anyone use card readers?

Quinbus said:

I have (and have had) various digital cameras, and always use a
card reader. It's just more convenient. Whatever you get, be sure
it supports USB 2.0.

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http://www.everythingusb.com/usb2/faq.htm

"USB 1.1 allowed a maximum transfer rate of 12Mbits/second. It is now obsolete, but both of its speeds (1.5Mbps & 12Mbps) are being adopted into USB 2.0, and they are now called Original USB officially. Though some manufacturers label their products Full-Speed USB. Note that this seems a bit deceptive as it's easy to mistake Full-Speed for Hi-Speed. You won't be fooled from now on as you now aware that Full Speed USB is only 12Mbits/second where Hi-Speed USB mode is capable of a much faster 480Mbits/second."

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Hmm, I thought everybody used card readers. I've had a whole bunch of them. Early Sandisk ones won't even work on later computers any more. I've had a whole bunch of different brands. Little ones, big ones, fat ones thin ones. They all basically work. Some don't like some cards, some work some times and don't other times. My Lexar firewire CF one wouldn't work at all last evening. I unplugged it and plugged it back in and it worked. I have one Lexar card that will crash the Lexar card reader that came with it as a freebie, but works fine on other readers. I suggest card readers are a glitch waiting to happen, but we all endure them.
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Dave Lewis

Godfrey said:

I use card readers exclusively. I've test four or five USB 2.0 card
readers and find the Sandisk ImageMate 12-in-1 card reader to be
the best performer, achieving transfer rates of around 8.5 Mbytes
per second with Transcend 150x SD cards. Most of the others didn't
get much over 4.5-5.5 Mbytes per second reliably, and some were
down in the 2-3 Mbytes per second range.

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My ExpressCard card reader in laptop gives over 20MB/s reading speed for my Transcend 150x 4GB SD card and over 10MB/s writing speed. Use my DL directly connect to USB2 will still be much faster than your Sandisk card reader.

Barry O said:

but all I get is the memory card activity light going off for a very long time each time I shoot several pictures within a few seconds. Mind you, not even close to burst-mode number of shots we are talking about here.

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Barry O said:

Curiously, when I use a regular slow 256mb SD card, it works well

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Well it's not an inherent problem with the K100D. I use a few 4GB 150X Ridatas and they write as fast as I can press the button, even continuous .. right up to 4GB Full !! and that's JPG ie 1500+ files
The only possibilities I can come up with -

1/ Severe fragmentation, In which case reformat InCamera once or twice. If that doesn't work format again on a PC (I don't trust XP, so anthing else) and back in the cammie again. Most likely.

2/ Cards not compatable. I've always said that I've had problems with Transend, plus there are occasional batches of other cards that have played up. You'd need to try another K100D to prove it.
JKirk

I've only plugged my DS into a computer twice in the last 2 years. Card readers are faster and won't drain the batts.

RG