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Sandisk 6-in-1 USB 2.0 Reader

Sandisk 6-in-1 USB 2.0 Reader

List Price: $39.99
Your Price:
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A complete waste of money. Don't buy it!
Review: DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY!

I wish I could give it a negative rating.

Sandisk knows that this doesn't work with certain popular cards, yet continues to sell it. It didn't work with my Lexar memory sticks, so I contacted them and they said they're trying to fix it but don't know when, or even if, it will ever be fixed.

They could have VERY easily tested compatibility with the various popular brands of memory so I assume they did. Yet they chose to sell the reader anyway, knowing that it didn't work as advertised.

Good aspects of the reader? It doesn't take up much space on your desktop because of its vertical design.

Please read the other reviews for the problems it has reading certain brands of Compact Flash cards, etc.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great unit, and has that cool factor
Review: I have only used the CF capability of this reader, and the unit read the card flawlessly. You can also delete the images directly off the card through the unit. I am running XP Corporate with the SP1 update. I simply pluged the unit into my running computer, and it rebooted itself, loaded four drive icons for the four slots, and I was good to go. Once you figure out which icon represents which slot, you can simply rename the drives so you will know which one to click when accessing different cards. The unit also has a nice orange power light, and four individual green lights representing each of the four slots. I was apprehensive because the unit looked top heavy, and unstable. No need to worry, the reader has a chrome plated, weighted base making it very stable. THere are also four rubber pads to help the unit stay put. Also, if you decide to use the unit without the base, it has a solid rubber pad across the width of the unit itself. This is a first class unit, and it looks great as well. The problems many have had regarding various cards, I suspect are not related to the reader itself. Computers are finicky things, and if something is slightly off, problems arise. This unit is future proof, go get one.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: bad
Review: I tried 3 type of cards with it, Memstick and Smartmedia works fine. With CF - different story. I have Lexar 16MB and Viking 128MB. This thing can not read both. Moreover, after i insert CF everything else stops working, remove - works again. Tried under W2K and Win98SE.
Today went to Staples and picked up another thingy(can not call it "reader").
Exact same result.

IMPORTANT:
1. sandisk does not respond to customer email requests.
2. rebate is still due after 4 month

Think twice.
would not recommend.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great reader
Review: Received this from my wish list, and I'm so glad that I did. I simply plugged it in to the USB port on my Win XP Home edition computer and the drivers installed automatically. After they installed, I've been able to simply put in both CompactFlash (16M thru 64M) and SmartMedia (16M thru 64M) cards and they're quickly accessable. The short USB cord that's included is great for transferring files from/to work where I'm running Win 2000 Pro. Again, no problems with installing it on that system either.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A great buy!
Review: I own over a dozen 128 MB Sony Memory Sticks and they all perform flawlessly with this SanDisk 6-in-1 reader. Half of these cards are "Lexar" branded, and they too, work perfectly with this reader. Amazon's price is a really good one, and when you combine that with the free shipping, the price versus performance ratio definitely makes it a great buy. I own 3 of these - one for home, one for my office, and one in my laptop case. It has excellent read/write speeds, super reliable, and will work with just about any memory media out there. What else can one ask for?

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great card reader
Review: I just bought this 6 in 1 card reader and it is everything I wanted. I would recommend it to anyone who is using more than one kind of card.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Doesn't work with my Sony 128 memory stick
Review: It doesn't recognize my Sony Memory Stick (128). Don't know why. Not at all useful to me. Couldn't find any help on the website. Buyer beware.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Its Quick!
Review: I have been shopping around for a 6 in 1 card reader for some time. USB 2.0 was a must. Not even firewire compares. So the choice came down to internal or external. With PC's becoming almost disposable, I decided to go external. I am not disappointed with the Sandisk. It is fast! I can not describe the difference USB 2.0 makes. I was a bit concerned with using Viking Compact Flash based on other reviews, so I went with Ridata (great flash memory). I have not tried Viking myself. The reader installs quickly and easily. Recognizes media almost instantly and transfers images in a flash. I have only used compact flash and smart media in this devise, but have had NO problems. Desighn is great. With the included base, it stays out of the othewise crowded desktop area. This is a great product.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Doesn't Work With My Older Viking 128 MB Cards
Review: This reader works fine with my newer cards (one Viking 512 MB purchased in Dec. 2002, 2 San Disk Ultra 256 MB purchased in March 2003 and a Canon Card 32 MB included with my Powershot S50, March 2003, all CompactFlash). However I'm not satisfied at all with it's performance regarding my two Viking 128 MB Compact Flash cards, purchased in October 2001. The reader refuses to acknowledge their existance. Tried plugging them in repeatedly, to no avail. This is probably because they are old and are missing something that doesn't allow them to be recognized. Apart from this problem (I'll just have to continue using my S50 to upload pictures from these cards) I'm quite happy.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Yes, but...
Review: USB 2.0 sounds good, until you realize that, usually, the bottleneck is not the USB connection. As I understand it, CompactFlash cards are the fastest out there (others have simpler chips and slow serial buses, to save space); and most CF cards are about 4x (same "x" as for CD drives), which means they run at 600KB/sec, or about 4.8Mb/sec. USB 1.1 runs at 12Mb/sec; its overhead is about 20%, so it should be able to do 9.6Mb/sec, so it should be able to keep up with an 8x CF card. Unless you have one of the new, faster CF cards (10x or 12x), you will not see any speed improvement from running this reader on USB 2.0; even with a 12x card, USB 2.0 will give you only about a 50% increase, not the fortyfold increase that it theoretically could give you.

The other case where you could get better performance is if you're copying from one card to another; where a USB 1.1 device could be maxed out simply by reading from a card, the USB 2.0 device should have enough bandwidth to read and write at the same time.

Now, that's not to say this isn't a good product. It's USB Mass Storage Compliant (means it doesn't need a driver on current operating systems), which means better reliability; you don't have to worry about the driver getting out of date and being incompatible when you upgrade the OS. (It also means it should work with Linux.) Unlike some other multicard readers, all the slots are usable at the same time. The USB 2.0 will become more of an advantage as CF cards get faster. And, well, it's a 6-way USB 2.0 reader, Mass Storage Compliant, for the same price as a lot of 6-way USB 1.1 readers which aren't Mass Storage Compliant.


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