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General discussion

Question from a digital illiterate

Sep 11, 2004 4:17AM PDT

Hi there,

My dad's looking for a portable device which can basically store all his pictures and where he can look at them wherever he goes.

He's not very digitally competent, so right now he just keeps buying these big memory cards so he won't ever have to delete pictures from his digital camera!

I was looking at the new Creative Zen portable media center, and also the Archos Gmini and Archoz Video Recorder - but not sure which would be the best fit. He's also computer illiterate, so ideally he would like a device that can download pictures directly from his Sony cybershot camera (with just the USB) , instead of having to go through a PC... any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Discussion is locked

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Re: Question from a digital illiterate
Sep 11, 2004 8:13AM PDT

That is an interesting question.

The devices you mentioned still need a computer to load them.

There has to be a device that will do what you want, because all you need is a portable digital camera photo storage device (plenty around) and a portable display device (plenty around). Surely someone put the two together.

And so they did:

Check out the FlashTrax by SmartDisk:

http://www.smartdisk.com/

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Re: Question from a digital illiterate
Sep 11, 2004 10:15AM PDT

Hi Snapshot2,

you're awesome, thanks for the headsup! i looked at the Flashtrax website but still wasn't sure if it would be compatible with a Sony cybershot camera, which uses a Sony memory stick.. (seems like not many devices are!)

any way i can look more into that?

thanks!

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Re: Question from a digital illiterate
Sep 11, 2004 2:03PM PDT
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Re: Question from a digital illiterate
Sep 12, 2004 4:38AM PDT

thanks again snapshot2!

i was also wondering, how many pictures do you think 20 GB can store? also, would it be a bit dangerous to simply download all of one's pictures into this device, only to have it crash or something later on and lose everything?

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Re: Question from a digital illiterate
Sep 12, 2004 8:03AM PDT

If the file size of the photos is 1meg, then you can say one thousand photos will take up 1gig of disk. A twenty gig disk will hold 20,000 photos of 1meg size.

It depends upon how big your photo files are.

Having all of your pictures on that device, just as having them on your computer hard drive is a risk.

If you don't want to take that risk then you keep a copy somewhere else, such as a CD or Data DVD.

If your dad is near enough, you could do this for him.
If not, then try to arrange for someone with a computer to do this on a monthly basis. After each backup to CD or Date DVD, he can erase and reuse the memory stick.

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