Slashdot Mirror
iPod Media Reader Slowness
gsfprez writes "According to an official statement by Belkin over at iPodlounge, the reason it takes 22 minutes to transfer a few pictures from your digital SLR's CF card to your iPod with their $99 iPod Media Reader is that, well, that's how they designed it. They wanted to 'address the needs of the largest percentage of owners of digital cameras and iPods,' because -- and let's be honest -- when you want to transfer 128 megs of pictures from your $200 digital camera, you think '$600 worth of iPod and media reader please!,' and not $14 flash readers." Belkin did say they are trying to work out a solution with Apple, perhaps in the iPod firmware, but it seems the problem may be with the design of the reader itself.
What's the fastest media reader out there? Are there firewire SD readers, etc, and are they much faster than their USB 1 counterparts?
Alex.
That's nothing; you should try copying a 17M file....
*ducks*
The sarcasm is so layered and the syntax is so awkward that I'm not sure what we're supposed to be upset with regarding this.
What does the Submitter mean. Can somebody translate it for me?
A Good Intro to NetBS
..the "ive been copying files in/with "X" for 17 minutes" troll got his own story!
... that slashdotters are using that same connection to post to this story. It's been 20 minutes since it's posting, and this is only the sixth comment!
I was ready to hit up the local apple store and buy this puppy and an iPod. Oh well.
I work as a photojournalist at a local newspaper, just about to switch to digital photography. It would be great to have a small multipurpose device to backup a compact flash card but ~22 minutes for a 512MB card? Half-time at a football game isn't even that long...
My USB 1.1 card reader doesn't take that long...
I certainly hope they fix this problem. This looked as though it could have been yet another killer app for the iPod.
Belkin might make some spiffy hardware, but their commitment to Mac OS X is questionable. Ask anyone who's had a Belkin USB-DB9 Serial adapter for the last three YEARS and Belkin just won't get off their asses and release any drivers for it. They flat out lied to me on the Macworld show floor last January...
I had a sucky sig.
I don't see what the big deal is? This add-on isn't a "pro" add-on. Transfering 128megs in 6 mins sounds reasonable to me, that was about how long it takes to transfer the data off via the USB on my camera. It is a $100 add-on, what did you expect?
The whole point of the belkin reader is that you dont need a computer (which the $14 flash reader requires) so if im shooting with my digital camera out somewhere where I dont have a laptop handy I dont have to stop taking pictures when my card fills up.
--aiee
Most people who have 1 gig cards have at least two. While your downloading the one you just filled up and can be shooting with the empty one.
As most programmers/developers know it is hard to balance the needs of ones users. For some the speed issue is a big deal, for most it is a slight inconvenience. If you have an iPod spending $100 for the convenience of a digital wallet is a lot better then spending another $600 and a dedicated/fast digital wallet. But is you have money to burn and you can't figure out what to do with your self for an hour (read a book, talk to someone) while you wait, then maybe this is not the product for you.
Tony
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you iPod fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of an iPod (30GB) for about 22 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to my iPod. 22 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this iPod, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, songs will not play. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even the backlight is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on this iPod, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen an iPod that has run faster than other music players, despite the iPod's faster chip architecture. My Vic 20 with 16KB of ram runs faster than this iPod at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the iPod is a "superior" music player.
iPod addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use an iPod over other faster, cheaper, more stable players.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Assuming I buy one, this is how I plan to use it.
I'll have two cheap memory cards (either 128MB or 256MB), and when I fill one, I'll put it into the iPod adaptor and start the transfer while using the other card in my camera. That should be about 10 minutes to load a full 256MB card. I don't expect I will fill the other 256MB card that fast (if I do, then I *really* worry about how fast I'll fill my computer's HD at over 1GB/hour!).
The real benefit here is I can take my camera on vacation, or just out and about, and not have to carry around my notebook. This is a *huge* benefit. Couple that with only needing two memory cards (even two 128MB cards will be enough), and this is looking real handy *and* cost saving (I already have an iPod).
The drawbacks? It's not instantaneous and it takes batteries. Not a huge problem, and if it's something that can be done better, someone will. If not, I'm still better off than I was before.
