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Sony Presents Bluetooth Digital Camera
JeroenH writes: "Sept. 2, 2002, Sony announced the DSC-FX77. It's a 4 megapixel, fixed lens digital camera with a special feature: Bluetooth. When the camera takes a picture, it will be sent directly through the Bluetooth link to a nearby computer, giving you nearly unlimited space for your photos (well, at least as much as fits on your hard disk). At this stage the camera can only send photos to a computer, but in the future it should be possible to control the camera remotely.
Will the wardriving of the future include scooping up pictures? Time will tell..."
I thought bluetooth's range was incredibly small? Doesn't this make it useless besides as a webcam or taking pictures OF the computer?
The government's moral compass is controlled by GPS.
In times of crises, they alter it to suit their needs.
"Will the wardriving of the future include scooping up pictures?"
.
It already does . .
I won't be buying their products ever.
With a 47 second transfer time for a full resolution picture I'd say the device is practically useless. Time between pictures is, IMO, one of the most important aspects of a digital camera, as longer timeframes means many missed perfect shots...
let's hope Sony has the good sense to release enough information for someone to be able to write a Linux driver for this one. i'm still hoping for a driver for my CMR-PC2.
Acts@core.mailboks.com Acrux@core.mailboks.com Adam@core.mailboks.com Adar@core.mailboks.com Ada@core.mailboks.com
I have to wonder if this doesn't hint at upcoming Vaios with Bluetooth. Rumor has it that the next PowerBooks will have it (Octoberish?) Looks to me like Bluetooth is about ready to go mainstream.
Life is short: void the warranty.
So i have to wait 47 seconds after i take the picture for it to be written? I don't see any mention of on-camera cache, which means you'd have to wait 47 seconds in-between shots. My Canon G1 has about a 1.5 second delay between shots, and i thought that was bad, but 47 seconds is insane! the article goes on further to state that you have to wait 6.5 seconds for a THUMBNAIL!? No prosumer photographer is going to take this seriously, and it'll be too much stuff carrying around for laptops...
Will the wardriving of the future include scooping up pictures? Time will tell...
This is one of the stupidest things I have read all day. What a moron.
This is another step in the direction of fragmented hardware. Instead of a mobile phone that can take pictures and browse the web, you'll have a camera, a screen, an earplug and microphone, and a screen, all connected via Bluetooth (or some other standard).
This will make it easier for upgrading parts of your system, and only buying what you need (you start with the mobile phone, then buy a camera of low quality, a year later you upgrade that camera, but you can keep using your mobile phone). Expect more of this to come.
Teenagers these days don't have as much sex as they want each other to think they do.
Yum, home-made-porn driving...
...compared to the time it takes for my digital camera to transfer an image via infrared.
Also, BlueTooth was not meant as a long distance communications channel. It is more of a cable replacer to reduce clutter. I welcome that any day.
If you have an X10 camera reciever you can "wardrive" for pictures now. You can join the Citizens Auxillary Police and take a peek around with Jay Santos.
According to an article currently running on Wired:
Bluetooth is a radio frequency technology that lets gadgets within 30 feet of each other interact wirelessly. It is more powerful than infrared and can transport data at 1 megabit per second.
A one megabyte pic should therefore transfer in 8 seconds. 47 seconds should make the picture just under 6MB in size -- that's pretty huge for a single jpeg!
Life is short: void the warranty.
Actually, the article says:
This gives a transfer time of 0.15 seconds.
Teenagers these days don't have as much sex as they want each other to think they do.
Now I don't need to hide a stupid cable when taking those pr0n pictures... ;)
$> cd
$> more beer
I just think in a portable market, having a laptop open whilst taking pics is silly - esp. with the range of BlueTooth. I reckon a Bluetooth adapter on an iPod will be better, so you can upload pics in between shoots, clearing the local camera's storage.
Fight Crime - Shoot Back!
