So I received the MindStor unit (portable 10GB hd). I retract the former statement about it being pocket-size - well, coat pocket, but not shirt pocket <grin>. It's about the height of a cd jewel case, and half as wide. About as thick as 3 jewel cases. Weighs 12oz w/ battery.
Total no-brainer to use -- Unit has 3 control buttons on front - Up, Down, and Select <even I can handle this! > On top are power button, power cord jack, USB jack, FireWire jack, PC card slot. =================== Camera Card to MindStor: Insert camera card (CF card in my case) into MindStor's PC Card adapter. Turn on MindStor unit. Select default choice, Download Content, from text display screen. Make sure no errors (unit verifies transfer ok). Select Manage Media / Erase PC Card. Turn unit off. You now have all your pictures on the MindStor HD, and a blank (CF) card to put back into your digicam. The CF card I tested says "256MB" on the label, but this is the Politically-Correct 1MB = 1,000,000 bytes, rounded up, rather than the true 1MB = 1024K where K = 1024. (Harumph.) In real terms (Windows Explorer), the card capacity is 243MB. My card had 232MB used (243,490,816). Transfer and verify from CF card to MindStor took 2 minutes 19 seconds. Whoo Whee !! MindStor says the battery is good for about 100 minutes per charge, and 500 recharge cycles. ============== MindStor HD to PC (can also use with Mac): Install driver from cd (can also download from web to install on any other computer). Connect supplied USB cable (can also use FireWire). Turn on MindStor unit (battery, or supplied AC adapter). PC now sees an external hard disk (which is exactly what it is!). MindStor screen says USB Connected. Use Windows Explorer to copy whatever you want to PC HD - I did the entire card, 147 files in 5 folders. Using USB 1.1, transferring to a PIII-866 w/ 256MB RAM and ATA-66 7200rpm hd, it took 8 min. 45 sec. to transfer 232MB. A P4 with ATA-133 HD and more RAM would probably be faster. MindStor says their FireWire will do 1GB per minute (!). Am waiting for my FireWire cable to arrive <grin>. Will provide timing on same transfer via FireWire once I get connected. (Have a FireWire card in pc for digital camcorder editing, but cable got accidentally damaged.) So far, it works just as advertised - simple, fast, and very inexpensive for the capacity (compared to cost of CF cards) and functionality. I paid $270 for the 10GB model. BTW, this is *not* just for people with digital cameras - you can ignore the PC card slot if you want, and use the unit just as a portable HD for transferring large amounts of data between two computers (esp. if they have FireWire!). They make 10GB, 20GB, 30GB models. -Ben ______________________________________________________________________ Structure your ColdFusion code with Fusebox. Get the official book at http://www.fusionauthority.com/bkinfo.cfm Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
