Swampy
November 11th, 2004, 11:06 AM
Since Igor is off, I'll beat him to it since I have one too. Igor, please add your own here too!
So, I have the 40gb model and have had it for about 20 months or so. It's size is a little larger than most, but it still fits in a side pocket of my camera bag easily.
It accepts CF and Microdrive straight out of the box and supposedly will do other formats with an adapter. 2 button backup makes it easy. Press the power button, insert card and hit the copy button.
The screen is a good size, however is a low quality screen at that. This means the pixels are spread out a little so the resolution is not that great. Translated even more, it's a kinda grainy picture. However, I don't view on-screen so it doesn't bother me really. I took what I took and I'm just backing it up.
Functionality is very simple with a 4 way keypad and center enter button. There are many menu functions that give you lots of options of how to do things and what you can do as well. Never really use them myself. The unit is capable of playing MP3's, WMA's, AVI's and what not as well. There are side controls for control of music playback, basic play/skip/reverse controls, a wheel volume control and a lock switch to prevent accidental button presses.
How I use mine. I fill a card, pop a new card in the camera and either continue shooting if need be and copy to the flashtrax later, or start copying right away. I prefer to copy right away though. So, I'll pop the full card in the Flashtrax, turn the power on, hit the copy button (waiting for the copy status bar to show up), then I'll close the LCD and put it back in my camera bag. It copies all the files off and will auto shut down. When I fill the next card up, I'll do the same thing again, except I'll be pulling the original card out to put in the camera and do an in-camera format.
The Flashtrax (by default) creates a folder on the hard drive for that date (ie: 20040327a). For each card you copy up for that day, it will change the letter on the end from a to b to c, etc. This will help manage what card is where.
Some of the menu functions are usefull. You can mark, copy from the flashtrax hard drive and past back to another folder on the flashtrax or even back to the CF card if nessesary.
It has a USB 2 connection and headphone connection on it. The USB 2 connection will charge the removable battery too. I bought 2 extra batteries for extended use. You may not need to do that though. Extended use for me is being without a charger for 2 or more days.
It also has TV out for doing slideshows and will read the embedded jpg's in a RAW file. Unfortunately, I don't have mine laying around and can't remember if it reads Nikon NEF files or not though. Maybe Igor can verify that part.
Now. The 3 drawbacks for some people. You have to press and hold the power button to get it to come on. That's a pain for me, but I deal with it. I'm only talking for like 2 seconds here, but I'm impatient. :) The second part. It seems for me, it takes about 8-12 minutes to copy a 512mb card up. That might be a long time for some people. But, like I said, the way I use it, this doesn't affect me at all. The third, it takes a minute for it to boot up, recognize the CF card and start copying. Again, I'm impatient. :)
Hope this helps you out Fruity (and anyone else looking at this). There are at least 4 users here (me, Igor, Melody and Hula Mike) that have one of these and I'm pretty sure they're all satisfied. I'm not sure if there are more or not.
So, I have the 40gb model and have had it for about 20 months or so. It's size is a little larger than most, but it still fits in a side pocket of my camera bag easily.
It accepts CF and Microdrive straight out of the box and supposedly will do other formats with an adapter. 2 button backup makes it easy. Press the power button, insert card and hit the copy button.
The screen is a good size, however is a low quality screen at that. This means the pixels are spread out a little so the resolution is not that great. Translated even more, it's a kinda grainy picture. However, I don't view on-screen so it doesn't bother me really. I took what I took and I'm just backing it up.
Functionality is very simple with a 4 way keypad and center enter button. There are many menu functions that give you lots of options of how to do things and what you can do as well. Never really use them myself. The unit is capable of playing MP3's, WMA's, AVI's and what not as well. There are side controls for control of music playback, basic play/skip/reverse controls, a wheel volume control and a lock switch to prevent accidental button presses.
How I use mine. I fill a card, pop a new card in the camera and either continue shooting if need be and copy to the flashtrax later, or start copying right away. I prefer to copy right away though. So, I'll pop the full card in the Flashtrax, turn the power on, hit the copy button (waiting for the copy status bar to show up), then I'll close the LCD and put it back in my camera bag. It copies all the files off and will auto shut down. When I fill the next card up, I'll do the same thing again, except I'll be pulling the original card out to put in the camera and do an in-camera format.
The Flashtrax (by default) creates a folder on the hard drive for that date (ie: 20040327a). For each card you copy up for that day, it will change the letter on the end from a to b to c, etc. This will help manage what card is where.
Some of the menu functions are usefull. You can mark, copy from the flashtrax hard drive and past back to another folder on the flashtrax or even back to the CF card if nessesary.
It has a USB 2 connection and headphone connection on it. The USB 2 connection will charge the removable battery too. I bought 2 extra batteries for extended use. You may not need to do that though. Extended use for me is being without a charger for 2 or more days.
It also has TV out for doing slideshows and will read the embedded jpg's in a RAW file. Unfortunately, I don't have mine laying around and can't remember if it reads Nikon NEF files or not though. Maybe Igor can verify that part.
Now. The 3 drawbacks for some people. You have to press and hold the power button to get it to come on. That's a pain for me, but I deal with it. I'm only talking for like 2 seconds here, but I'm impatient. :) The second part. It seems for me, it takes about 8-12 minutes to copy a 512mb card up. That might be a long time for some people. But, like I said, the way I use it, this doesn't affect me at all. The third, it takes a minute for it to boot up, recognize the CF card and start copying. Again, I'm impatient. :)
Hope this helps you out Fruity (and anyone else looking at this). There are at least 4 users here (me, Igor, Melody and Hula Mike) that have one of these and I'm pretty sure they're all satisfied. I'm not sure if there are more or not.