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Technology Stocks : WDC/Sandisk Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ausdauer who wrote (26985)	11/19/2004 5:11:16 PM
From: NHP	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 60323

Aus, I just received my SanDisk Photo Album (SPA). The delivery time was 3 days from the time I placed the order. Chalk one up for the USPS. So far I've only removed the SPA from it's package, so I can only make a couple of comments about it at this time. 1) Very neat package, complete with cables, adapter,2 cables, and a CD containing Startup instructions, etc. 2) Upon reading the specs, I was amazed to find that the connection to the PC will be by USB 1.1. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't remember seeing the USB spec on the SanDisk website. I was planning to use the device as a card reader input to my PC, but now I'll just go on using the back-of-PC USB 2.0 input. Had I known about USB 1.1, I wouldn't have made the purchase, not even for the purpose of evaluation. However, I will not return the unit because I want to check out the operational features and quality of the display. We are ending the year 2004, and SanDisk comes out with a USB 1.1 device. Awful! I don't know why SanDisk is so secretive about the performance of many of it's products. I have found it frustrating in the past not to have any idea of the speed of the SanDisk CF cards; ie. before the Ultra Series. Compare that to the Lexar specs which right from the beginning contained a speed value such as 2X, 4X, etc. I like to deal with numbers, and terms such as "high speed" mean nothing to me. Even the announcement of the firmware upgrade for the SPA doesn't say anything about the reason for the upgrade. I hate to sound so negative about SanDisk at the moment, especially when I think about the enthusiasm shown by the contributors to this thread in the late 1990s. I'll give more comments about SPA, the chips falling where they may, after I've had the chance to use the unit. NHP

To: Ausdauer who wrote (26985)	11/22/2004 2:25:21 AM
From: NHP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 60323

Aus, I give the SPA a rating of 9.5 out of 10. A deduction of .5 was given because the USB is version 1.1. SanDisk must have improved on the Digital Photo Viewer that you purchased earlier this year. I am really happy with it's successor, the new SanDisk Photo Album (SPA)). As I said before, I connected the composite output of my SPA directly into my InFocus X2 projector; so the projector might partly account for the good results I am getting. I had the device up and running after just glancing at the instructions. The control buttons on the Remote Control are arranged similarly to the ones on the Remote Control for my DVD player, so there was not a whole lot to learn about it. The first thing I projected was some copies of old B&W photographs that were scanned at 300 dpi and saved on a SanDisk CF card. I was pleased with the quality of the projected image, especially when considering the resolution was just 640 x 480. When the SPA is turned on, a page of 9 thumbnails appears. The user then brackets and clicks on the thumbnail he wants displayed. This much is straightforward. At this point I was really disappointed that it took so long for the thumbnails to appear. I was thinking, "this won't do". Then it dawned on me that a 640 x 480 photo doesn't need the large file size that is the result of the scanning at 300 dpi. If file size could be reduced, maybe the SPA would become peppier. The instructions say that a 2nd CF card is required to convert files to an optimum size for a standard TV set. When I used the converted files that were stored on the 2nd card in the rear of the SPA, everything loaded quickly. More to come. NHP