Flash card reader advice please.

[Captain315]

My wife has a Canon digital camera that uses the compact flash card. Running XP with SP2 installed, everytime she tries to download pictures from the camera she can't get the computer to recognize the camera. This makes life VERY stressful for me. What I need is some advice on a card reader that uses a USB connection. There are many listed but I just don't know which is the better ones. Anyone with experience in these things would be a great help if you can recommend a EASY, RELIABLE and INEXPENSIVE card reader as soon as possible as my life may be cut short at any moment.

Thanks,
Tom

[thecoalman]

Have you looked to see if you need to install drivers for the camera? I know my Canon Camcorder required drivers for the built in flash memory, it was not plug and play.

[waheed]

Many cameras do require drivers and software to be installed. Check your camera box for the drivers/software CD.

[wwaag]

I use a Lexar USB2.0 Multi-Card Reader. It will read pretty much any kind of card including compact flash. Running XP, there are no drivers to install. Simply plug it in. Works very well. You can get one at Walmart for around $27 as I recall. Good luck.

wwaag

[JSB1]

My wife has a Canon digital camera that uses the compact flash card. Running XP with SP2 installed, everytime she tries to download pictures from the camera she can't get the computer to recognize the camera.

So you say when you plud the USB connector from the camera to a USB port, you do not get a wizard or something? Could be once apon a time the menu came up and someone clicked do nothing ??????

Does your camera show up in explorer?
JSB

[ROF]

42 in 1 Mem Card Reader for $10

I bought two of these one for my dad and one for me. This has come in handy for relatives who use mem cards other than what I have.

[redwudz]

I have a Canon S400 Elph and have never had problems with it being recognized by several computers, though I know it's a problem for some users. I generally use the Microsoft Scanner and Camera Wizard that comes with XP to download. You don't really need additional software.

I would also recommend the Lexar card reader. I use one at work. A bonus is that your card will read in quicker than when it's in the camera and you don't use up your camera batteries. Or worry about where you put the transfer cable.

[ozymango]

Anyone with experience in these things would be a great help if you can recommend a EASY, RELIABLE and INEXPENSIVE card reader as soon as possible as my life may be cut short at any moment.

Hopefully you're still alive out there, Tom.

Yeah, what these guys already said, ditto. I like having a card reader around anyway because my wife finds it easier just to pop the card out of the camera (SD card, Canon A520 camera) and put it in the already-connected-and-working reader and not have to futz with batteries going dead, or what wire connects to what. And we have a lot of people here at work (I work at a college) who have various card readers attached to their computers and one thing we've discovered -- frankly they all work just fine. Cheap is just as good as expensive, so basically, whatever's on sale, that'll work just fine. Haven't had one barf or format somebody's disc, you just plug 'em in and voila, you're done. And what are they now, maybe $10-$20 for a reader? If that much.

I do like the "reads a zillion different cards" readers for when somebody comes to visit and brings their Zanotchka camera with SmartMedia card (or whatever) and didn't bring their cable, nice to be able to read pretty much any disc on a moment's notice.

[Captain315]

I have surely enjoyed all the helpful information that y'all left. Yes, we seem to have to re-install the software every time she wants to transfer the pictures off her Dimage 7. When it won't work, it's all my fault. She's a little ticked at me because of the problems. She introduced me to an associate as "her current husband". There's a storm a brewin' I can tell.

I suppose I will just get the first card reader I can find and hopefully calm the storm a little. Thanks to everyone for the help, it is much appreciated.

Regards,
Tom

[snafu099]

First off, if is a newer camer and has a usb interface, then there is an internal setting in the camera that tells it how to act when connected to a pc. 1. as a camera, acts like a webcam. 2. As a harddrive, xp will reconize it as a removeable drive, that will have 1 or more subfolders and you need to naviagate to the lower folder that has the pics.

Someone really needs to read the manual especially as to the setting for how the camera assigns the file name #. If the camera is set to revert back to #1 each time the files are deleted, you run the risk of overwriting existing pics when you upload new ones.

I use and recommend a shareware program called PieStudio which greatly helps in uploading/viewing/printing of digital pics

http://www.picmeta.com/piestudio.htm
There are actually 3 programs, 2 of which are free
Pie is the importer/viewer FREE Will auto rname to your spec on inport
Pie Print is the printer, great for multi pics on one page. Print the contents of a cd with 50/page to put with cd for easy ref. FREE
PieStudio is the shareware ver that intergrates the above 2 free programs

We share a lot of pics and some of us have the same cameras so we use a rename on import such as: yyyymmdd firstname/initials_originalfilename (if the camera has a date function, it uses the date the pic was taken not the date it is uploaded)

You can always try the free ver to see if you like it. Was $30-us when I bought it several yrs aggo