I want a digital camera that will also handle video and sound. 802.11b would be nice too.
Are there any inexpensive digital cameras that handle video and sound? I haven't seen any for under $300USD.
Something other than MPEG-1 video too. The Panasonic AV/10 does MPEG-4, but runs $350+. The Panasonic site doesn't say how much video per MB can be stored, but I would guess about 7MB per minute.
Is it just me or did someone else notice the add for M$ Visual Studio .Net on Slashdot as well?? Whats the world coming to??
What's under yellowstone?
So that gives you a really small radius around your PC to take pictures, if you're transmitting to a desktop PC. Although with a Laptop it should be fairly easy, but still, that's a lot of hardware to carry around. Not practical at all. The bluetooth technology really gets on my nerves. The range is horrible, and should be replaced by something better. It's not a God's gift to consumers. It's vapor.
Ok, lets say I have a Ericsson mobile phone, and it can intercept and store blootooth signals. I doubt there is a phone out there which will store massive uncompressed image data on a tiny memory block. Totally useless. I can see no further applications within the next couple of years. The technology isn't widespread enough, and the storage on BT modules are either a) tiny b) non-existant c) inpractical
Vapor.
Is that even a feature? I can transfer 32 Megs of high quality image data from my DSC F505 under 30 seconds, give or take a few.
Good. Someone should tell Sony that 1999 called. They want the digital camera back.
The only thing that's worth raving about with this digicam is the 4.0 megapixel spec (which is not much by today's standards). I just feel sorry for the people who will be paying lots of money for this overpriced POS.
Better range, better bandwidth - and hey, putting a camera on a LAN, rather than a BlueTooth PAN would be really cool...
Doh! Stupid Sony marketing droids...
> Will the wardriving of the future include scooping up pictures?
Probably not.
1. This seems like a very gimmicky feature, and hence won't be used much in the future.
2. Most people want to take their cameras away from the computer, and hence need some sort of on-camera storage.
3. Bluetooth's range is very short - only a few metres.
4. Bluetooth isn't particularly fast, so things like dumping the contents of a memory card across it is likely to be painful.
I think the poster, and subsequently everyone who has replied, has missed the point of this camera.
It is not bluetooth enable so you take a picture, send to BT device, take another one.
You use it like a normal camera, but you can ALSO transmit your pictures to other BT devices, like sync with your computer etc..
That's great. I look forward to having to lug around both. Unless you're bound to a wheelchair and have ample cargo capacity, this is truly dumb.
Plus, is it really that hard to plug a wire into your camera to download the pictures?
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Damn shame it's made by a jackbooted DMCA wielding, Jack Valenti loving, GPL violating, peer-to-peer network threatening evil conglomerate.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
It takes 40 seconds to copy from camera to PC if you use all of those 4 megabits of picture information.
Stupid.
Sony sux0rs! Down with Sony!
Ooooh, a new shiny object from Sony. I'm buying two today!
There's no "war", which usually involves military conflict, or at least two diametrically opposed agendas. It's just a geek or two running around with wireless stuff, delighting in the poor security of wireless networks.
It should be called "virgindriving" or "patheticgeeksdriving".
What don't I understand here?
Now granted I am late to the party, but with a range of 10M and a very slow transfer rate -- what make Bluetooth a viable technology? (Granted my only experience with wireless is 802.11B -- I can use the wireless NIC in my laptop to cruise around the Internet and transfer files on my LAN at pretty good speeds and from a distance of around 300-400 Feet.)
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
But I do miss the free webcast replays of the show... definately took the edge off of work.
This product is not targeted at techies nor for photographers...
This is targeted at PHBs who need to show off their "cool" gear to other PHBs and to make a talking point at the next company party.
Move along people.... Nothing here...
-- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
-- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
My Nokia 7650 has Bluetooth and a camera and will happily send pictures to my PC or a Pocket PC or even a Palm Pilot. Mostly I use it to send pictures to my HP printer, which also has Bluetooth, it took no setting up or drivers, just unpacked the phone, took a photo, pressed "send" and out it comes.
