Apple Reviews

Key features:

SCROLL WHEEL: Once you start using the scroll wheel (on the left side) you won't be able to work without it! It releaves alot of stress on the mouse hand for sure. My car-pool tunnel doesn't bother me anymore.

FORWARD/BACK KEYS: Browsing the internet is much easier with these keys. No more hunting for the back arrow with the mouse. Anytime I can do something without the mouse I like it.

OFFICE SHORTCUTS: Honestly, the one I use the most is Mail. I have the Mail key reprogrammed to create a new mail message. So I don't have to find the email program, then click new mail message. One button access to new email!

COMPLAINTS: My one complaint is the way they arranged the key group above the arrow keys (home, page up, page down, delate). This is a non-standard way to arrange the keys so it take a bit of getting used to. But now I have one at home and at work so I don't have to switch back and forth.

The Microsoft Office Keyboard is the best value currently available (as long as you're right handed). It is fully integrated into the - you guessed it - Microsoft Office XP suite of software products, which is what I, and many other users, use most frequently for work. This keyboard will simply make you faster and more productive, giving you easy access to common functions with simple keystrokes and button presses. The keyboard also has its own scroll wheel, edit keys, and multimedia controls that you might expect from any premium keyboard.

The keyboard is not wireless - but who cares? Who uses their keyboard halfway across the room from their desktop? Save your money and buy a wireless/optical mouse, which actually is useful. The keyboard is large and may not fit into some keyboard drawers - check yours before you make a purchase. Also, if you are left handed, consider another keyboard - most of the functions are to the left of the standard QWERTY pad. The keyboard is normal - none of this curvy, split, ergonomically designed nonsense. The delete key is large, but other than that it is designed very similarly to your standard windows keyboard. The keys are comfortable and well-padded, and the wrist rest is large enough for big hands, and I type comfortably at 100 WPM for long periods of time. I highly recommend this keyboard to those it is intended for: right-handed, MS Office-using, practical computer users.

I love the clipboard keys (cut, copy,& paste keys.) Use them all the time. My problem is that the right side shift key started to "stick" about a year after I bought it. Anyone else out there had the same problem?

Unusual positioning of home, delete, end, page up, & page down keys, but you will get used to them as long as you don't use another keyboards elsewhere. The placement of "insert" key is interesting. (It is above your number keys.) Keyboard is large. So check your space before you buy it.

Really slow, low quality, crappy software and no power switch. And good luck getting technical support! My emails got bounced and I could not get through on the phone. Oh, and Epson offers you a "free" web space to post your photos... I read the fine print and it says that you lose your rights to pictures you post! Epson can claim your photos as its own and use them without even acknowledging you, let alone compensating you. So here's the summary: bad product, bad service, and they try to take your photos for themselves!

I have had a this scanner for a week and find it to be adequate for most of my scanning needs, however I did have a problem with the installation of the Epson Smart Panel software on my XP system. If I had not had to spend 45min manually editing my registry and destroying all traces of the software because the Install wizard would not properly uninstall the product (and yes, you can not install the Smart Panel software if the auto install program detects a previous version), I would have rated this product with 4 stars. It has a good value for the price if you are willing to deal with potential flaky install scripts.

Side note: I am not sure what flaming reviewers has to do with this product but as there is one here I feel compelled to state that my XP skill set is ADVANCED and RTFM would not have been of any help if first reviewer had the same issue I did (assuming of course that he followed the instructions to close all open programs and kill anti-virus scanners).

Nice scanner for the price. My needs were not major so it fits my need perfect.
The only minor problem I have had is making copies. Sometimes when I have several pages to copy, it stops after a copy. But I just power it off and back on and it's fine.

Before I used to think that i would be worth the prive that it was set at, I was wrong. I mean this does serve its purpose and does everything it says, but it is just too overprivced. I could see this at $15, maybe $20, but $40 is just outragous. If you are planning on buying an ipod, buy a 20 or 40 gig, if you really want this. Sepreately, it is just a waste of money.

