i.e. a web site with reviews or someone of you who bought this unit
could let us know his/her opinion.
Hi Tom,
I guess you have already searched "v-mp3h" in this forum.
I have tested it for a while, but not in the real "field".
here's my impression anyways.
Build quality: OK, similar to image tank. Doesn't feel as "solid"
as my canon s30.
... just don't drop it.
Size, weight: bigger by about 1cm on thickness and length
compared to image tank. doesn't look or feel "compact" but
remember, it encloses an internal battery and LCD screen.
hard drive installation:
remove 2 backcover screws. attach cable to drive and set it
on two notches. No screws to secure it. There are 4 round
pads on the backcover that will hold it down. I moved the pads
to match the corners of the drive so they won't press on the
drive itself. Installation is a bit clumsy, but once installed, it
sits firmly. i think 9.5mm drives only. no room for more.
Operations:
You turn on unit and it will sense the devices (HDD, CF, SD).
You can hot plug / unplug the CF card. Pressing "auto" copies
all contents of CF card to a new folder "CARDxxxx" where xxxx
is auto-incremented. You can also choose the "copy" function
but that copies into the root directory without creating a new
folder. A full 256mb card copies in less than 2 minutes!
The v-mp3h checks and displays the space left on HDD first
before copying. If filenames already exists, it warns and you
can pick to overwrite them or not.
You can double check by going to HDD and list directory / files
there. Only .jpg, .mp3 .dat . mpg listed. No text or raw
formats support. But gives me the peace of mind to see files
are actually there.
PC operation:
Install driver first, then connect usb. 3 removable drives
will show up. The 2nd one is HDD. totally hot pluggable
with my win98se system. USB link LED is on if USB connects.
Good for debugging connection. Blinks during accesses.
CF card download speed:
I bought this mainly for downloading images in compact flash
to the internal hard disk. Numbers:
CF -> HDD: 2.1MB/s
HDD -> PC: 0.77MB/s
CF -> PC : 0.80MB/s (bypassing HDD)
The "other" way:
PC -> HDD : 0.67 MB/s
PC -> CF : 0.56 MB/s
HDD -> CF : not allowed
LCD display:
The LCD is no way near my canon s30 LCD quality.
picture review is slow. but useful to check what's in the
CF cards (by looking at a few images.) a 3 megapix
image takes 7-9 seconds. Smaller size images are fast.
MP3: i don't care for this feature. tried it. it's OK, I guess.
MPEG: don't care either, but I loaded a .dat format movie
and it plays very very well. Cool.
TV out: Either NTSC or PAL only. Not both.
Battery life:
no scientific test yet. seems to run at least an hour.
probably much more. 1 hour gives me quite a few gigs of
downloads in the field, so I'm not worried. My camera
will probably need a recharge sooner than the v-mp3h.
other issues:
hot - it does get hot with LCD display on all the time.
Not an issue if I use it to download CF cards only.
Lock/unlock switch - cool feature. locks buttons so
you won't turn on unit accidentally.
Multiple partitions - haven't tried it, but don't think it;s
supported. Not important to me using 1 partition.
price:
US$220 (including tax, shipping) from compgeeks.com .
Compared to IT, personally i think it's worth the ~$50 extra.
But if you already have an IT, don't think you need this.
Anyhow, in absolute terms, I think it's still expensive for
a rather simple device... (same goes for image tank).
Hmm... maybe I should build one myself...
UK prices look way expensive, IMHO.
overall: I like it as far as data storage is concerned.
would be perfect if JPG display is faster, supports RAW,
thumbnails display, text display, umm... what else?
phew, that's all for now. let me know if you want
me to test something out...
