I'm looking to buy my first. I've narrowed down to a few, but am confued about what is considered the easiest tranfer method. How much better is USB vs. serial? What about "via removable memory? What would THAT mean in terms of getting pictures onto my PC?

THANKS!!

-- tim burch (tburch@m iami.edu), June 11, 2000

Answers

USB is 30 times faster than serial, but that does not mean that your camera must have usb for fast upload. You can buy a memory card reader that connects to you PC thru usb, which would be just as fast.

-- Jonathan (JonathanFung@Home.com), June 11, 2000.

USB is MUCH faster than serial transfers. Though it doesn't quite reach the 12 megabit/sec. speeds advertised, more like 900 KBytes per second max. Several cameras seem to transfer at only about half that rate which puts the USB connection on par or just sub par to parallel port based media readers, but if you already have working USB and your camera comes with a USB cable you really can't beat the price/ performance ratio. At 450KB per second you can drain an 8MB smartmedia in about 18 seconds... None too shabby.

As far as removable media devices go, a PCMCIA adapter is probably the fastest, but all the faster technologies are SO much faster than serial transfers that the differences between them is minimal. Who cares if a Parallel based reader that cost $40 sucks an 8MB smartmedia dry in 15 seconds, but it takes a couple more seconds with a "free" USB connection or goes even faster with a pcmcia adapter. They all swamp the 20 minutes it'd take to do the same with a serial port connection.

You need Win98 for trouble free USB, but someone else previously pointed out in this forum that there are files available somewhere that enable USB support for Win95. Don't ask me where, do a forum search. You need either no help at all or divine intervention to get serial ports to work on some machines. For something that smacks of something between the two extremes I "humbly" suggest the Serial Port Troubleshooting Faq, which I wrote, that can be found on the Imaging Resource. If you have access to ANY alternative to serial transfer method, short of transcribing bits by hand, take it! Run screaming for your sanity and your life and take it, I beg you...

One last thought, if you insist on running Win2K then you're largely on your own unless the proper drivers "hav ben writ" for USB use of your particular camera. Check before you buy, or cry and wail at your leisure. There is a reason why they say being at the forefront of technology is "the bloody edge."

Personally, I use a PCMCIA adapter card to dump most of my images onto a small, very portable, laptop or a parallel port based Lexar Digital Film Reader to dump them into my tower PC. (Ah, that's a tower case. I don't actually have a PC in the tower here, that's where we keep the crown jewels... HA ha, ho ho, he he... -groan)

-- Gerald M. Payne (gmp@francomm.com), June 11, 2000.

USB is a great way to transfer images WHEN IT IS CORRECTLY IMPLEMENTED. That means, if you buy a Toshiba, or Casio, or almost any other brand of camera, USB is very handy.

If you happen to be using an Olympus (C3030 or C3000), just forget that they included the port. Buy a cardreader and you'll spare yourself infinite grief. I've complained about a dozen different problems to Olympus, and their answers were basically, "well that's the way we decided to do it."

For example, the camera WILL NOT OPERATE WITH THE CABLE CONNECTED. So to transfer data, requires powering the camera down, connecting the cable, opening the Camedia software package (the world's worst implementation of USB, as far as I know) transfering the data. Then you have to shut down Camedia, and restart it, if you want to delete the images on the card - it simply never occurred to them that somebody would both want to transfer the images AND delete them. Anyway, having finished transfering the data, you have to power the camera down (Olympus warns that it isn't safe to unplug the USB with the camera live) unplug the camera, and then power it back up. . .

I won't go on, but you're warned - the USB implementation by Olympus is simply unusable for anything other than very lightweight work.

-- Mark Grebner (Mark@Grebner.com), June 15, 2000.