And Thanks to Rocky, Matt's overall positive Clik! review:
lost-oasis.com
Matt Chroust is, unlike most of us, including Rocky I presume, a digital camera speicalist:
"Have Memory Will Travel"
lost-oasis.com
Have Memory, will Travel!
Matt Chroust
Imagine this: It's a beautiful summer evening in Paris, and you've just composed a perfect view of the City of Lights in your digital camera's viewfinder. As you press the shutter, you're greeted with a low beep and the message "FLASH CARD FULL" appears in the camera's display. What will you do?
Iomega's new Clik! drive is billed as the mobile storage solution for memory-hungry megapixel camera users. With SmartMedia at approximately $3.30 per megabyte and CompactFlash around $2.50, The Clik! drive offers an extremely competitive mass storage alternative for the photographer-on-the-go at a cost of less than $0.40 per megabyte. If there isn't room in your rucksack for a five-pound laptop computer and you're constantly filling your available memory, the Clik! may be your best bet.
The following review is based on the Clik! desktop PC version intended for use in the parallel port configuration. While a USB version is rumored, the current products are designed for PC use only, available in parallel port version or PCMCIA card adapter to support laptops.
SETUP
Opening the carton, you'll be surprised, both at the number of components that comprise the Clik! system, and at how small the drive itself actually is. In addition to a handy Quick Start card, manual and software that accompany the Clik!, you'll find a desktop docking station, pass-through parallel port interface, a five-volt AC adapter, a memory card reader with LCD display, rechargable battery and a carrying case.
The system is modular and the components fit together in a very intuitive way:
Connect the battery to back of the drive of the 4½" click drive, snap a tiny 2.0" diameter, 40MB Clik! disk into one end, click the 2" Flash Memory Reader onto the other, and you're ready to travel.
The compact package fits right into your jeans pocket or purse, or use the attractive slip case provided, with its embroidered Clik! logo and belt clip.
READING A FLASH CARD INTO THE CLIK!
The Flash Memory Reader has separate slots to accommodate both CompactFlash and SmartFlash media. A small LCD display on the reader has icons for the drive and memory card and reader and a digital gauge to let you know the percentage of the Clik! that is already full.
To copy the contents of your flash card, simply remove the media from your camera, plug it into the reader end of the Clik!, press the blue button on the reader, and wait…
Capture Speed was measured at approximately 10MB/min , so offloading a 40MB card could be expected to take about 4 minutes. You will then also need to erase the contents of your card after returning it to the camera before taking more pictures. The Clik! does not remove the files from the flash card.
UPLOADING YOUR IMAGES
Back home, you've loaded the Click Software CD containing the interface software onto your system, set up the docking/charging station and connected the pass-through parallel port interface to your system's parallel port.
To upload the pictures to your computer, you disconnect the Flash memory reader and slip the Clik! into the desktop docking station. The Clik! will appear as Removable Media on your desktop, so you can drag and drop from Explorer into your favorite application, or copy the entire content of the drive onto your hard system's hard disk or other removable storage medium.
Upload Speed was measured at 5.1MB/minute , so transferring the content of a full 40MB Clik! disk to your desktop should take just under 8 minutes, depending on system variables like hard disk and port speed.
QUALITY
I was very impressed with the construction of the unit. The fit and finish were excellent. The drive, battery and docking station have display indicators to let you know what's going on. The battery has a 2-color status LED, green indicates charging, amber indicates low battery. (Charge time is specified as two to four hours.) The desktop docking station glows green when the drive is inserted and powered. A green LED on the Clik! drive itself indicates disk access is active.
ABOUT THE MEDIA
The Clik! media is reusable after deleting its contents from the PC desktop or DOS. The system comes with one 40MB disk, but to really use the system as intended, you'll want to buy several additional disks, sold in 2, 4 and 10 packs. Prices vary widely with the source and the quantity purchased. I've seen the two-pack offered at $30 retail, and I've seen the 10-pack advertised as low as $80 on the www.shopper.com. You can expect to pay between $8 and $15 per disk. Disk size is 40MB, yielding a price of $0.20 to $0.40 per megabyte, discounting the cost of the drive itself. Of course, you'll want to consider your memory needs, and how much flash memory you could buy for the cost of the complete Clik System.
ABOUT THE TECHNOLOGY
Clik! is based on Bernoulli drive technology evolved through the popular Iomega Zip drive. The drive itself is nearly silent in operation. You may hear a slight high-pitched whir.
ISSUES:
Capacity: Each Clik! disk can only accommodate 40 megabytes of information. If you try to use a card with more than 40MB of data, or, if you don't have enough room left on the Clik! disk to accomodate all of the memory card images, then no images will be transferred, and you'll get a "nr" (No Room) error display on the LCD readout.
Charging: In order to charge the Clik!, you need to have it plugged into the desktop docking station and connected to the AC adapter. On a very long trip this would mean taking those extra components with you. The good news is that the Clik! comes with a nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) battery, which provides a lot of run time and charging in just 2-4 hours.
Speed: The biggest drawback with the parallel port Clik! may be ultimately resolved in the USB configuration: Improved upload speed, fewer cables to manage, and no parallel port requirements.
ABOUT THE MANUAL
There is a note in the manual and Quick Start guide to set your camera to save images in JPEG format rather than a camera-specific format to "make using the copied files much easier." There is no indication that the system has any difficulty with TIFF files.
The manual was a little difficult to read because it tries to address the various Clik! system configurations from PC-based systems to laptops and Windows-CE configurations. The Quick Start Guide was much more useful, with specific setup diagrams for the desktop PC/camera configuration.
ABOUT THE SOFTWARE
In addition to the driver, Iomega's Photo Printer software utility is provided, which will let you view, rotate and print JPEG or bitmap pictures located either on the your Clik! or on the floppy drive. It will let you arrange a few pictures of different sizes pictures on a single page or run through a slide show of the pictures on disk, but it doesn't provide any facility to copy, delete or even to drag & drop an image into your favorite application. The Explorer interface on the desktop will meet these needs, but it would have been nice to have a fully integrated utility.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (PC / digital camera configuration)
Windows 98, 95 or NT 4.0; CD ROM; 16MB RAM; Standard Parallel port. It is possible to daisy-chain a parallel printer from the Clik!'s parallel port interface. Sharing the port would mean you couldn't print or scan while the Clik! is uploading to the computer. |