Bluetooth is a truely wonderful thing.
Lots Of Love
Bill Ray
Transfer rate of full 4 Megapixel picture = 47 seconds per picture
Transfer rate of vga resolution image = 1.5 seconds per picture
Transfer rate of Thumbnail pictures = 6.5 frame per second
Also, zdnet:
Starting time = 0.9 seconds
shutter time lag = 0.35 seconds
Time between shots = 1.7 seconds
It supports memory stick.
is to let you transfer from one camera to another. For example last week I was at Dragon*Con and there were plenty of times when I would miss a photo op where it would have been kick-ass to have been able to just go up to someone and say "hey, I see you got a pic of that crazy costume, mind if i get a copy?" and voila! I'd have it. :)
...that if it's not one thing, it's another. Just when I had solved the problem of redeye in my digital photographs, now I have to deal with blue teeth?
Forget this. I'm going back to 35mm photography.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
Sony released a Digital Camera 18 months ago that had a 3" CD-ROM built into it. It used the same rechargables as their video cameras.
People hated it "Only 2 Megapixels" they whined. "CD-ROM isn't as whizzy as CF" they said.
They missed the point. There are two problems with a digital camera when used on vacations (a) You won't have a PC with you for 2 weeks (b) The battery life either has to be measured in thousands of pictures or be easily rechargable.
Well the Sony solved these two problems. It had 150M of storage space on cheap ($1) media. You moved it to your PC by moving the CD-ROM. Plus, the sony had enough space that the JPG compression used was light. I love these cameras that advertise 6 megapixels, and then they compress the images so much that it might as well be 1.5 megapixels. Plus, the camera's battery would last 150 pictures and be rechargeable in under an hour.
It was and is a great idea.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I bought 256MB of Compact Flash for my digital camera for only $90.
I take everything at 3 megapixels (2048x1536) and
the average size of 118 images was 801KB. That means
I can store 334 pictures. If you really need to take more
than 334 pictures then you probably have $90 for
some more flash memory.
I got a bluetooth ass and an 80211 cock.
Yawn. Wake me when it uses 802.11b.
This will go with the recent Microsoft rumor that it's new mice and keyboards will be Bluetooth devices. This would certainly explain why all the local stores here are not getting any more microsoft natural keyboard pro's when they sell out so i can't get another one :(
/.
I believe the story was on News.com a few days ago.
BTW, this is an old story. they'd announced this a looong time ago. i think we've read about it here on
Don't know what's new about this. It is not Sony's first Bluetooth camera. I believe DCR-IP7BT was their first Bluetooth enabled model.
AFAIK, the name is derived from the term "wardialing" which refers to the old-school hacker trick of getting a compuer with a modem to dial up every number in your area code looking for other modems, which at the time were probably unsecured computer systems.
No idea where war figures into "wardialing" either, though, except that it probably sounded cool at the time.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
I don't want the camera to send the picture to a nearby computer, but to my cell phone. The cell phone should then upload it to my computer at home. Then the 10 meter range would be plenty, and I would have a digital camera with essentially unlimited memory. As well as a reason to invest in an UTMS connection for my cell phone.
You're missing the point. This is not for WLAN parties. This is for lying on the beach with a Sony Ericsson T68 Bluetooth enabled GPRS phone in your pocket, a pina colada in one hand and a camera in the other and snapping pictures and send them to your friends in real time.
If I had to wait 47 seconds *per picture* something would be bouncing off the wall.
That "something" would probably be the grenade launcher rounds in Quake III Arena, which you move to the foreground while the camera uploads your last 20 pictures in the background.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It might be useful to develop a Bluetooth-capable device in a Compact Flash form factor that acts like a memory card, but really stores its data on a remote device (like a laptop). Such a card could be inserted into any existing CF camera and used in the same way as the Sony.