For 40 bucks you get the dock, which is nice. For 75 you get the dock, a Monster Cable audio connection cable with RCA connectors; the Apple USB-iPod cable and the Apple power adapter. Apple calls this its stereo connection kit. In May 2004 it's $5 cheaper on Amazon than at apple.com. Seventy-five bucks is too much for this, too, but bought separately, I know these items would cost quite a bit more than $75.

You do need the dock to use the line-level output to your stereo. While it's true the variable output headphone connection works fine, the line-level output provides higher fidelity and eliminates the risk of overloading the inputs on your pre-amp or receiver.

If you don't have an iPod yet and you love music, especially if you travel on airplanes, you need one. Just know that podding, like most other things, is a bit of a money pit.

Let's put it this way: I think the dock is great. Aesthetically is much more pleasing to see my iPod propped up securely in this sturdy little accessory. Functionally, the line out jack is great for hooking up to a stereo. And for the sake caution, I prefer having a spot to place this pricey little unit in, rather than just leaving it lying down, just waiting for the first inadvertant soda can to be set on it, or crushed under a stack of books, and so on.

The price doesn't really bother me; it could be lower, but it's not prohibitive, considering how much you just paid for your iPod. And that's why overall, I'd give the dock 4 stars...

... But not 5. Because having said all of that, it's really sort of chintzy of Apple to make one have to pay extra for a basic component and, when all is said and done, one you don't necessarily actually need. So, in the end, it's nice, if you can get it -- but if not, you're not missing much.

We have this printer in our school and it is almost always broken! It doesn't last very long! I hate this printer because it prints very slowly and the printing is never like it was on the computer screen! Everything awful it makes for your printing paper if it's only working...!

We have been using this printer in our workgroup for about5months. Contrary to some reviews posted on Amazon earlier, we found that the printer is very quite, requires almost no time to warm up, and prints with excellent quality. I never measured how many pages it actually prints per minute, but its speed is certainly adequate for a small workgroup. User interface is inconvenient since it is limited to three poorly labelled buttons and three LEDs, and one has to refer to the user manual to interpret their blinking pattern each time something goes wrong. However, paper jams or malfunctions happen very seldom, if ever, and one does not have to use those buttons often.

Although our printer has a network card, we decided for the sake of installation simplicity to connect it to a Win-95 PC and share it on the network. This resulted in a problem that a Win-NT computer could not access the printer since HP drivers for NT were not fully compatible with drivers for Win-95/98 ...

I'd say its an entry-level laser printer for a workgroup. I would not recommend to buy it for home office in this pricy configuration with two paper trays and a network card.

Overall this is another nice printer from HP. We bought the TN networked version including PostScript capability for our Home Office where both my wife and I print from our respective computers and/or laptops. The setup and install of the network configuration drivers is a snap. Our network has a DHCP/Firewall device to share the cable modem and this printer works great in this "floating IP address" configuration. The print speed is good and the 1200 DPI resolution/print quality is notably better than our other HP-6P printer we still use as well.

I have only two compaints about the printer. First, in this day and age the Ethernet should be 10/100-BaseT capable. We knew it didn't have the support when we bought it, but it doesn't seem worth the extra money to buy the more expensive print server that supports it. Again, I think this an expected network feature nowadays. The second complaint is the sound level of the printer. It is definately noisier than the HP-6P that we have. The noise concern is not so much the printing noise as a small fan (I assume) that turns on and off while it sits idle. When there is any background noise going on you don't notice it, but when I'm working alone it can be distracting at times when it either turns on or off and changes noise levels.

In any case, overall, we like the printer and our happy with the purchase.

Overall not as high quality as I would expect from a high-end monitor targeted at graphics professionals, but if you want a Trinitron-quality picture without the damper wires and the geometry doesn't have to be "professional" quality, look no further.

