Maybe if you'd read the context you wouldn't response with knee-jerk
idiocy.  The Ipod is a nifty audio play, but it sucks for downloading
photos from your camera.  The battery isn't up to the task, you can't
keep it plugged in while transferring photos, and it isn't fast
enough.

I don't see better advice from you.

Just like the lemmings, because some jump of a cliff everybody does it.

But later you call me Windows looser, but according to your own point,
must Windows be MUCH better than OSX, simply because many people use it.

Get a grip on your points.

I can hear you have not tried it, in every test i have seen it wins on
viode quality, audio quality, amount of codec, features and much more.
Only one irrelevant point does the iPod win on, and that is the look.

A lot of people. Actually here in northern europe we have a lot of great
music stations.

Yes i think iTunes is crappy, the way to make playlists is bad, if you
by mistake tells itunes to handle your files, everything gets mixed up
(gladly MediaMonkey can repair the damage)

But if you are happy with the iPod + iTunes fine with me. I have had an
iPod, and really hated it, glad i bought it used. But i am very pleased
with my Creative Zen Visions M, simply because it is a better piece of
hardware, and i did actually choose it by comparing over 20 different
players, and not just bought what the rest gets (lemming effect).

p.s. You should maybe not complain about my advice, when you contributed
absolutly nothing yourself.

Back in the kill file with you, Randall (and if iTunes is a testament to a
typical mac user experience, macs suck something aweful).

--
www.mattclara.com

On May 29, 11:09 am, "the_niner_nation" <the_niner_nat...@sf49ers.com>
wrote:

I think the search I went through last spring is pretty much along the
lines of what you're doing now:  you're looking at an Holiday with a
digital camera, you're going to take photos. What do you plan to do to
make sure you have enough "film" (Flash Media cards) with you?

Option #1 is to not take long vacations. Goody.

Option #2 is to carry a laptop with you. This is a good option, but
usually only if you already own the laptop.

Option #3 is to just buy a big stack of Flash Media cards. This is
becoming a bit more affordable, but if you're using a digital SLR and
shooting JPEG+RAW, you're probably eating up around 15MB for each
frame, which can mean a big stack of cards, which adds up...especially
for higher speed cards.

Option #4 is to get some sort of 'stand alone data storage' device ...
aka a "digital wallet".

Option #5 is to give up on digital and go back to film. Another non-
starter for most of us.

Option #6 is to run out and find whatever local camera store / kiosk
that offers dumping a card onto a CD or DVD for some fee.
Particularly make sure that it is a good copy, plus be very meticulous
in scanning the disk with your Anti-Virus software when you get it
home.

If things haven't changed much in the past year since I really delved
into this, I found that Digital Wallets come generally in two forms:
optical or magnetic backup media.

Optical: ie, a portable CD/DVD burner with card slot(s), and usually
with battery power (but not always).

Magnetic: ie, a laptop 2.5" hard drive in an "external" type
enclosure, with card slot(s), and usually with battery power.

Second, the action of backing up data needs some level of
consideration as to what it is that you're trying to accomplish. My
objective was to make sure that I get my vacation photos back home. As
such, the more conservative approach is redundancy. This means that if
you think you need "a" digital wallet, you should be really thinking
about buying two digital wallets so as to provide data robustness
through redundancy.

Optical vs Magnetic.

Optical drives have some good points - its nice in that the optical
media gives you a permanent copy, for example. However, their
shortcomings are becoming IMO increasingly evident:

a) Capacity:  with flash card sizes getting progressively larger and
larger, a CD-R burner won't even hold a standard 1GB card. As such,
you're probably going to self-limit yourself to a DVD burner...and
then limit yourself to cards that are 4GB or smaller.

b) Reliability: there's also the question of if you did a successful
burn or if you made a coaster...until you know for sure, are you
really going to wipe your Card? Probably not.

c) Size:  you'll need to drag along your own CD/DVD media too, and
then protect these separately from the device.

FWIW, you could choost to carry just one burner and make two copies
(for data redundancy) from each Card, but if you do this with only one
device, you lack redundancy in the burner itself, which may also leave
you stranded.

As such, I wasn't too thrilled with the optical device solutions and
looked more seriously at the magnetic ones.

For magnetic devices:

a) some have pretty displays (Epson P-2000 and P-4000, Apple iPod)
that you can see your downloaded image on before you get home.  You'll
pay extra for adding this feature.  For in-field work, I found looking
at the photo while it was still on the card and in the camera to be
satisfactory.

b) several of the HD-based products are sold at different price points
with different sized hard drives.  This allows you a certain degree of
product tailoring/customization to your needs.

c) some of the HD-based products have poor transfer speed performance
(iPod), and/or have a bad reputation for inadequate battery capacity
to accomplish a typical download (iPod, reportedly Wolverine). The
important question to ask yourself here is if you're simply looking
for a small, compact device that can rely on wall power, or a device
that is truely portable and can be used in the field, away from the
grid.

d) many have proprietary battery packs (at the time, Wolverine, Jobo,
Epson, Creative, Apple iPod, Smartdisk).  The implications are that
when you run out of juice, you had better hope that its removable and
that you have a charged up spare, etc. Overall, I consider devices
with unique batteries to be a disadvantage because it limits
interchangeability between different electronic devices, and forces
you to carry a pile of rechargers...its great when everything runs off
of the same industry standard NiMH AA battery.

Overall, my conclusion here was the Hyperdrive HD80 was the best
choice for me at the time, because:
- runs on AA battery form factor (available everywhere)
- had enough battery capacity to run on its own
- was cheap enough to buy two (for data redundancy)
- fast transfers (burns less batteries)

An unexpected bonus was that the Hyperdrives also recharge its own AA
batteries when running on wall power (although slowly).  Since I had a
standard NiMH AA recharger packed for other stuff that used AA's, I
was able to carry redundency in AA charging capability too.

The only real glitch that I ran into was in getting a couple of
exercise cycles on the NiMH batteries before they would 'last' through
a full card dump.

The HD80's since been discontinued with a new model, called "Space".
Their website is here:
http://www.hypershop.com/shop/index.php

Only trade-off versus what I currently have is that they've gone to a
Li-Ion battery (not sure how easily it is to replace), but they do
also offer a 4 x AA external battery pack too.

-hh