Memory-Card Reviews

This media card reader does live up to all the good reviews it's gotten. The download time is fast and the usability/reliability is sound. The one drawback to this model is that it is a little too big and heavy.

This reader is great if:

1. You actually need to use more than just a compact flash or smartmedia card reader: this reader is also equipped to handle Memory Sticks, Secure Digital, MultiMediaCards, and IBM Microdrives.

2. You're planning on using this reader for your desktop and not a laptop.

This card may not be the best choice if you plan to travel (or just go mobile with your laptop) based on its size and weight.

No more loading drives for each different digital product with media! Pop in and it works great!

I bought this universal reader from Micro Center because it was on sale. I actually didn't even think it would work because it was a brand I hadn't heard of. HOWEVER. I am using Windows XP Pro and it works FANTASTIC!! I used to use my HP Photosmart printer to upload pictures and it would take FOREVER. This card reader opens my SmartMedia disk in seconds. Incredibly easy to install and an overall great product!!

Followed the instructions for installation and Windows recognized the reader, but would not read the compact flash card. Got the message that the card was not formatted even though it contained valid data. By the way, this unit requires installation of a driver with Win 98 systems. The existence of this unit on the usb bus prevents the operation of a SmartMedia reader that I use.

Works really well. Haven't had any problems. Quick downloads for my photos.

At the price, you can't beat it. There's not much to say about a card reader but it works. Read and write speeds are above average in my opinion. It looks great and comes with a 1 year warranty. I'm happy I made the purchase.

I bought one of these for my new digital camera. 4 days and over 50 MB of photos later, this Memory Stick had a fatal error, taking all of my photos with it. I tried to retrieve the data several ways and all failed. Buy at your own risk. I'd go with a different brand if I were you. I lost photos I'll never get back, and when I returned the stick, the guy at the store told me that this happens more regularly with Lexar than other brands.

I didn't even figure that reviewing Lexar memory sticks was worthwhile, since they did their job so well that they could easily be forgotten about. I got a cardreader for the holidays and didn't realize the stick had an LED for data transmission until I used said reader - very slick. And for anyone worried about power drain with digital camera applications, the constantly lit power-on LED for your camera draws more juice than this one does. Highly recommended.

I was nervous buying this at almost half the price as the original sony memory stick, because I was putting it in my camera. With the camera - if the memory stick has errors, well those pictures are all gone... and unlike losing some phone numbers from your PDA because of bad memory - you can't recreate photos from your friends wedding because your memory stick went bad on you.

Well, the nervousness was unfounded! I've used this stick heavily since I bought it a few months ago, and has never failed me. It performs just as well as the smaller sony stick that came with the camera.

I'd also highly recommend the memory stick reader Lexar makes (you'll find it here on Amazon as well). I bought it after loosing the cable that connects my camera to my computer (the memory reader is *cheaper* than that single cable, if you can believe it!) and it's *better* because you don't waste batteries transferrring your pictures, and there's no cables to mess with when it's time to upload your pictures - just pop the mem stick into the reader that's always hooked up...

End result - Very happy with this memory stick and other Lexar products. They've worked flawless for me so far :)

This card reader worked fine for me. It is the third card reader I've picked up, and it is the best of the three.

Not the first multi-format card reader that I have, but it's the first one that really works for me ! I tried microdrive, smc and xd cards on it using Dell 8300 with Win XPpro. Everything works great no freezing PC, no strange errors! And on the top data tramsfer is really fast with USB 2.0 and you don't need to install any drivers at all on Win XP, it's just plug and work...

Works great. Have used it with Compact Flash and SD card. Reads fast and is very compact.

This reader is great!! It treats each flash card as its own drive and is very fast!! You can use it to move files from one card to another. Yes!!!! It is backwards compatible with usb 1.1 . I have Windows XP and it will warn you that you are using a high speed device in a low speed port, but you can close the message and it works perfectly fine. ( Just slower than the 2.0 port). It's real convenient having a 6 in 1 card reader thats fast and fits in your pocket.

Don't beware, it is backwards compatible with USB 1!

My system running Windows 2000 (with SP3), has both USB1.1 and USB2.0 ports -- the unit works on both without problems. Of course, transfer speed is much faster on USB2.0 ports.

I did not install the included driver which is for Windows 98. The unit gets detected every time it's plugged in. I also tested with different brands and types of media: Viking 512MB compact flash, Memorex 128MB secure digital, Lexar 64MB memory stick and SanDisk 64MB smart media -- all were able to read and write.

The built-in USB connector can be tucked away inside the device case (a nice touch). A 3 ft USB extension cord and a vinyl pouch (case) are included.

If you are brand conscious, take a look at the Imation FlashGo!2.0. I think both of these units come from the same factory as they are the exact same size, except for the slots placed in a different arrangement. I have both units and they've performed reliably well so far. The Imation unit is more expensive though. I've also tried the SanDisk USB2.0 6-in-1 reader -- that gave me a lot of problems: froze my system and couldn't get detected, so I returned it.

Using this reader with XP worked great.

Using this on my Mac was another story. I have USB 2.0 and 1.1 on my G4 (10.3.4).
USB 1.1 worked as expected, slow but sure.
USB 2.0 would lock-up when copying large amounts of data. Small files would copy ok.

