If anyone needs any further specific or technical information, drop me a
line off list and I'll be happy to give you some specific details, I
didn't want to upset the digest readers with a 3000 word diatribe! <g>
Alex
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