Iomega 31308 FotoShow Digital Image Center

Rating:
Summary: I am pleased with it--Recommended
Review: If you travel with a digital camera, I recommend the FotoShow. You can use 100 or 250 MegaByte zip disks to store your photos on the road. This will free up your expensive flashcards or MicroDrives for more pictures! You can also hook it to a television to review your photos, though I find that you need to either go through a VCR or else use a a converter kit (available at consumer electronics stores) to hook up to most televisions. Despite this, I find my FotoShow useful on the road for storing of photographs from a recent trip. If you are like me, and inflict photos of your travels on the few remaining friends you haven't alienated with this practice, the FotoShow is a good way to do it. I find the "zoom" feature is particularly useful when doing this, you can zoom in on selected parts of the image. You also have the ability to do some modest photo editing (rotating, redeye removal, lightening/darkening) with just the FotoShow and a television. Finally, you can hook it to your computer and use it as a conventional zip drive. I do have a few quibbles that keep me from giving FotoShow five stars--You need a small converter to hook into most televisions directly. I had a bit of trouble copying photos at first, till I figured out a couple of tricks. And I dread losing the remote control, since none of the imaging controls are duplicated on the device itself! To my knowledge, FotoShow will not work on non-US televisions, though you can use it to back up pictures anywhere, even without a television. Finally, (though this isn't really a fault of the device) Zip Disks are a bit pricey. According to the manual, FotoShow works best with 250 MegaByte Zip Disks, use of 100s will make disk access slower.

Rating:
Summary: CF tranfer too Slow
Review: It have nice resolution, but the transfer time to Zip drives are extremely slow!, it take about 30min to transfer a 128mb Compact Flash to a 250M ZIP drive.

Rating:
Summary: Just what I needed
Review: The Fotoshow is a great device although there are some issues with it:
1) The disk that came with mine was bad so the drive kept clicking and clicking and wouldn't work. Luckily I bought some others that worked.
2) The machine doesn't read your original image file each time it displays it. The first time it sees a new file on the disk, it stores a highly compressed version of that image that it uses for each subsequent access. This causes a major delay each time you load a bunch of new images on the disk (as it creates the low res images), but speeds things up big time after that first time. The fact that it displays this low quality version of the file is why some people complain about the quality of the display- I find the quality to be more than satisfactory- it's on a TV anyway. It even lets you zoom in, etc. Note that the editing features obviously do save to your original image file.
3) The interface is a little confusing- the default view is not full screen which drives me nuts to have to keep selecting full screen over and over.
4) I don't know why the power adapter weighs like 5 pounds- it's ridiculous.
Overall it's a fun device that helps you archive your photos on zip disks and also bore your friends and family with slideshows.
The sound effects can be quite entertaining too.

Rating:
Summary: Really great- with a couple caveats
Review: The Fotoshow is a great device although there are some issues with it:
1) The disk that came with mine was bad so the drive kept clicking and clicking and wouldn't work. Luckily I bought some others that worked.
2) The machine doesn't read your original image file each time it displays it. The first time it sees a new file on the disk, it stores a highly compressed version of that image that it uses for each subsequent access. This causes a major delay each time you load a bunch of new images on the disk (as it creates the low res images), but speeds things up big time after that first time. The fact that it displays this low quality version of the file is why some people complain about the quality of the display- I find the quality to be more than satisfactory- it's on a TV anyway. It even lets you zoom in, etc. Note that the editing features obviously do save to your original image file.
3) The interface is a little confusing- the default view is not full screen which drives me nuts to have to keep selecting full screen over and over.
4) I don't know why the power adapter weighs like 5 pounds- it's ridiculous.
Overall it's a fun device that helps you archive your photos on zip disks and also bore your friends and family with slideshows.
The sound effects can be quite entertaining too.

Rating:
Summary: Dissappointed with Picture Quality
Review: This would be a great product if they added one thing - decent picture quality when you view it on TV. I compared the exact same images viewed with the Fotoshow and with my Sony Camera -- both through the TV. The difference in quality was huge. For some reason, much of the resolution of a good photo is lost when viewed on TV. Since that's its main feature, I had to give this a low rating.