I don't understand the sarcasm of the story's submitter. Sounds like the guy has issues. I bet he doesn't have an iPod or he'd see that Belkin has put to market something that can add to the utility of his iPod, if he wants it. If he doesn't want it, he's no worse off than he was before and he still has an iPod.
However, they don't seem to support RAW format, so you may have to check out this list of photo/video handhelds. The FlashTrax is listed as supporting RAW, and comes with 30GB (80Gb available) built-in for $500 (80GB is $700).
Da Blog
Using an extra $100 under-performing clunky gadget to send data to a device with no image viewing seems like a losing proposition.
This just in: Slashdotter realizes that iPod is good for music, lousy for pictures. Film at eleven!
There's something very similar at Compgeeks, so you can dump the contents of a flash card onto a laptop disk. You have to provide your own laptop disk, but the USB 2 version should be pretty fast.
X's drive USB2
They also have a regular usb version
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
I am a professional photographer who shoots digital and I am often in remote/poor areas. I either have to lug a laptop (thief magnet) along in a backpack or carry a digital wallet (MindStor 20gb) that is old and from a company that went out of business.
I was real excited about this reader because it was the one thing keeping me from buying an iPod. This slowness, however, is a deal killer for me. I have heaps of flash cards but I still like to back everything up as soon as a card fills (and I don't use huge cards...too risky to put so much in one place).
My point? I'm disappointed. I WANT to buy an iPod...I know someone can make a card reader that is fast (enough) and cheaper than $99...Heck, the reader that works with my desktop cost $19 and is plenty fast. What is so hard about this? *sigh*
This device is a "firewire device", yet it operates at slower than USB 1 speeds.
You wouldn't put up with that if it was a USB 2 device operating at 300 kbps, would you?
On the Apple Store's webpage, it clearly and openly says..
"Using software support that's built into your iPod (iPod software version 2.1 or later), transfer your pictures quickly via FireWire technology and you're ready to start shooting again. "
A reasonable person would assume that such a device would operate at such speeds. Or do we all quickly forget the 1st gen pre-Oxford 911 based IDE hard drive cases that were horribly slow and never mentioned that they couldn't possibly give you back even the the bandwidth of IDE, let alone Firewire. MacAlly got hammered in the press and by their customers over that whole debachle - as well they should have.
A reasonable person purchasing this product would assume that "transferring pictures quickly via Firewire" would not mean - "transfers slower than USB 1 devices".
"My issue" is that this $99 "Firewire technology" reader gets its ass handed to it by a $14 USB 1 device. That's unreasonable.
If they (Belkin and Apple on their store page) were to point out "while this uses Firewire, it does not transfer ANYWHERE near Firewire speeds, and in fact, its slower than USB 1", then there would be no "issue"
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Just chill out for a sec and listen.
Yes, the iPod,/i> is a FireWire device. The card-reader is NOT. The issue is not FireWire. It has nothing whatsoever to do with FireWire. It has to do with how Belkin has implemented this card-reading tech.
I mean, it sounds a tad slow to me too, but a 128MB card in 6 minutes.. on a portable device that has an 8-hour battery.. is not a big deal. It's still way more convenient than lugging around a laptop.
By the way, it sounds like you've got an axe to grind about FireWire though. I'll give you a bit of advice; its okay to hate a plug. The plug doesn't hate you. Move on to other plugs if you hate that one.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Did i just fall for a troll?
I've been reading some other posts, and I think I figured out why everyone thinks this is funny. I guess that is what happens when you take time off from reading Slashdot. You don't know what the latest trolls are, last I heard, we were in Soviet Russia or something.
-Spyky
Please, this deserves to be on the top comment page :^)
I also have one of the original Digital Wallets (10 GB). From what I read about the Belkin tool, it may be faster than the DW for normal JPEG files (0.5 - 1 MB). The issue seems to affect large files of a few tens to hundreds of MB. My DW also takes a minute or more to load a 64 MB memory stick with 60-80 images (I am not a pro).
Maybe if you (and I) delayed the purchase of a more up-to-date device than the DW, we could give this $ 99 Belkin tool a try, possibly a few weeks from now when more info becomes available. That is, of course, if we are interested in the iPod for its own sake.
