Laptop V Digital Walllet V More CF/MicroDrive

Hi Warren-

I bought the 10GB Nixvue for $430. from B&H photo in NY. The 20GB is way more than I could ever fill on any trip/assignment. I also opted for the travel pack for $59., which includes an attachment for the Nixvue which allows you to leave the docking station home and charge the internal battery directly with AC, or with the included 8AA cell battery holder. It also has a plug/cord to charge the internal battery from the cigarette lighter of an automobile.

Having owned (if only for a short period of time) both the Mindstor and the Nixvue, there is no comparison in build quality between the two. Aside from the superior firewire support of the Mindstor, everything else was inferior to the Nixvue. The 2 Mindstor units I had refused to run for more than 3-5 minutes on batteries; they simply shut off in the middle of what they were doing. Minds@Work tech support tried to be helpful- they overnighted me a new battery pack (Panasonic vrs. the original no-name pack which came with the units); however this had no effect on the problem, it still shut off in 3-5 minutes.

Also, the build quality of the Mindstor's case was not confidence inspiring. The units appeared to be spray painted, and the paint immediately started scratching off, just resting on my dining room table. Plus, the battery compartment cover was really flimsy, the battery was almost impossible to get into the alotted space and the battery cover kept coming open.

The Nixvue comes with a nice case, which the Mindstor did not.

I apologize if this is more info than you were looking for; I just figured that you might want to know the details of my personal experiences with the 2 brands. I would imagine that it would take you awhile to get a defective unit serviced in Aus., so I wouldn't want you to make a bad choice- hense the lengthy explanation.

Cheers-

Gary Shepard

Warren Prasek said:

$1200 is in australian dollars... i.e. about $580 USD. still way
more expensive i think, we typically pay 50-100% more down here for
niche-market tech gear... sigh

could you please keep us updated on the nixvue... i'm tempted to
get one of these for mega-storage during multiple-week holiday
trips, blows away even a microdrive's (current) capacity of 1 gig,
but is much more portable than a laptop (ugh! may as well take your
whole studio... i wanna travel as light as possible, much more
enjoyable)

ps how much did your nixvue cost (10g or 20g) and where from? thankx.

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Warren Prasek said:

hi Vernon... may i ask how long you will be in australia? if it's
more than a couple of weeks i hope you have scheduled some time in
sydney, melbourne, perhaps the great ocean road, maybe coober pedy,
alice springs/ uluru (ayers rock)/ the olgas, kakadu, cairns (great
barrier reef), the whitsundays etc...

that's like travelling around most of the US mainland but it's well
worth it for the diversity of climate, terrain, flora, fauna and
people!

have a great trip and be sure to post some photos. i'm sure you
will find the exchange rate to your liking...! i live in
brisbane (queensland) and it's currently about 21deg. C overnight
and 30 deg. C during the day, so bring your bathers!

cheers
warren.

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Aloha Warren,

We will be in Australia for the entire month of March. This is the wife's lifetime dream trip.

The basic itinery is, Sydney, Melborne, private drive of Ocean Road, Adelaide, Brisbane, Cairns, Silky Oaks and back to Sydney. We are traveling with another couple.

The wives are into jewelry(Opals, Pink Diamonds), shopping and eating. We all like to do the unusual stuff. I want to see the Shark Museum, WW II aircraft museums, a Yowie(if we can get there). Stuff like that. Not normal touristy stuff.

If you check my other postings, you'll see how much digital photo stuff we're taking. Probably enought stuff to open a small photo shop(just kidding). We're even bringing our own Kodak Ultima Gold CD-Rs to back up our Smart Media cards AND Nixvue Digital Album. I wanted to bring my new toy, a Sony Vaio laptop as backup to everything, Smart Media in the left side, burned CD out the right side. Wife shot that one down. We are both new to digital photography. I don't know how to post photos here. When I get back, I MUST learn how.

Yes, we are aware of the exchange rate. Your economy will probably be helped by us. We like to SHOP. Wife is happy that I am one of few men with the Shopping gene.

