I gave this card to my wife who has a Canon digital camera, because I got tired of always having to get the images off her camera and onto her laptop. Both of the USB ports on her laptop are constantly in use. The installation 'pamphlet' almost made it seem too easy... unfortunately the installation was a little trickier than promised, but the Eye-Fi Web site had good support information.
After turning her camera off, then on again, the pictures I had taken transferred very quickly to her laptop like magic... When I showed her she only need be in range of our home network and the photos would automatically get onto her computer, she was ecstatic.
PROS:
- brilliant concept, well executed.
- great for the technically challenged
- a small thumbnail of the image and percentage transferred appears in the upper right of your computer when transferring images
- Mac compatibility, Firefox compatibility and auto-software update during installation procedure
- 4GB, generous for a point and shoot 8 mpx camera!
CONS
- Eye-Fi forces you to sign-up with email address at their site to install the software
- It appears that the default is for photos to get uploaded to the Eye-Fi site then relayed to a computer. I dug around a bit under settings in their Web based interface and realized we could choose just to transfer the photos to a folder on her laptop
- Only a Web-based interface to settings and the service. A standalone application would be snappier for those not interested in sharing anything through the Eye-Fi site. If people are interested in uploading to sites, they probably already have that under control through MobileMe or FaceBook, etc.
- Power-saving settings on the digital camera must be turned OFF. On slightly older cameras, like the Canon SD-870 my wife uses, the battery life is not that great to begin with, so this method of transferring definitely requires a trade-off between ultra ease-of-use and battery life.
- 4GB, not so great if you take a lot of movies with your point and shoot!
I would highly recommend this for someone without a spare USB slot, someone who is technically challenged, or someone who doesn't have one of the newer MacBook Pros with the built-in SD card slot. :)Get more detail about Eye-Fi Share Video 4 GB Wi-Fi SDHC Flash Memory Card EYE-FI-4SV.
Thanks for your review of the Eye-Fi card. We are glad you like it and hope your wife enjoys it too.
ReplyDeleteIf you are delivering photos to only your computer, they are not stored on the Eye-Fi server.
You may also want to check out some of the new features we added like Selective Share http://www.eye.fi/blog/selective-share