Now, this is what I wanted to know about

[mmcirvin]

How fast is it to transfer photos from a photo memory card to an iPod with that Belkin gizmo? Really slow, according to one user review; not that bad, according to another. What is going on here? Will mankind ever know? It sounds like Belkin is still working the bugs out, and I think it might be wise to wait a while.

Comments

[kerri9494.livejournal.com]

It may also depend on the photo memory card. They actually have read and write speeds these days. This article talks about write speed, not read speed, but they're both significant.

Of course, there's probably a bottleneck in the hardware, too.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

The concept of the photo memory card reader thing reminds me of the wacky iomega "Clik!" Drive, which had cheap little 40MB disks (that look like SmartMedia Cards, but weren't) that go into one end of the battery-powered device (smaller than an iPod, but cheaper-- and by that I mean less sturdy, because money-wise ALL THINGS EVER ARE CHEAPER THAN IPOD) and you'd put your CF card in the other end (8 or 16MB only) and it would offload your pictures onto the clik disk. Two people I know have this thing, and one of them still uses it because the clik drive is old enough to connect to her PC's parallel port-- her USB port (one, because it's an older laptop) is broken.

Basically, you would carry around something the size of your camera in order to deal with taking pictures with your camera. It struck me as kludgy. iPod, I see, you might be carrying around anyway, so not so kludgy.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Actually, all things ever are not cheaper than the iPod, any more. The latest generation of serious iPod competitors are also comparably priced-- for instance, that Samsung/Napster player has the same MSRP as the iPod of comparable size, and costs more than the one I've got. It's got some more features, but is also newer. I think that cool Philips one announced a while back is considerably more expensive. The popular ones from Creative are a better deal in bytes/dollar, but are also bigger and less elegant in other ways.

These disk-based MP3 players are all frivolous luxury items, no doubt about it. When flash memory gets a factor of 10 cheaper, they will start to disappear.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

You're right, I was being a little hyperbolic, but as portable toys go, $400 is a substantial outlay, especially if you're willing to count other musical appliances, such as the portable CD players and no-brand walkman ($12 at most drugstores). (Sony walkmans are still about $20, and generally worth the difference, in my experience.)

I'd be in the market for a flash-memory-based player with tuner, hopefully something in the 256MB range-- I don't often get that far from a computer for too long, heh -- but they're overpriced, compared to where I see the market, especially as the HD players get cheaper. Samsung, BTW, has a nice 256MB one I saw at Gizmodo, with tuner and a couple other nice features, but one thing bugged me perhaps more than was right: the headphone cord was short, because Samsung expects you to wear one around your neck (or maybe clipped on, or something-- I envision this thing, which is shaped somewaht like a wide highlighter-marker, clipped to my collar for some reason). I've never seen or heard of anyone doing anything like this, and most people would reasonably put aside the short-corded 'phones and wear their own pair. It leaves me with the thought that either Samsung is trying to transplant some Japanese/Korean trend on American Urbanites (which might be easy in the case of Asian Americans who keep in touch with trends from those nations) or else some marketing person, I'm guessing a Frenchman of some sort, invented the neck-worn player out of whole cloth.

Sure, it would be crippling to wear an iPod around the neck, but flash-players are obviously lighter, and maybe that's the point they're trying to make without subtlety. But it sounds really dumb, and I wonder just what the hell else they think I should be doing with it, and what crazy marketing scheme is built into the price? Maybe I should break out the ol' 32MB Diamond Rio and consider myself lucky I don't need a new one.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Sam got me this thing, so naturally I bought her one too, and that's how we convince ourselves to buy expensive things.

Were it just me, I'd probably have just replaced my old Discman with one of those MP3-capable CD players. They're too big to walk around with comfortably, but you get about 700 MB of storage, and they're like 60 bucks.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

At least the CD player wouldn't skip.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003-05-28&res=l




(Sorry if you get more than one version of this joke-- I keep deleting posts because I keep screwing up.)