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jsganti
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Joined: 22 Mar 2005
Posts: 338
Location: Sunnyvale
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 Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 1:50 pm Post subject: |
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PD70X looks reeeally good and cheap. Looks like there is no distributor in US. Eastgear.com is taking back orders for this.
Anand - do u've PD7X now with u? |
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Ferdinand
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Joined: 10 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 1:56 pm Post subject: |
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Jags did you check with www.mydigitaldiscount.com I have the older PD7X love it, I bought the unit itself and then got a 40GB HDD from FRYS.
Things I love about it, is that its the fastest there is out there, and it takes AA batteries which is important for when you spend a long time away from any electrical sockets, and its user replaceable HDD 
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jsganti
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Joined: 22 Mar 2005
Posts: 338
Location: Sunnyvale
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| Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 2:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Ferdinand wrote: | Jags did you check with www.mydigitaldiscount.com I have the older PD7X love it, I bought the unit itself and then got a 40GB HDD from FRYS.
Things I love about it, is that its the fastest there is out there, and it takes AA batteries which is important for when you spend a long time away from any electrical sockets, and its user replaceable HDD |
U mean u've REPLACED the 20GB HD in PD7X with 40GB HD by urself? Is it that easy? that nullifies the warranty!! |
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Ferdinand
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| Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 2:22 pm Post subject: |
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No Jags, you can get the PD7X as a empty shell, only USD$99.00. And then I went and bought a 40GB HDD and put it in myself, its easy, the manual will show you how to, and its cheaper to do it yourself. But if you are not comfortable with that, go ahead and just buy the unit with a HDD in it.
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jsganti
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Joined: 22 Mar 2005
Posts: 338
Location: Sunnyvale
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| Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 2:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Ferdinand wrote: | | No Jags, you can get the PD7X as a empty shell, only USD$99.00. And then I went and bought a 40GB HDD and put it in myself, its easy, the manual will show you how to, and its cheaper to do it yourself. But if you are not comfortable with that, go ahead and just buy the unit with a HDD in it. |
aahh...got it
thats really flexible. if HD fails, replace it...cooll
I think i'll get PD70X sometime in June. |
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Ferdinand
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Joined: 10 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 3:13 pm Post subject: |
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| jsganti wrote: | | Ferdinand wrote: | | No Jags, you can get the PD7X as a empty shell, only USD$99.00. And then I went and bought a 40GB HDD and put it in myself, its easy, the manual will show you how to, and its cheaper to do it yourself. But if you are not comfortable with that, go ahead and just buy the unit with a HDD in it. |
aahh...got it
thats really flexible. if HD fails, replace it...cooll
I think i'll get PD70X sometime in June. |
Hehehe yup or picture yourself doing this round the globe trip for a year taking photos. All you have to do is carry a few more HDD and replace the one that is full COOL HUH!
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obelix
Master Photographer
Joined: 30 Jul 2004
Posts: 7149
Location: Fremont, CA
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| Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 3:17 pm Post subject: |
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| jsganti wrote: | PD70X looks reeeally good and cheap. Looks like there is no distributor in US. Eastgear.com is taking back orders for this.
Anand - do u've PD7X now with u? |
No, wait till it shows up in mydigitaldiscount.com. eastgear.com lists list price. mdd.com will be considerably lower in price.
It will take a month or two though.
If not, just grab the PD7X now.
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tjotala
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Joined: 03 Jun 2004
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Location: San Jose, CA
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| Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 9:47 pm Post subject: Re: Digital Photo Storage: which one to buy? |
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| jsganti wrote: |
--Ipod photo: impressed with it but not so impressed with the kind of attachments and battery life
--Epson P-2000: very much impressed but not available in the market
--Archos Gmini400/AV420: good reviews
Any 1st hand experiences with above? any suggestions?
anyone backordered Epson? |
I happen to be currently in the market for a portable photo storage solution as well, due to an upcoming vacation trip.
Personally, I would not buy iPod Photo because the whole point is to have a single self-contained unit and more importantly not to tie up the camera (or its batteries) while transferring images. Besides, I don't have iPod 
The Epson P-2000 looks very nice, but pricey! Makes for a juicy target for crooks.
Right now I am test driving an Archos Gmini400 from Fry's (gotta love 30-day returns  Here are my observations:
CF copy --> HDD copy speed: I measured about 25 Mbits/sec using my slow Viking 1GB CF card. In other words, roughly 4.5 minutes to copy nearly full 1GB card. Faster cards may copy faster.
HDD <--> PC copy speed: I measured about 75 Mbits/sec either read or write directions. In other words, roughly 3.5 minutes to copy 2GB to the PC.
Pros
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1. Size: TINY! I love the form factor, it is only a little bit wider than my cell phone (Audiovox SMT5600) but otherwise same size length & thickness. It would easily fit in a pocket.
2. Display: bright & crisp
3. Interface: built-in CF Type I card slot
4. Will not write anything to a CF card. In fact there are no features to make any changes to a CF card (e.g. delete files)
5. Adequate MP3 player; shows content by artist, album, etc.
6. Voice recorder, in case you need to quickly record some mental notes about the photoshoot
7. Compact AC adapter that works anywhere in the world (comes with adapter plugs, no less!).
8. Uses common FAT32 filesystem & looks like a standard USB mass storage device to a PC. Automatically mounts as a drive letter.