Pros:
-Good refresh rates in higher resolutions- rock-solid 85hz all the way up to 1600x1200.
-Slot-mask technology gives a brighter picture without the visible horizontal damper wires that all aperture grill (Trinitron/Diamondtron) monitors have.
-Jaw-droppingly good picture - sharp, bright, vibrant, accurate colors. Games look fantastic.
-Text in 1280x960 and 1600x1200 very sharp and black (10 point Arial and Windows 2000 default fonts)

Cons:
-Concave image takes some getting used to. Horizontal lines are bowed about 1/16" (it appears much worse than it measures) and there is no way to adjust it.
-The first unit I bought made me wonder if Viewsonic ever heard of QA- the non-glare coating stopped ½" from the corner of the screen. Fortunately I could return it for a replacement at no charge.
-The replacement unit displays a considerable convergence issue in the tests that will not adjust out, but I don't do any precise graphic work so I don't notice it. (first unit did not have this issue)
-Coming out of sleep mode, the picture takes about 10 minutes to come back to proper size.
-100hz refresh rate setting in 1280x mode is fuzzy and shimmers, use 85hz instead.
-Noticeable (but not severe) clicking when changing resolutions

P.S. If you find this review helpful please post one of your own on whatever HW you buy to keep the "system" working- thanks.

Ordering a monitor over the internet is a mixed bag: You can't see it for yourself before you buy it. You can't stop the shipping company from banging around the box. And you certainly must realize that a significant portion of these mass produced monitors come off the line as lemons.

I was a little worried when I put in my Internet order for this monitor: In addition to the factors above, there are some very negative one star reviews of the P90F.

When I first got the monitor hooked up, my first impression was good: Bright picture, no obvious blotches of discoloration, steady image.

Closer inspection of the image at my preferred resolution (1600x1200 @ 85 Hz) revealed some worrisome flaws:

• There were a couple vertical half-inch-wide bars of dimming along running the length of the left hand side of the screen.

• Text was blurring in the corners due to misconvergence, and the purity of the right top and right bottom corner was off.

• There were also noticeable screen geometry problems around the edges of the screen: It is not uncommon for P90F to have a 1mm to 3mm vertical "slant" along one of the horizontal edges of the screen. This I found to be annoying, but did not affect the image quality (I looked at several full screen geometric pictures to see if I could notice distortion, and my eye could not find any).

• The vertical edges of the screen are not perfectly straight. They are very close to straight though, and their straightness seems quite acceptable to me, especially for a monitor in this price class.

• I noticed the frequently mentioned problem with this monitor taking 15 minutes to "remember" its vertical / horizontal screen sizing after it has been in sleep mode or turned off for a while.

All these problems! But, I decided to stick with it for a couple days, and see what I could get fixed on my own. After three days I've decided to keep it. Read on for why.

The vertical bars of dimming slowly seemed to "get better" after using the monitor for a couple days. Also, I changed the video timing mode on my nVidia video card to "Fixed Ratio" mode, which seemed to help alleviate the problem immediately. They are still *BARELY* visible on a purely white background and this is acceptable to me.

I adjusted out the the text blurring (which was due to misconvergence) with the on-screen controls. This convergence adjusting took me about an hour of careful inspection of text and graphics in different applications and resolutions. The monitor still has a little misconvergance, but I have found a happy middle ground where everything in the corners is acceptable, and the convergence in the middle of the screen is quite crisp. All CRT monitors will be blurrier in the corner than they are in the centre. I am not entirely satisfied with the P90F's convergence however, and feel it is an area that ViewSonic could improve upon.

The purity was again adjustible with the onscreen controls, and I was able to fix the dimness on the right top and bottom corners. The right-hand side of the screen is almost imperceptibly darker than the left, but this is only noticeable on a purely white screen, and even then is barely so. I was happy with this adjustment.