Damnit people, you can get devices that do this better and faster than repurposing your damn walkman to do it!
I have an iPod and $99 for this big bulky media reader junk is just stupid. I currently use some off-brand (sigma is maybe the brand name, i think..) device that has a compactflash port and takes a 2.5" HDD. It dumps out the cards to the HDD at 5-10MB/s and sometimes a little faster with microdrives.. It was about $200 including a 30GB drive. When I need to get the files off of it, it's got a slick USB2.0 or Firewire bridge board in it so that it can work as a standard HDD on pretty much any computer..
$300 full-speed "pro" version coming in 5-4-3-2-1
Yes, I'm being sarcastic...
I have an HP laser printer and I purchased thier piece of garbage Parallel to USB printer adaptor. The thing was very buggy for OS 9, and they haven't done shit with OS X. Almost as bad as UMAX and their horrible scanners.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
I was interested when I saw the Belkin reader, and I'm still interested. Sure, I'd love to see it perform a little better, but the device would serve me reasonably well the way it is. I carry a compact 3.2mp camera and two or three CF cards. I've already got an iPod, so the Belkin reader would make it really easy to dump the cards onto a device that I already own, and avoid toting my PowerBook with me when I take a trip. So, yes, let's be honest here... when I'm using my digital Elph, a $99 CF reader that works with my existing iPod is exactly what I'd like.
I can see why those of you shooting 10mp digital SLR's on multiple 1GB CF cards might be disappointed with slow transfer speeds, but really... if you're going to invest that much in digital photography, do you really want to use some consumer-level hack to store your images on your MP3 player? And if you're going to lug an SLR around with a full kit of lenses, flashes, filters, and tripods, would it really kill you to add a 12" PowerBook or iBook?
This product may or may not work for you. If it's performance doesn't meet your needs, don't buy it. But the fact is that there are lots of people out there that DO use CF cards in the 64MB-256MB range.
Slightly offtopic, but how's about a Gameboy classic emulator for the iPod? It would need an adapter for the dock port, but the screen resolution is about the same (160x128 for the iPod, vs. 160x144 for the original Gameboy). Then you could have it disable the music channel that the game uses, and replace it with your own music... Hmm! Even better would be the ability to store your games on the iPod, and be able to select them from the built-in menu. The only problem I immediately see is that the controls will be a little (or maybe a lot) different.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
The Soviets are old news. We're welcoming new overlords now. Please try to keep up.
This sig intentionally left blank.
My main problem is that they wont add Memory Stick Pro support to this thing. Sony only makes the 256MB and higher cards in that format so I'm SOL to be able to use this toy. Then I agree that they need to fix the file transfer issue. Couldn't they also make it run off the iPod's battery? I'd much rather have than with a really small reader as opposed to this big thing that takes 4 AA batteries. I've written them vial email to add these features but they basically come back saying "we have no plans to ever add these features".
Send an email to Belkin and complain! sales@belkin.com
I also had the misfortune to buy a Belkin KVM and not hook it up before I could return it.
I bought an Omniview KVM and it works pretty well with both Mac and PC (as it should, actually claiming to support OS X on the box) - the only problem is the audio control keys on an Apple keyboard do not seem to make it through.
I also had some video display problems with the Belkin. I have come to the conclusion they must be a bunch of talentless hacks, and I doubt I would buy anything from them again.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
His issue wasn't with Firewire, it was that the transfer was very, very, glacially slow for a 'Firewire device'.
I had that repeating problem (and numbers showing up when I used the arrow keys) with Belkin, but not with ioGear - did you use the four-port model?
I agree we have a really poor set of KVM's around right now - I can't believe these things have not been updated more by now as a lot of people at least have a USB mouse.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Here's a hint: it's not the iPod. This technology is basically a point to point firewire link, and it's obvious that they've used a rather poor chip to handle this process. The iPod, the flash media and the transfer medium( firewire) all have the ability to transfer at higher speeds than this setup is acheiving. The only thing slowing it down is the point to point bridge chip they must be using.