An on-card cache could help it get past transfer time issues for the purposes of compatibility with existing cameras.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
Also rendering this kind of useless. Who wants to have to be that close to a laptop/desktop at all times? Something tells me that you'd better stay within 7meters if you don't want pictures to be lost.
Bluetooth has some nifty applications, but it's lowbandwith short range limits it. Why not a camera with built in 802.11b?
-- taking over the world, we are.
A friend of mine and I were /just/ talking about this sort of thing this past weekend. (Without any prior knowledge of Sony's work).
The way figured it is that cameras can get smaller if the storage was moved off the device. I didn't really think about lugging a laptop around (though that is a good idea) but more a portable device like the iPod. Have your camera transfer pictures to the same device that's storing and playing your mp3s. I mean, with 20 GB of space, you could leave 3 GB free for pics for an afternoon. The iPod-type device is already on your person so range isn't an issue.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
I have a PowerMac with OS 10.2 and I know that it has support for bluetooth built in but was wondering what kind of hardware it would require to actually get the computer working with it?
Any comments / suggestions would be appriciated.
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
The thing ships with a 16mb memory stick, and can take larger sticks. It also has USB and a cradle for faster transfers. 47 seconds is also for the largest format picture. It can also send video at several frames per second, or a VGA resolution snapshot in under two seconds.
Backing up, the point of Bluetooth isn't Raw Speed. The point of including Bluetooth in a device like this is automation: As soon as you come near the proper PC, this and the PC will detect each other and begin the exchange. You might not have taken the camera out of your pocket or done more than set it down on walking in the door before it finishes the transfer.
If you need the pictures more quickly, simply set it in the USB cradle, or pop out the memory stick and stick it in one of those PC drive bay memory stick adapters.
Later on, you'll be able to configure your Bluetooth-enabled cell phone as a conduit, so pictures can automatically ride a secure tunnel back to your machine wherever you are, giving you an effectively infinite amount of space for your pictures. That's what Bluetooth is for.
More details here for Japanese speakers.
Says the RIAA: When you EQ, you're stealing bass!
(Thankfully the RF testing guys down the hall haven't yelled at us yet!)
No trees were harmed in posting this message. However, a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced
to a nearby computer, giving you nearly unlimited space for your photos
You will need unlimited battery power to go beaming multi-megapixels of data all over the place.
This product is stupid.
Grip
Failure is not an option. It comes automatically enabled in every Microsoft product.
What I would like to see would be the ability for the camera to add metadata to the pictures via input from the Bluetooth connection. For example, getting the current Lon/Lat from a Bluetooth enabled GPS and embedding it in the picture's metadata ("Where the heck did we take THIS picture?"). I could then do some interesting GIS applications, such as a photoalbum on a map using Mapserver (a great Open Source GIS program)
1) Show add for camera to that neighbor with the gorgeous wife.
2) buy WarDriving equipment
"The DSC-FX77 features a cradle which offers various solutions. A USB interface and connection for quick and easy image download"
Right, so, from this let's conclude that there must be a method of storage on the camera, from which you can transfer the images.
So, quit complaining "Oh, but now I'm forced to wait 47 seconds between shots". That doesn't quite seem the point. More than anything, as it has been said, bluetooth is cable replacement -- so it's a wireless replacement for the above mentioned cradle.
Oh, and 802.11b? Great stuff, fast, large range. Why do you think bluetooth isn't that way? Oh right, bluetooth was made for low power consumption , portability, an low costs.
So great, here's your 802.11b version, can transfer for 10 second before dying on those two AA batteries, and puts you back the cost of the camera again.
science is a religion
And I feel like I've somehow ended up in a pseudo reality, thanks to this post.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
It's bad enough that most so-called technology news and reviews sites don't amount to much more than a collection of regurgitated press releases and graft-driven prose -- most rampant in the games industry as discussed previously on Slashdot in two threads on fraudulent reviews and bribes, junkets and payola -- but does Slashdot have to promote them?