The slanting along horizontal edge appears to be a common problem with this monitor. It can not be adjusted out -- I wish it wasn't there, but honestly I don't notice it at all when I'm using the monitor. However, serious graphics professionals who want uncompromizing geometry might do well to look to a higher quality CRT, or pay the premium on an LCD.

The problem with this monitor "remembering" its vertical sizing very slowly when first starting it after it has been powered down for a while is a bit frustrating. I believe it has to do with the type of Tension Mask used in this particular CRT. Let's say you have had the monitor powered on for a while (i.e., displaying images so that the Mask is warmed up), and you adjust the horizontal edges of the image to the VERY edges of the displayable regions. You then power down the monitor for the night. In the morning, when you turn on the screen, you will notice that the horizontal edges of the image are now "out of bounds" of the displayable region. If you leave the image be, you will notice that the horizontal edges slowly come drift back into the original settings (and into view) over the next 15 minutes. I believe this is the Tension Mask warming up and slightly changing shape.

Normally a problem like this would have me sending the monitor back right away. But -- I stopped to think for a bit: This particular CRT offers near Trinitron (read: great) brightness and color, but without aperture grille tension wire lines. However, it offers it at the cost of this slow "image size restoration" while warming up. Ask yourself: would you rather deal with a few millimeters of image shift when first powering on the monitor for the day, or would you rather have two distinctly visible horizontal black lines crossing your screen all day. I'll choose the former, and I have.

Now, with all my adjustments set I have what I feel is a fantastic mid-range 19" monitor. The case is stylish and looks good with my black hardware. The image is crisp and and the colors are true and bright. I can even run at reasonably flicker free at 1920 x 1440 @ 70Hz, and text is still readable! This I feel is due to the excellent .24 dot pitch. It switches resolutions fairly quickly and without much noise.

The only thing I wish ViewSonic had included was saveable monitor profiles for restoring certain settings for certain applications. However this is a "nice to have" and not a "must have."

Overall I feel that this is probably the best monitor in its class. It requires a lot of tweaking, but the end result is very satisfying. One of its best features is that it has no aperture grille lines due to its Tension Mask CRT design. The only other monitor in this class that could compete would probably be the NEC/Mitsubishi.

The P90f is truly excellent, with a sharp and even picture and very nice bright colors. Right now, I am running it at 1280x1024 32bit color under a 2 1/2 year-old video card (ATI All-in-Wonder 128 Pro) and it's clarity is better than my slightly scratched-up glasses will allow me to see!

Even more incredible to me is that, at the maximum resolution I can set (1920x1440), the picture is still as clear as my old monitor at 1024x768. 1600x1200 is just as clear to my eyes as my current 1280x1024. I can imagine this clarity would improve with higher quality video adaptors (I can't wait to get one).

This monitor's graphics are also quite stunning. Vivid, well-separated and crisp colors in all modes (16/32 bit 640x480 to 1280x1024 are what I tried).

The controls (on screen display) are the usually lot of brightness/contrast, color and geometry displays. Straight out of the box, the geometry only required a few minor tweaks to get to a very acceptable shape. Other monitors I've had required massive tuning. The controls are really average, and I admit I expected a bit more innovation in a product positioned as "professional" (perhaps in a higher-end P-series model).

The color is a bit limited in control, you do get a red and blue color temperature adjustment (green is fixed). the problem is that what looks right depends on the contrast and brightness settings - which mean exiting the color menu and adjusting them, then coming back to the color menu etc. Mode switching is average speed as well, but the picture snaps back fairly quickly, so it's not an issue.

No bit complaints here and, really, with a monitor like this, it's about the looks. I never believed I could own a monitor this nice for less than ... and I'm very glad to have been proven wrong.