Feel free to recommend anything in the area where we'll be. If we think it's interesting and we have time, we'll probably try to see/do it. Except for Minnesota in March, we usually do bring our swim stuff. We're not into the Outback stuff. We like air conditioning, hot/cold running water etc.
Thanks and Aloha

--YogiBear

Vernon Okamura said:

I wanted to bring my new toy, a Sony Vaio laptop as backup to
everything, Smart Media in the left side, burned CD out the right
side. Wife shot that one down.

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Yogi, you've got to find a way to take your laptop. It's the perfect compliment to your other photo accessories. Your wife may not think it's such a great idea now but she will thank you later....and you will thank me for insisting that you take it ;-)

Seriously, if there is anyway you can swing taking it you will be glad you did.

Debbie

Read it carefully Warren. I didn't say 'no' or 'every', I said 'Those who merely carry lots of CF cards probably don't backup their computer's HDs, either.' The important word here is 'merely'; I was addressing the postists who are choosing more CF cards over transferring to some HD or CDR.

I'm glad you're smart enough to backup your HDs. SOME aren't.--I love my D30!

Fair enough, I just can't seen anyone not transferring images from their CF card(s) to their computer at the end of a day of shooting, and then archiving to CD-ROM soon thereafter... i mean, you have to empty the CF card to make room for more shots anyway!

So i dont see how anyone would "trust" their images to their CF cards alone... i mean you have no choice in the field unless you do have a digital wallet/laptop (major expense and bulk), CF cards are only a short-term (interim) storage solution until you get back home and i think everyone knows that. whether or not they back up to CD-ROM often enough or not is another matter. and store those CDs carefully too...

hang on, i forgot what we were arguing about... heh

Jeffrey Behr said:

Read it carefully Warren. I didn't say 'no' or 'every', I said
'Those who merely carry lots of CF cards probably don't backup
their computer's HDs, either.' The important word here is
'merely'; I was addressing the postists who are choosing more CF
cards over transferring to some HD or CDR.

I'm glad you're smart enough to backup your HDs. SOME aren't.
--
I love my D30!

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--------------------------------------i was gonna type something witty here but then i changed my mind.

I bought just such a laptop (IBM ThinkPad 560E, 3 lb, 1" thick, 800x600) for just those purposes (photos, GPS) for $200 on ebay. That was over a year ago (you can get it sometimes for $100 now). I put in a 12G HD for $50. It's my travel laptop and if I lose it (hopefully without any of my images) I won't lose too much sleep over $250. It was only 150MHz but for the purpose it was perfect.

I use it for:

• offloading images from CF/SM cards using PCMCIA adapters
• rename files base on EXIF date info (VB program I wrote0
• backup of those images to a different partition (same HD)
• create/browse thumbnails (PSP 7)
• stich paroramic photos
• preview AVIs and WAVs (Canon S30)
• GPS connectivity to Garmin III Plus
• Internet w/landline or CF/StarTAC/Verizon wireless modem

Beeeil

Jude Franey said:

I'm going to go the laptop route for my G-1. I'll be getting one of
those under 3lb., 10.5" screen, 1" thick ones. In addition to all
the other plusses with a laptop I will also use it as a color
moving map display GPS and a backup computer for the home. This
will be a little pricey but it will give me maximum versitility and
satisfaction. All of my vacations are sightseeing by car.
JF

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Warren,
I live in Brisbane as well...great place to live I say!

Ok....my big question is WHERE CAN YOU GET A 1GIG MICRODRIVE FOR $500 AUD DELIVERED????? Is that including gst?
The best I can find is $649.....and I think it might be ex-GST.