The item above is identical to the DSC-FX77 digital camera press release from Sony Europe's site. Could the reason for posting a press release as news be more payola from Sony?
Everyone whines and complains about the problem but they keep helping and promoting sites lacking any integrity by providing them with traffic. The question I have is why do Slashdot's editors participate and add to the problem by directing traffic to them? I'm sure that the editors are concerned by the brochure-style content of more and more sites, although that wouldn't be apparent from posting this 'story'. I've found that Tim generally does a pretty good job of separating the signal and substance from the noise and fluff, but this one got past you.
If you want to see quality Web content, vote with your clicks and posts and discourage blatant product promotion by shills for product manufacturers.
Frankly, these problems are what made us decide to start Geartest.com. We figured that there should be some place on the Internet where people can find unbiased technology product reviews that can be understood by the layperson. It's been difficult getting manufacturers to loan evaluation units because we specifically tell them that they will not necessarily receive positive coverage by virtue of sending their products -- but a few seem to be coming around to our way of thinking.
Hopefully average technology users and Slashdotters will too.
Now there are THREE products that work with Apple's $50 bluetooth adapter.
Oh, the choices! The individual consumer power!
that would indeed be cool. The equivalent of beaming business cards between palm computers.
...
At plokta.con (another SF convention, but in the UK) we had a laptop hooked up to a projector with a multiformat digital card reader, and we each dropped whatever pictures we wanted to share on the laptop and after the closing ceremony (during the dead dog party) there was a continuous slide show of pictures from the convention
I saw something similar at Sea World about a month ago. At the dolphin cove, where you can feed the dolphins, there were employees out on a little island in the cove with what looked like SLR cameras, but with big attachments at the bottom. From that vantage point, they could take pictures of people feeding the dolphins, and the pictures would come up at a booth by the people where you could buy a high quality print (presumably for $$$$ although I didn't check it out). My guess is that the attachments were a wireless network interface to a good quality digital camera, but that's just a guess because I can't see how else it would have worked...
It would be interesting to see what people could accomplish by "WarCamming." Rather than trying to pick up open networks, perhaps we could pick up signals from remote cameras. Wouldn't it be interesting if it was easy to feed all those little radio, etc signals into a home input point. If there are a lot of downtown businesses minitoring their front door/walk, for example, one would be able to monitor almost an entire street!
On a side note, one wonders how many little wireless spycams are out there on a relatively open range and a unencoded signal. Hey , let's look what we can see from the neighbour's bedroom bookshelf today...
I take it this is as well as being able to save to a flashcard? Otherwise the device is useless; I don't want to have to carry a laptop around with me when taking, say, travel photos.
(Well, actually, what I want is a nicely weatherproof digital SLR with a 24-megapixel CCD occupying a full 35mm frame with a range of metering modes, Canon's eye-controlled autofocus and accepting Canon's "L" range of lenses. And that can take about a gigabyter of flashcards. Oh, and where the body only costs about £1000, similar to an EOS-1V. Hmm, maybe next year...)
Who mentioned an mp3 player with bluetooth?? I always wanted an mp3 player that "bluetoothed" to all its cousins in a subway car and sucked all the music that matches your preferences. I want to join the collective. Assimulate me...
Let's say I'm out touring a city and I'm snapping shots for the requisite post-tour photo album. Of course, I'm nowhere near a desktop PC or even a laptop. But lets say I have a Bluetooth-enabled hard drive in my backpack. It's built like these 20GB MP3 players, but it's just a Bluetooth file server nothing more. Now I can wander around the city shooting forever, or until the batteries die, whichever comes first :). Camera tosses every photo into the drive in my backpack (or on my belt, or whereever). If the camera can cache at least a handful of pictures, I'll never notice that transfers take a minute.