I would give it zero stars if I could. This product may be good for something, but it certainly does NOT do what its packaging advertises; i.e. "easily turn old records and tapes into MP3s or CDs." If you have a PC, stay far, FAR away from this bogus item. The packaging claims that it is designed for Macs AND PCs, and also claims to include a full version of Final Vinyl Recording Software. Both these statements are *technically* true... what the packaging does NOT say is that Final Vinyl does not WORK on a PC--and the only software included for PCs is 30-day trial software you will eventually need to buy for an extra ~$50. Buying such extra software (not even made by Griffin) may or may not be worth it to you--but this does not change the fact that if you did, it would be THAT ADDITIONAL SOFTWARE allowing you to convert your LPs and tapes into mp3s (together with a good RCA-to-3.5mm cable for your sound card), and NOT this product at all!! As far as converting old LPs, the only thing you can do with this product alone (using the Sound Recorder that YOU ALREADY HAVE preinstalled in Windows) is to record sound bytes NO MORE THAN 60 SECONDS LONG... now tell me how many of the songs on your old LPs and tapes are less than 60 seconds long? So without additional software, from another company, at an additional cost, this product will do absolutely nothing for you (unless you have some burning need for sound bytes under 60 seconds long).
But just to be fair, before returning this product to the store (not Amazon), I e-mailed Griffin to make sure I was not overlooking something, and got a defensive and insulting reply from someone in tech support (we'll call him Wendall), who told me, "I apologize that *you* do not have a full understanding of what our product does." To which I reply, "Well, Wendall, I understand that your product does not do what its packaging claims." Another amusing piece from Wendall was his technical(ity) argument that "Nowhere on the packaging does it say that you do not need any recording software." Is this man a lawyer or what? Okay, Wendall... this is exactly what it says on the packaging: 1) that the product works on PCs and Macs (presumably, the *whole* product--including the enclosed software?); 2) that a full version of Final Vinyl Recording Software is included; and 3) that the PURPOSE of the product is to "easily turn old records and tapes into MP3s or CDs" (for goodness' sakes!). But I guess we are just supposed to guess as to whether 'working on a PC' extends to the included software?? Wendall's take on this was that "we do not say anywhere on our packaging that [Final Vinyl] is either a Mac or PC application." (MY POINT EXACTLY!! Ya don't think that might have been a helpful thing to mention on there somewhere??)
In addition to the misleading packaging, there are next to no setup/installation instructions included (for these, you have to go online--and even then they are very brief, unclearly written, contradictory, and do not answer the questions you would think one would need to ask). One precious design gem is that you have to push the switch to the opposite side from the function you actually want to use; e.g. to enable the microphone, you push it AWAY from the mic symbol... nice, huh? My iMic (otherwise known as the headache of this past weekend) is going right back to the store for a full refund, as is the 3' RCA extension cable I had to buy to hook this useless gadget up in the first place... that is, if Radio Shack will even take it back opened (if not, that is six bucks down the drain, thanks to Griffin).
NUTSHELL: maybe this device improves sound once you have all other not-included required components in place (I wouldn't know, since I was duped into thinking it came with software that would work on my computer--and since it doesn't, I can't use it)--but it *definitely* does NOT serve alone to convert old analog music to CDs, as its packaging implies with a capital I. Consumer, beware!!!!!!

I'm using it to record NPR. I used to use a PCI sound card but got annoyed at all the noise and buzz coming from the computer. The solution was move the sound card outside the computer. It records faithfully and quietly. I'm not going to say it's easy to get it working under Linux, since sound is still not trivial, but I was successful and am very happy with this product.

I currently using Redhat Linux 9, with Alsa 1.0 patches and ecasound to do the recording. One upshot of switching to usb audio was that the quality of the recording improved so much that the size of the recordings got smaller. Now I get excellent sound quality using VBR and average about 12kbps.

This device is a totally plug-n-play way of adding sound input capability to your Mac. It plugs into a spare USB port and accepts a mini mono mic/line input. G4 Macs, among others, come with a line in audio jack, but they have no mic input and can't amplify a mic enough to make it audible. So, if you want to use an unpowered mic for direct sound-in to your mac, this is a cost-effective way to go!