I'm almost salivating at the thought of a 1gig microdrive for that price. Very interesting!
Thanks mate,

Tony

Warren Prasek said:

I still dont think its practical for every day stuff, lugging a
great big heavy laptop (seeing as it will be low spec and cheap, it
aint gonna be thin and light like a new Titanium Powerbook!) and
powersupply, etc all over the place...

and dont forget you can get the 1gig microdrive for $500 AUD
delivered... not bad really... thats what i'm gonna go for anyway

good luck

oh yeah and one more thing- compact flash cards known to fail????
are you kidding! i've used CF cards for about 3 1/2 years now,
never had a single one fail or even vaguely indicate anything was
wrong. that's 8 different cards, travelled all over the world,
dropped them, you name it.

these things are TOUGH. there's a thread on these forums somewhere
about a CF card going through a full washing machine cycle (yes,
water, detergent, spin dry, softener, the works) and then thru the
clothes dryer as well! and it worked 100% ok after... and 3 months
later too. don't worry about CF cards, they're SOLID STATE baby...

microdrive is a different story but apparently while the 340mbs
sucked, the 1gigs are damn tough. rated at 1,500 g's of shock
resistance, i've heard people dropping them, stepping on them etc
and theyre fine... just so you know...

jonlg said:

Thanks for responding Kirk.
Yes I thought my idea was to obvious, but alot of people seem to be
taken by high in camera storage or those digital wallets.
As you know in field editing is a big bonus, the fact you can see a
large view of the photo to tell if it's of reasonable quality or
delete if not.
I came across a thread that gave me the info about a crossover
cable so I don't need to spend a small fortune on network cards etc.
Microsoft has already supplied the means.
So Laptop here I come.
john http://www.pbase.com/jonlg/g2

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--
------------------------------------
i was gonna type something witty here but then i changed my mind.

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Has anyone here considered using a PocketPC PDA as an alternative to laptops and image storage devices?

Costing not much more than a dedicated device such as the Nixvue, you can get a PDA with dual PCMCIA (PC Card) slots, one for a hard drive and the other for interfacing with your media card. The additional benefits include usual PDA applications (Word, Excel, Outlook - useful for emailing home and maintaining a travel diary) and better upgrade options, such as buying a bigger hard drive. They're also smaller and cheaper than laptops.

See this link for further details: http://www.glasslantern.com/articles/PocketPCresources/index.htm

Any thoughts on going down this route?

Tony

Warren (from earlier up the list...),

Ok....my big question is WHERE CAN YOU GET A 1GIG MICRODRIVE FOR $500 AUD DELIVERED????? Is that including gst?

The best I can find is $649.....and I think it might be ex-GST.

I'm almost salivating at the thought of a 1gig microdrive for that price. Very interesting!

Thanks,

Tony

Debbie Lothes said:

I'll check into the Sony SR33.

Thanks

Jude Franey said:

Right now I am looking at a Sony SR33. They come with 10 or 15 gig.
Hard Drives. I'll use the MS streets and Trips mapping program and
I'll load the whole CD onto the hard drive. I have an old handheld
Garmin GPS40 which can feed the satellite data into the laptop.
These laptops are $999 brand new from Sony but you can usually get
them cheaper used on Ebay.

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Click to expand...

Also try the Sony C1, it is smaller than the SR33, comes with DVD/CDRW as standard and weighs 1kg - this might be a better option for prolonged trips.

Regards,

Ross.

Tony UK said:

Costing not much more than a dedicated device such as the Nixvue,
you can get a PDA with dual PCMCIA (PC Card) slots, one for a hard
drive and the other for interfacing with your media card. The
additional benefits include usual PDA applications (Word, Excel,
Outlook - useful for emailing home and maintaining a travel diary)
and better upgrade options, such as buying a bigger hard drive.
They're also smaller and cheaper than laptops.
See this link for further details:
http://www.glasslantern.com/articles/PocketPCresources/index.htm

Click to expand...

The only place where you can get one with both PCMCIA slots is the Compaq (by HP) iPaQ, which is very much out of many people's reach. Its prices have not dropped since Dell entered the fray.

Oh, you absolutely must check out Sharp's Zaurus.
--
Casio QV-10, G2, A40