[offtopic]
While we're inventing stuff, let's say I have Bluetooth-enabled headphones with an MP3/OV decoder built in. (Heh, and make em solar powered, since they're sitting on top of my head.) They're pulling MP3s off the same file server in my backpack. I guess I'll lose the music stream while my camera stores a picture. I won't mind very much if the player is at least a little bit graceful in it's handling of the bottleneck.
man....my DSC-F707.....it's....it's....not bluetooth! Though I think 802.11b based would be better (for speed). wonder if they plan on making a bluetooth-memorystick adapter....for memorystick enabled digicams. (my VAIO has bluetooth support so it's perfect).
Why has no one even MENTIONED this? My first thought was that this sort of thing would be perfect for, well, think about it for a second.
... intrigued / enthralled with the idea of hooking more than 1 USB camera up to a single computer, enabling, among other things, stereoscopic vision. Why has no one else on this board posted about it? :-) I guess it shows where my mind is.
Yes, Porn. Put the camera anywhere, have it transmit, add a number of them, etc. Wireless webcam. Think about it.
I have to admit, I was really
fair.org counterpunch.com truthout.com indymedia.org salon.com
eff.org guerrilla.net debian.org gentoo.org
The good thing with bluetooth support in a digital camera is NOT being able to transfer images wirelessly. The pro's are:
:-P
* Ability to remotecontrol your camera
* Sending smaller pictures to your PDA, for say use in presentations
* Being able to send smaller pictures to the many new mobile phones (like the Sony Ericsson T68i))
* Bluetooth chips are getting cheap and massproduction gives Sony even cheaper chips for use in other devices
* Using an open standard that many operating systems and hardware will understand (at least sending images)
Bluetooth is the future. Apple has excellent support for it. Linux has good support with Bluez and Nokia's Linux bluetooth stack (Affix). Soon even Microsoft will support it.
Ciryon
4 megapixels... with a FIXED LENS?
Sure, it's a Zeiss lens and all, but what good are all those pixels if you have to walk forward and back to compose a good picture?
With a fixed lens on a camera, anything much above 2 megapixels is overkill.
Cameras are plenty small with onboard storage. Look at the ultra-thin cameras out there, they have fairly standard storage options, CompactFlash, SmartMedia, MMC/SD, or memory sticks. Space for storage isn't that big a concern, really, when you can fit 1GB on a standard CompactFlash card (either a ibm microdrive, or 1GB of flash memory).
The issue is really batteries. Those ultra-thin cameras get about 30 pictures on a charge.
Driving the LCD display takes a lot of juice. Putting in batteries that can drive the display for a reasonable amount of time takes more space than you want it to.
My Canon S40 can take about 70 pictures with the LCD on (low brightness level) and a mix of flash and non-flash. About 80 pictures with the LCD on, and no flash use at all.
Turn the LCD off and that jumps to about 150 pictures on a battery charge.
My Olympus Stylus point-n-shoot 35mm camera gets about 20 rolls of film on a disposable lithium battery 1/3 the size of the rechargable lithium the S40 uses.
You want smaller digital cameras, don't worry about the storage medium... Make a battery with 10 times the energy density. Or get the OLEDs working, they are supposed to be very low energy usage, aren't they?
Though otherwise, I tend to agree... a wireless link to a bluetooth harddrive you stuck in your backpack would give you effectively unlimited storage. But with my 1GB microdrive... I switch batteries 8 times before I fill up my storage media, so that really doesn't help me all that much.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
I have a 4MP camera and love it. Don't shoot anything other than 4MP highest-quality-jpeg.
However...
What pixel range you need is not a function of "equivalent to" but is instead a function of "used for".
If all you want are 4"x6" prints, 300dpi for prints is about the same as what you get from your standard cheap 35mm film developer/printer. Think Walmart photofinishing here. 300dpi at 4"x6" == 300 x 300 x 24 == 2.2MP. Most photographers and magazines (I believe) will talk about 240dpi, though. That's 240x240x4x6=1.4MP.