The driver came installed with Jaguar, so there was no installing to do - I plugged it into the USB port and the Mac OS immediately recognized it. It shows up in the 'Sound' pane of System Preferences and is easy to select. There's a handy level meter there, so you can twiddle the amplification just right.

I've used it for a couple months to DJ my live internet radio broadcast, which goes out over the "airwaves" as a 56K internet stream. I'm using it with a cheap Radio Shack combo phones/mic headset (nine bucks), and the sound quality is totally adequate. I'd agree with the manufacturer, though, that you oughtn't expect to use this for studio-quality sound; although I can't discern any distortion or hiss from the peripheral over my cheap speakers or headphones.

This device works best when plugged into its own USB port. I had trouble when using it on USB busses that already had a lot of activity.

It fails to get 5 stars because the cable is too short - only about 18 inches - not really even long enough to make it around to the front of the computer. Also, there's an occasional (once a week) bug/problem with sound degradation after the computer's been asleep. Unplugging and re-plugging in the peripheral fixes this problem, but it'd be nice if it wasn't there at all.

In short, if you need average quality mic-level sound input into your Mac, and price is important to you, this is the peripheral you need!

I found this gamepad to completely blow away my exisiting Gravis Gamepad PRo USB. installation took two seconds, calibration was easy, and soon i was playing NBA live. the control is amazing, your hands never get tired, the thing is exteremly comfortable too. Plenty of buttons in the right places too. All in all, highly reccomended.

Thrustmaster makes a great product and I found this joystick to very user friendly. The amount of buttons to be used for a multiple of functions is outstanding. The force-feedback is great and adjustable. The software is easy to install and also found easy on Thrustmaster's website. This joystick is very solid and offers a lot for the money.

From opening the box, to installing this pad it took me less than 2 minuites.

I run windows 2000 and the pad works excellently with all the latest games, Even with emulators for obsolete consoles like the snes and megadrive.

I am more than happy with the price of this customisable and comfy gamepad. And with over 10 buttons this gamepad means you can sit back and relax without having to mess about with the keyboard.

I was told buy Epson Pre-Sales that this printer would print 16.5" +/- in WIDTH.
IT DOES NOT !!!
The maximum width of this printer is 13.6" Don't buy this OLD machine! Get a newer one.

>:(

Probably the best deal you can possibly get on a solid wide-format color inkjet, from anyone. However, word of warning: as of not (August 2002), there are NO drivers for this on Mac OS X... so it's completely useless with that. You'll have to use OS9, or a PC to print from.
I have the networking card from a different epson printer, that works with this as well, and it's pretty nice to be able to print to it from anywhere on the network, so realize that's an option as well.
It does suck down ink a bit, and the startup time is quite long (often 3 minutes from turn on to printing), but this is the case with all Epson printers of the era (this printer first came out in 1999 I believe.)
Overall, if you really need the wide-format printing, this is probably the printer to get for under [dollar amount]; it's definitely got some quirks, and until they release OS X drivers I'm bummin', but it is a nice printer for full-page bleed proofs, etc.

I've used this printer for 5 years on all kinds of paper and have never encountered these feeding errors so many people talk about. I do keep the printer rather clean though, as I realize that a roller coated with paper dust is probably not going to work as well as a clean one. The only time I have trouble with feeding is when using the manual loading slot and thicker paper. Since I prefer to load the paper before the printer needs it, if the paper doesn't load correctly I can just reload it. If there is a problem, it just fails to grab the paper and pull it in. This can be fixed simply by putting slight pressure on the top of the sheet when the printer first grabs it.

I've only had problems with the head clogging on one occasion, which turned out to be a bad black print cartridge (brand new and didn't even print a full page). I've abused the printer by using media much thicker than what it is supposed to accept (using manual loading), yet this is the most troublefree inkjet I've ever used. In the same time I've used this printer, my parents have gone through 2 HP's and encountered all kinds of intermittent behavior on both units with two different computers.

