Sandisk 12 in 1 Card Reader
- From: "Chuck Olson" <chuckolson01@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2007 15:50:38 -0700
I looked for reviews on this reader and found some dated back in 2005. Many
gave it 5 stars, so it appeared to be an excellent product. But for some
reason, the specifications for the current product SDDR-89-A15 have never
been updated by many vendors that carry it, so the fact that it now supports
SDHC cards was a surprise when I found it on a peg at Best Buy. SDHC
compatibility was the "acid test" for a reader that is reasonably
up-to-date, so I bought it. Installation was very simple on my Windows ME
machine (I know, time to catch up with the world) and it works perfectly. I
have a set of photos, about 88MB, that it read into memory in 6.75 seconds,
for 13.04MB/sec transfer rate from a 2GB CF card. Not bad.
Now this reader has a pushbutton. There's a CDROM furnished with the reader
that contains what they call "Button Application" software. One might expect
that the pushbutton does something good and that this is necessary for it to
work correctly. Wrong. The software is a reasonably useful image management
program (I presume - - I never actually used it), and provides two
functions,"Transfer All Files" and "Use Photo Tools". Installation puts an
Icon on the desktop - - so much for needing the pushbutton. Also,
transferring any files to the computer automatically starts the software - -
sorry, pushbutton, you lose again. Okay, there's nothing wrong with all
that - - time marches on, and the pushbutton just got displaced in the
eagerness of the software programmer. Nothing lost, nothing gained - - wrong
again. After installing the software on my admittedly ancient machine, I ran
into a rash of hard lockups - - suddenly, although the cursor seems still
alive, it doesn't do anything when I click on stuff. Can't even ctl-alt-del
out of the condition. I uninstalled the pushbutton software and the computer
came back to its old, dependable self. Too bad - - I had hopes for that
programmer.
But the reader is still really terrific! You can hot plug and unplug the USB
connection (unplugging will get you a complaint message that you didn't use
the "eject" icon, but as long as all the slots were empty, who cares? A
yellow light says the reader is connected. Inserting media lights a green
light (one of four), and it stays lit even after executing the "eject"
procedure, but if the green isn't flashing, you can pull the media out
anyway - - it's safe - - the drive has been deleted. If you want to go back
with more pictures then, there's a problem since the drive letter for that
slot is gone. Here's where the USB hot unplug followed by hot plug feature
comes in. Unfortunately you get another bawling out message, but no matter.
Everything's fine and all four drive letters are again present and the new
shots can be transferred. To make all this easy, a short USB extension cable
for conveniently located hot plugging helps a lot. Have fun!
Chuck
.
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