Rating Reviewed by: Michael Fanelli(Unregistered User)
(Expert)
Review Date May 2, 2001
Overall Rating 4 of 5
Used product for 3 Months
Review 1 of 3
Summary: The FotoShow is a good low-cost alternative to the very high-priced Digital Wallet. The unit is a standard Zip 250Meg drive with a brain. It works in three modes:
1. Offload CF and SM cards. No connections other than power is required for this. The unit is plugged into a wall or car outlet. The card is inserted into the appropriate slot on the front panel. Push the button, and the card is copied to the Zip disk. The unit copies common image types, e.g., JPJ, TIFF. It also copies Canon RAW format files, a nice bonus. The files remain on the memory card (a good thing!).
2. Connected to a TV, the FotoShow cranks up it's ROM software and allows you to view, organize, and modify the images on any Zip disk. This is of minimal use as a TV is low resolution and trying to edit that way is for masochists only. This function is good, however, for reviewing a day's work in a format larger than the digicam's LCD screen.
3. Connected to the computer via USB, the FotoShow acts as a standard Zip drive.
My usual mode of operation is to carry the FotoShow and the car plug with me. My cards are downloaded as they fill. In the evening, I move the files off the Zip disks to their normal place on my computer's hard drive. If travelling, I will sometimes use the TV function to review the images in the hotel room each evening.
This is an excellent device. It is simple, to the point with no frills, priced reasonably for the functionality, and works as advertised.
Strengths: Good price. Does the job well albeit without frills. Remote control is a nice plus (included).
Weaknesses: Too bad it doesn't use batteries! The user manual is mindless. Thank goodness most FotoShow functions are obvious.
Rating Reviewed by: Michael Fanelli(Unregistered User)
(Expert)
Review Date May 2, 2001
Overall Rating 4 of 5
Used product for 3 Months
Visitors rate this review 5.00 of 5,
1 votes
Review 2 of 3
Summary: The FotoShow is a good low-cost alternative to the very high-priced Digital Wallet. The unit is a standard Zip 250Meg drive with a brain. It works in three modes:
1. Offload CF and SM cards. No connections other than power is required for this. The unit is plugged into a wall or car outlet. The card is inserted into the appropriate slot on the front panel. Push the button, and the card is copied to the Zip disk. The unit copies common image types, e.g., JPJ, TIFF. It also copies Canon RAW format files, a nice bonus. The files remain on the memory card (a good thing!).
2. Connected to a TV, the FotoShow cranks up it's ROM software and allows you to view, organize, and modify the images on any Zip disk. This is of minimal use as a TV is low resolution and trying to edit that way is for masochists only. This function is good, however, for reviewing a day's work in a format larger than the digicam's LCD screen.
3. Connected to the computer via USB, the FotoShow acts as a standard Zip drive.
My usual mode of operation is to carry the FotoShow and the car plug with me. My cards are downloaded as they fill. In the evening, I move the files off the Zip disks to their normal place on my computer's hard drive. If travelling, I will sometimes use the TV function to review the images in the hotel room each evening.
This is an excellent device. It is simple, to the point with no frills, priced reasonably for the functionality, and works as advertised.
Strengths: Good price. Does the job well albeit without frills. Remote control is a nice plus (included).
Weaknesses: Too bad it doesn't use batteries! The user manual is mindless. Thank goodness most FotoShow functions are obvious.
Rating Reviewed by: Richard Westlake(Unregistered User)
(Intermediate)
Review Date March 11, 2001
Overall Rating 3 of 5
Used product for 2 Months
Review 3 of 3
Summary: The FotoShow is a Zip 250 USB drive with extra hardware and firmware, that lets a digital camera user store and view photos without a computer. You can even create and present a "slide show" of your digital photo album on an ordinary TV set ... at a price of $299 for the whole setup.
Physically, the FotoShow resembles a Zip 250 external drive on steroids. Its extra size makes room for CompactFlash and SmartMedia readers in the front, plus RCA and S-video plugs on the back. It also accommodates a built-in television display driver, plus its own PictureIQ firmware to sort and display the photos in an "album" (Windows folder). It isn't something to put in your camera bag. All-up weight is a bit less than 5 lbs (2 kg), including the power brick, swoopy-sculpty little remote control, RCA cable, and a Zip disk. But it does let you save the equivalent of 8 32-meg SmartMedia cards on one $15 disk -- and again on a second $15 disk, for data security.
Plugged into your computer's USB port, the FotoShow is a Zip 250 drive; the card readers and PictureIQ firmware are disabled. But it's good for anything you'd do with a Zip drive, especially one full of your photos. (100 megs can hold a whale of a lot of 1280x960 images.) It has replaced the old SCSI Zip 100 that I used to use.
By itself, the FotoShow can read all the photos off your camera card and copy them to a Zip disk. Just plug its power-brick into the wall, plug the SmartMedia or CompactFlash card into the front of the drive, insert a Zip disk with enough room, and push the "Copy" button. It takes several minutes to copy a full 32-meg card onto a 100-meg Zip disk - less time on a 250-meg disk. The copies are saved in folders that are titled "Album (date)", for the day you saved them to disk.
When you plug it into a TV set and switch on its PictureIQ firmware, it will 'prepare' all the photos on the disk for viewing on the TV set. This is a lengthy process; 100 images can take 20 minutes or more. The firmware makes 640x480 screen-display copies and 80x60 thumbnails of each JPEG image, saving them in "Screen" and "Thumb" folders within the original folder. Once it's finished, you can view a "grid" display of thumbnails, click on a thumbnail and view the "screen" copy, and even zoom in on the screen display and view a segment of the original photo.
You can edit slide-shows (to put the photos in your preferred order) on the TV screen, and you can even do some limited photo-editing (brightness, contrast, gamma, rotation) through the built-in firmware ... but it's clumsy, slow, and frustrating. Photo "albums" are initially sorted by the date and time the photo was last saved to disk. This is fine if you'd copied the photos "in order," as you would if you'd only brought one SmartMedia card; but if you've shot two cards (or more), you'd better make sure you save the first card first.
My biggest squawk with Iomega is that they don't have a computer program to view, index and set-up your FotoShow albums on the PC or Mac. Sorting on the TV screen is a hassle, and those thumbnails are too small to view! The PictureIQ firmware writes an XML script to store the viewing order, and it should be possible for a computer program to do the same thing ... maybe that new "LifeWorks Photo Album" program Iomega offers on their Web site will do this. I hope so!!!
Bottom line: The FotoShow isn't perfect, but it does a good job of storing and showing your digital photos, even on the road ... at half the weight and 1/4 the price of a cheap notebook computer.
Strengths: Inexpensive - compared to a notebook computer ($299 including one 250-MB disk)
Saves directly from CompactFlash/SmartMedia to Zip disks, without a computer
Displays photos on a TV set with built-in hardware and PictureIQ firmware
Weaknesses: Size and weight
PictureIQ functions are on TV set only - no computer emulator included with my model
Frustrating to work with photos on the TV set
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