I've done 4"x6" prints from my 4MP camera. It looks *good*. I am more than satisfied, for that use. (It does nice 5"x7"s too.)
I wouldn't really want to use a 4MP camera for an 8"x10" print, though it would look okay. For that, I'll wait for a 20MP camera. 8"x10" x 300dpi = 7.2MP. Not enough of a change from what I have now. So instead... Doing an 11"x17" print is 11x17x300x300=16.8MP So assuming I don't break this one, my next digital camera will be in the 20MP range.
For showing on a screen? 1600x1200 is enough, and for a lot of people 1024x768 is actually what they run. Both of those are noticably under 2MP. Good reason to use less than the max resolution.
For showing on a web site? Unless it is a page background, you probably don't want anything bigger than 800x600, and maybe only half that size.
Yes, you'll probably get better results by taking the 4MP picture and downsampling in Photoshop or whatever, but that's an awful lot of effort for something where the camera can do almost as good a job itself, using less storage space, taking less time to transfer results, and less of your time in on-computer editing afterwards.
Figure out what your use is, and make selections based on that.
For my use? As I said up top, I never shoot at anything except the max resolution the camera supports.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
I didn't want to know what my dad did with that digital camera in his bedroom. Now he's going to have to ask me to secure it. Eeeeuuugh.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Throughput was great too. PCMCIA does 8 Mbyte/second. Woops, who needs wireless when you have something simple like compact flash? I
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Since it's Sony, you'll only be able to view your pictures on one computer, and to share them, you'd have to take a film photo of the screen, resulting in a 'less perfect' analog copy.
I always found the writing speed of the old Mavicas (even the quad speed) make the saving time of pictures too slow, and the fact (I believe) that the maximum compressed size of an image was 1.44Mb (and usually stored much lower than that) limits the resolution. Of course my 1.3Mp camera saves SHQ at about 170Kb/pic so that would mean I could get around 8 pictures on a floppy, but if I went up to 4Mp, then we're looking at changing discs every two or three pictures ... and even my old 1.3Mp camera will take 9 shots in a row and then write them to smart media. It would be nice if it could turn them into a GIF animation for the HTML though ... ... trying to remember the last time I used a floppy except to build a rescue disk ... ummm, sometime last year I think. LANs, FTP, cable modems, CD burners and USB harddisks have replaced floppies for most things for me.
You can pick up a cheap *video* camera from x10.com, including a battery pack and a wireless transmitter, and a receiver that connects to your PC and sends the images in via USB, for far less than this Sony will cost, and you can add multiple cameras for not *that* much extra.
/m/e/ you!
It even has the software to take still images and post them on the web!
And just looking at any X10 ad, they do their best to not actively say "set this up in your/someone else's bedroom" but the images they show and the words they do use certain suggest it to pervs like
... no, my cell phone isn't sending multi-gigabytes, neither is the camera, so I've no idea what relevance that comment has. Bluetooth is fairly (very!) low bandwidth, but still an order of magnitude more than my cell phone can handle at the moment out to the network. UMTS/3G will change this, and perhaps there will be a Bluetooth2 by then (just like USB2.0 etc.)
:-)
Certainly putting 802.11[x] into my mobile phone and camera will let them talk to each other faster, but since that's not the bottle neck, and is HIGHER power consumption (and more likely to end up proprietary) I can wait for newer/better technology.
I think my digicam suggests using a/c power because serial comms cables require a fair bit of power which will provide a continual lower drain on alkaline batteries, not good for them. Some battery technologies are better for high current/short duration, others for low current/long duration.
"High Power" - my cell phone works fine with bluetooth, the guy sitting opposite me at work surfs the web with his Palm, bluetooth card and bluetooth cellphone, I'd suggest that any activity that can be done for several hours on small rechargeable batteries does not really come under the heading "High Power Consumption"