Registered: Dec 2000
Location:
Posts: 16

I currently have a Matchbookdrive CF Adapter and I am very happy with it. My sole reason to purchase the memplug is to view photos directly from my SM and delete the bad shots. My jpgs would be 1 mg each.

Will the Memplug work with 1 meg jpg files?
Is the viewer of sufficient quality?
Will the speed be acceptable?
Will the battery drain make it impractical?

Thanks

PS I am using a Visor Platinum.

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Oliver

Registered: Mar 2001
Location:
Posts: 23

Will the Memplug work with 1 meg jpg files?
As far as I can tell, yes. But see below.

Is the viewer of sufficient quality?
The viewer will only be able to display an image width of up to 160 pixels. This is fine for identifying photos, but if you're looking to compare two fairly similar shots to pick the best one in regards to focus, you'll be disappointed.

Will the speed be acceptable?
On a >1MB file? Not in my opinion, but here are the numbers for you to decide. I just tested the display time on a 653k file, and it took around 30 seconds to display the whole thing. A 129k image took less than 8 seconds to display. This is mostly due to the 33MHz processor speed of the Prism, not the SmartMedia technology, I believe.

Will the battery drain make it impractical?
Not at all. In this regard, SmartMedia is a far better choice than CompactFlash. Power consumption of the smartmedia cards are a fraction of CF's. I honestly don't see any impact on battery life, even when I use my Memplug extensively.

If your digital camera has it's own LCD display for viewing what the camera sees, I recommend sticking with that for "snapshot management" tasks. The camera's LCD will be a higher resolution, and the digital camera's processor is probably faster, which would speed up the display of photos for viewing.

If you don't have an image viewer on your camera, though, the Memplug CAN be used for that purpose, and at $50 it's a lot cheaper than upgrading your camera equipment.

-kirb

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All Children Are A Gift From God...

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Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Mineola, NY USA
Posts: 161

Chances are that a 1 meg file will be on the magnitude of 1280x1900 pixels,which means that when displayed in PiViewer they will be shrunk to postage stamp size, and not even be full screen on the Visor.

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-Michael-