I replaced this reader with a SanDisk 8-in-1 Reader (SDDR-88-A15) and it works great with my Mac and PC.

Compact Flash Cards used: SanDisk Ultra II 512MB, Kingston 128MB, Simpletech 128MB.

I used this to replace an older USB card reader on my Dell 4550 PC (running Windows XP) which has USB 2.0 ports. It works great.

Please note that the comment above, that says that you probably won't see an improvement in speed if you don't use high speed compact flash cards is untrue. I see a significant improvement in speed when reading my Lexar 4x compactflash in this USB 2.0 reader compared to my old USB reader.

I bought this reader after having some problems with other readers on my win98se op system. The install was seamless, and everything works perfectly.

SimpleTech is the best across the board, for all types of memory cards. This 1 gigabyte CF card is excellent. I use it for my Olympus C8080 digital camera. At the highest quality setting, this CF card will get me 254 color shots. Not bad. It's dependable, well-built, and has a fairly fast write time.

Clearly the person giving this one star is doing so because apparently they are upset that the card could not be used in a product not designed for it! Normally I write very few reviews but it's quite irritating when people post negatives simply because they don't understand what they are purchasing.

This is a CF II card...that means it's for cameras and devices with a CF II slot...

In any event, this is an excellent card. Very fast with my Cannon 300D (Rebel). Uses minimal power, with no moving parts. I've never had a problem with any read / write operation. I'm getting 287 6 MegaPixel images...hopefully enough for most people! Overall very happy with this card.

It's a type II card, so it's thicker and won't fit in a type I slot, but if your device has a type II slot, as most PDAs do, it's a fine card. I have one in my Dell Axim.

I had some problems with this card. I use it in an Olympus digital camera. The first five or six images taken have an annoying yellow stripe down the right side. I can usually cut this out in photoshop but I have lost some important shots because of this defect present in the card I purchased.

I bought one of these because it was the first one I saw and I wanted a little more capacity than the one that came with my Olympus D360L. I thought the price was high but I only have to buy it once, right? Well now I find that there are other brands for half the price. Check around. A company called Smartdisk makes these and sells them to other companies. Can you say " cut out the middle man" boys and girls? The card works great and I have had zero problems.

I bought this card for use in an Olympus D340R camera. The card appears to be completely compatible with the Olympus format. The camera recognized the card immediately with no need to format it in the camera. With twice the capacity of the card that comes with the camera, you can take 36 exposures in SHQ mode, or 244 in standard mode.

...First, I would say, it is an good design, a must for computers not having USB ports and it is convenient to use compared to USB reader(unfortunetly, the USB ports is usually located on the back of the computer). then the bad part: 1. No instructions on installing, no documents, papers and wrong information on Web support. Although installation went smoothly, but it is not the way doing business. Buyer needs to be pretty experienced with computer files. 2. Although the physical size of the product is compatible to a standard 1.44" FD, it does not mean you can use this adapter to any computer you like. First, you need to install the driver and it may not work with your system, (i.e Laptop FDD, Imoge FDD, USB FDD, etc) and this is not mentioned on technical description. One the motivations of buying this adaptor was to use it as a ZIP driver, so I can tranfer big files to different computers, but obviously, not every computer will install the driver for this. 3. Speed. Although it is much faster than serial port,but it is still very slow. I carefully measured the speed, it is about 3K bytes / second, that is about 1.8M bytes per minute. Just image that how long it will take to transfer 64M data, which is the memory size used in my digital camera. By the way, a USB adaptor can get a trasfer rate of 1.5M bytes per second.

Conclusion: Buy it if you have no choice (no USB port)

I have not used a USB reader, so I cannot comment on speed from that standpoint. This was a very good solution for my family, our computer has some sort of peripheral coming out of every port and I love the idea of no cables to work with. While its true that the flashpath does not come with much information, I think its because it doesn't really need it. It took me less than 10 minutes to open the package, load the driver and retrieve photos from my smartmedia. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is that it seems expensive, especially when compared to a USB reader.

This is a great little device. I got it to go with my Olympus D-490 digicam and it works great with the smartcards. At first I thought I made a bad purchase becuase the manual said it only worked with cards up to 32M. This was true until I downloaded the software from their website. It works perfectly now with the 32 and the 64 MB smart media. I didn't give it five stars because the file transfer is slower than I thought it would be. It takes about 15 to 20 seconds to copy 1MB. Still, this is much faster than the serial cable, and much more convenient. No cables lying around, and you can turn the camera off and not drain the batteries while you transfer the pictures to the computer. It's also handy for moving large files from one computer to another when you don't have a network connection. I would recommend this for people who have a smart media device with no USB connection.

After 8 months of use the memory has broken down. No longer the operating system (w-2000) recognizes it. It even push you to remove the card because it is bad.

I bought 2 modules of 256MB pc100 for my Dell Inspiron 8000, and the speed increased dramatically (I had 128), I really recomend the upgrade. The price is very low.

I upgraded the memory on my Dell Inspiron 8000 by adding one of this and it has been working great for almost a year. You can really notice the difference in speed and now I am actually planning on buying another one to get to 512 MB.