I think it's more a "windows" factor that causes these "driver" problems, I've not had any problems using it with Linux and gimp-print (which, BTW will work with MacOS X).

Don't expect such an old model to rival the photo output of the newer printers, but if you ever get the chance to compare a 1520 with on of the newer Epson models, the durability of the 1520 is quite evident. Overall, even today, this printer is a bargain if you wish to print out large graphics.

If you are planning on using a USB keyboard that has multi-media buttons or a USB mouse with a scroller wheel, it may not work with this KVM.

I got my KVM and it worked great until I plugged a Microsoft Natural Pro keyboard into it. Windows XP would not recognize the keyboard and Hawking tech support said this KVM does not support non-standard 101 keyboards or mice with scroller wheels.

this switch isnt all too bad, words fine with my 2 button wheel mouse, only thing is, i have to use two keyboards, but much better than having to use two mice two monitors, etc etc. not a bad price for it either

I had PS2 switch and now for my new USB mouse and keyboard, I bought this switch.The description to me clearly suggested that it is fully USB compliant. After buying it I read Customer reviews. The reviews scared me as it seemed the hot keys on my keyboard will not work and my MS 4 button optical mouse with scroll wheel will function only like a two button mouse and no scrolling. I also read the data sheeet from Hawking website. There they mention that this switch works with most keyboards and mouse. This made me feel that I had bought the wrong thing. However on receipt of the switch, I found that with proper connections, most of the hot keys work and all the 4 buttons plus the scroll wheel work. I am happy having bought this at a discount at Amazon Marketplace.

I bought this product to store the RAW Canon Digital Rebel photos of my Australia trip. Instead of buying a set of expensive flash cards, I kept my 2 512 MB flash cards and copied the results at the end of the day.
The good:
In the end, it worked and saved me a lot of money, since I already owned an iPod.
The bad: where do I start?
- Copying 512 MB of data almost completely drains the iPod battery. Don't even think about copying more. It doesn't give you a good piece of mind to see the battery indicator go down quickly. Quickly, I decided to fill up the flashcard up to 75% capacity, to have some margin.
- It's EXTREMELY slow. 26 minutes for 512 MB. Not really an issue for me, since I never took more than 50 pictures/day, but other may find this a problem.
- Media Reader battery usage. A set of 4 AAA allowed me to copy roughly 10 512 MB copies. When the batteries run out, everything still seems to work fine until it stops after, say, 12 of the 50 pictures on the card. There's no indication at all about what happened.
- Software Robustness. From time to time, it wouldn't start copying or stop in the middle of a copying session. Restarting always solved the problem, but if this happened at the end, your iPod battery might already be drained by then.

Conclusion: it worked for me, but I can only recommend it if you are really really cash strapped, are a amateur who doesn't shoot that much and already own an iPod with some spare gigabyte. Otherwise you just don't bother.

Tom

I bought this device to download pictures from the Memory Sticks used by my Sony digital camera when I am on vacation and away from my computer.

The device works as advertised. It takes me 3-4 minutes to download a full 128 MB Memory Stick. No, that isn't super fast but it wasn't a problem for me.

The biggest negative on this device for me was the fact that it can't read the new Memory Stick PRO media.

Yes, it isn't very fast (about half or a third as fast as uploading to the computer in my experience) and it does tax the iPod battery, both negative qualities.... but its not as bad as some have said, and it definitely works as advertised.

To be honest though, I've only used it with 256MB cards, but I've used it for 6MP full size .jpgs (about 2.5MB) AND for RAW files (~6MB) from a Nikon D70 and it works equally fine for both. The RAW files obviously take longer, but there are less of them per card, so big deal.

Just as a rough estimation, I'd guess I could transfer somewhere between 1-2 gigs of photos before the iPod battery died.

Overall, if you are going somewhere that you can't bring your powerbook its a worthy investment. Its a lot cheaper than buying a couple gigabytes of flash memory (I only paid $82).