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| Home >> Handheld & PDA Reviews: Eye-Fi Share Wireless 2 GB SD Flash Memory Card EYE-FI-2GB | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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User Submitted Eye-Fi Share Wireless 2 GB SD Flash Memory Card EYE-FI-2GB Reviews (cont...)Date: 2008-05-24 Uploading pictures has never been easier I read about this little wonder and had to try it out, no matter what the result. I was not disappointed. While they spent quite a bit on some modern packaging, the setup was simple. Push the card, that comes in a USB device, into your computer and tell it what wireless access points to use. From there you can decide if it should also store them on your computer while uploading to picture sites like Flickr and Picasa. While it can eat battery life a bit faster, it worked seamlessly for me at a recent conference. I put the SSID of the wireless from the conference in the card and as I walked around taking pictures, they uploaded to my account. People were baffled how I was getting them online so fast without even touching my laptop. I grinned and walked away knowing this device, well, it just worked. Date: 2008-05-23 Antique interface, not well thought out I had high hopes for this gadget. After all, I've been happy with my old Hawkings WiFi webcam for years. Imagine being able to upload pictures from my camera without having to lug a laptop around! That would be sweet. Unfortunately, the software is very 1960s, closed, corporate and proprietary. Worse, the clever stubby USB plug means was not as clever as it seemed. The Eye-Fi was not what I expected. I expected the Eye-Fi to make my camera a WiFi accessible device. Maybe it would require some software like Apple's Airport Express, and I could configure it that way. Even better would be for it to join the nearest open network, then I could just connect to it via telnet or a web browser and configure it that way. As a backup, the little dongle could have done ethernet, perfect for downloads, uploads and updating. I always carry an ethernet cable so I can use my Airport Express. Instead, you have to plug the gadget into your USB connector. This means you have two WiFi radio stations only a few inches apart. That means they interfere, so you can use EyeFi or you can use internet, but not both. Unfortunately, their EyeFi manager software assumes you can use both. I used a USB extension cord and managed to get this working. Maybe I'll get a shorter cord. The stubby USB connector is a great idea, but it doesn't work, not without some outside help. As for the software. I imagined that I could just mount the camera like a disk, except over the network. Look ma, no wires. Unfortunately, the 1973 code for an FTP server is still patented, encrypted and inaccessible to modern corporate cultures. Newer network file systems, post 1970s, are way off EyeFi's radar. Imagine, just finding my camera on the network, hit connect, start up iPhoto or whatever and accessing my photos. No such luck. Still, I pressed on. It would be neat to have my camera talk directly to my Airport Extreme on the road, when I didn't feel like lugging my laptop and USB extension cord. (Yes, I know, I could just take the little camera cord with me and leave the EyeFi at home). So, having configured the EyeFi to work with my household network, I decided to add a few of my favorite remote networks. I figured that all Holiday Inn Express's are the same, so that would make sense, but first my Airport Express. Needless to say, that wouldn't work without the Air Express actually being up and running and having a network connected to the internet. I usually leave it in my bag, but I dutifully set it up, plugged it into my router and so on. Well, that was a pain, but it will save me trouble on the road. Now for the CAVU Cafe at Boeing Field. They have great coffee and great WiFi. Unfortunately, I have to fly there to use it, so EyeFi said no dice. Rather, the EyeFi manager wedged itself into some weird state half updating my Airport Express network, half updating the CAVU Cafe info, but in no way usable. Well, that's my signal. This card is unusable, and $100 is way too much for a 2GB card these days. Still, it was educational. I hadn't expected much to be honest. After all, I really wanted to upload my pictures to my website, not to some commercial outfit like Flickr or Webshots. I'm paying several dollars a month for hosting, so I should get something out of it. I had planned to run a little server to move my photos from Flickr to my online site, but I can't even get this thing to take the first step. I've been trying to figure out who is using these cards. It uploads your pictures to Flickr, but not to your computer. It doesn't work with a WiFi laptop. It doesn't let you configure it for use on the road without also lugging your laptop along with you. I imagine there are people who don't look at their pictures, but just upload them to Flickr, and I know there are people who still have desktop computers, so there is some market. Still, the whole neat idea was to be able to shoot pictures, collapse at some jungle internet cafe and have all your shots waiting for you on your home machine. Oh well, Amazon has a great return policy. Date: 2008-05-15 Paradigm Shift! The next camera I buy must be 'Eye-Fi Powered', I've decided. The annoying stuff with not being able to connect to random hotspots would be alleviated by total integration. In the meantime, I would like a way to upload to multiple services (e.g. I want to upload to snapfish and flickr so that I can print private things full size and have controlled sharing on flickr). I would I to manage the photos on the Eye-Fi itself directly (have a real time thumbnail view of the Eye-Fi card's contents and be able to delete stuff). Most people would love this product! It's a real boon :3 Date: 2008-05-12 Eye Fi Card in a Canon 1Ds Mark II Digital SLR I am using the Eye Fi card with my Canon 1Ds Mark II. I have had no problems at making it work. It have upgraded to the latest firmware on the card and software for the PC. I shoot with the following settings of RAW + Small JPG. This card is very helpful for proofing lighting setup in a "wireless tethered mode". Once the lighting is set up as required, I switch over to my high speed CF card slot (camera has both a CF and SD slots). If the following items were improved this card would get 5 starts from me. - Make the SD memory faster. This card is fairly slow. - Come out with a larger, faster SDHC model. Like a 4 or 8GB version. 2GB these days is pretty small. - Somehow tweak or increase the transmitting speed. - Allow it to also move RAW image files. It can only move JPG image files. Date: 2008-05-06 Don't buy if you have satellite internet access!!!!!!!!! I was very excited about this card, not so much for its ability to upload photos to an online album, but for the ability to automatically transfer the pictures to my computer's hard drive using the home network. What they don't tell you is that if you have satellite internet access (the ONLY high-speed available in my rural location) the card is USELESS because you have to connect to the Eye-Fi server in order to configure the card, and the Eye-Fi server cannot be contacted using Hughesnet (something about proxies). What's more, even if you have an alternate dial-up access, unless your wireless router allows sharing a dial-up connection, the card will still be useless because you have to be on the network that the card will be configured to use when you configure it online. It's all very badly designed, to my way of thinking. Customer service seemed unapologetic. Suggested I buy a "travel router" (for about $100), take one of my computers to a non-Hughes wireless access point, configure it there, then bring it home and use the travel router as my networking router. Hello, excuse me I already HAVE a network router - I don't wish to buy another one just to make your piece of equipment work!
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