Cons
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1. Display: only 220x176 resolution, 2.2 inches diagonally
2. Interface: CF Type I only! can't use CF Type II cards, like MicroDrives. The CF card sticks out almost entirely while inserted, and the CF pins protrude precariously far out (the card guide rails start when the pins start). It seems like a bent pin waiting to happen. Also, CF cards mount upside down in the slot. Go figure.
3. Speed: viewing a 6Mpixel image (JPEG) is painfully slow. It takes about 6-8 seconds to display a single image full screen - you can see it being drawn top to bottom on the screen.
4. Photo viewer supports 3 levels of zoom, but the re-sampling is atrociously bad.
5. Photo viewer file format support: supports only JPEG and BMP files. CRW or NEF cannot be viewed.
6. Video viewer file format support: only supports MPEG-4 simple profile (DivX); does not know anything about MPEG-2 or Motion JPEG.
7. Will not allow you to change the CF card in any way (e.g. copy or delete files, reformat card, etc.). Some would argue that this is a good thing.
8. UI design is somewhat inconsistent (several overloaded buttons, etc.)
9. Lame games
10. Only available in 20GB capacity, with no upgrade option
11. Non-user replaceable Li-Ion battery. When will they learn?
Bottom line conclusions:
I love the form factor, but the CF card slot being Type I only bugs me tremendously. What were they smoking? Otherwise, the unit is a perfectly passable portable storage device so long as you don't really care about viewing the photos on it. For me, the multimedia (video, music) features are purely gravy.
It sure is cute, but not cute enough to justify plunking down $300 or so. Back to Fry's it goes...
I haven't found a local retailer that carries SmartDisk FlashTrax or FotoChute so that I could try them out.
Another alternative would be to get Macally SYNCBOX and use my existing CF readers & USB HDDs. I like the ability to run on AAAs but I doubt it would support a USB HDD power requirements. Plus it would be a total cabling mess.
The PD7X looks mighty appealing. Other than that, I guess I'd have to build my own. I'd rather be shooting photos, frankly.
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lingk99
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Joined: 23 May 2005
Posts: 298
Location: San Francisco Bay
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| Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 11:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Have you thought about buying a PDA? Just buy a cheap Palm or Windows CE product and dump in a huge memory card. With the screen resolution, you don't need 40 gigs... just resize your pics to fit the small screen. IMO palm, etc, have one of the biggest screens out there and is decently fast in terms of navigation. |
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tjotala
Conjurer of Colors
Joined: 03 Jun 2004
Posts: 2204
Location: San Jose, CA
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| Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 7:01 am Post subject: |
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| lingk99 wrote: | | Have you thought about buying a PDA? Just buy a cheap Palm or Windows CE product and dump in a huge memory card. With the screen resolution, you don't need 40 gigs... just resize your pics to fit the small screen. IMO palm, etc, have one of the biggest screens out there and is decently fast in terms of navigation. |
Heh, yeah, I have a whole pile of 'em - I'm the Ferdi of PDAs I even went as far as construct a little storage brick of my own. The problem with these solutions is that they are rather cumbersome to carry around (i.e. not self-contained) and not particularly battery friendly either.
Edit: just to be clear, I do not need a device to carry around downsampled versions of my photos. I already have that covered with my Smartphone and soon-to-have-1GB-MiniSD card What I'm looking for is ability to dump CF cards onto some large(er) storage device so that I can then re-use them in my camera.
Anyhow, the more I look at PD7X/PD70X, the better it looks. I only wished it was a bit smaller - I guess part of it is the 4xAA batteries, but seems to me like they ought to be able to make the rest of it smaller overall.
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Tapani
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Ibn
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Joined: 19 Mar 2005
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Location: San Jose
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| Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 8:32 am Post subject: |
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Part of it is due to the batteries and the other part is due to the hard drive. Not the smallest thing out there, but fits nicely in my lightweight walk-around setup (Crumpler Budgie Smuggler bag).
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jsganti
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Joined: 22 Mar 2005
Posts: 338
Location: Sunnyvale
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| Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 8:39 am Post subject: |
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| Tapani - thanks for the Archos review. i was tending towards Archos, but PD70X is interesting and simple. I might get one soon. |
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rslifka
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Joined: 02 Aug 2004
Posts: 1235
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| Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 8:40 am Post subject: |
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If you really want to view your photos, the good news for D70 owners is RAW+BASIC mode, so the lack of NEF file viewing on all but the P-2000 isn't that big of a deal since the BASIC mode shot should be enough to tell if you "got it".
I'm really tempted to get the P-2000 because of the 4" display. I'd love to be able to evaluate my photos during downtime, instead of paging through them on the D70 - sucking up battery life and on a 1" screen where everything looks good.
Apart from the P2000, I can't see anything competing with the PDs. To my knowledge, the only portable NEF viewers are Nikon's viewer (again, tiny crappy screen) and the P-2000. Furthermore, if you're going to pay big bucks to see your photos, why pay big bucks from a crappy little screen? So if you can't view them large, then why view them at all? Save the $ and get the PD.
Rob
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obelix
Master Photographer
Joined: 30 Jul 2004
Posts: 7149
Location: Fremont, CA
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| Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 9:07 am Post subject: |
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| rslifka wrote: |
I'm really tempted to get the P-2000 because of the 4" display. I'd love to be
Rob |
And calibrate that screen too? 
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anand
10mm and be there
Gallery http://www.anands.net
Blog http://blog.anands.net |
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obelix
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