Aloha all! I was just wondering if there is much of a download speed difference between downloading photos to a laptop through the USB connection as opposed to using a CompactFlash card adapter and putting in the PCMCIA slot? The cheapy PCMCIA adapter seems like a better idea just so you don't have to have your camera on.

Thanks!

-- Rick Werner (mantaman@tiki.net), April 03, 2000

Answers

nothing is faster than pcmcia, it's faster than USB. The pcmcia adaptors only cost like $10 for compact flash, sometimes they throw them in for free. Extremely easy to use. If this is an option for you it's the way to go.

That said, USB isn't exactly slow, I use that method on my laptop, because I'm too cheap to pay $60+ for the memory stick pcmcia adapt

-- benoit (foo@bar.com), April 03, 2000.

PCMCI theoretical transfer speed is around 1.6megabytes/second, USB is about 1.3meg/second. Hence not too much difference. I use both a $7 PCMCIA adapter and a $35 Sandisk USB reader to read 48meg compact flash cards, and I don't notice a speed difference between them.

By the way the speeds I see quoted for in-camera USB ports are typically about .3 megabytes per second. It would not be fun downloading huge flash memory cards at that speed, I would still get a reader if I used 128meg flash memo cards in a digicam.

-- Russell Bozian (finaldesign@hotmail.com), April 03, 2000.