Rating: 
Summary: Does what a reader should do, though the design is wacked
Review: All in all this Lexar card reader does exactly what it's supposed to do read from almost any Digital memory card on the planet. So if you're looking for a quick multiformat card reader. This could be a good choice.
A few things to keep in mind though: the first is the design. The door opens by being pulled down, that wouldn't be bad, but it's a curved piece of plastic so the card reader is held off the table by the cover, take a look at the pictures, and you'll see what I mean. Also, the USB cable attaches to the side and not the back. So if you're looking for a card reader to sit on a table next to your computer. All neat and tidy you my will look elsewhere. I think this was more designed for on the go. Throw in a backpack etc.
Those were a few things I wanted to mention.
Have some fun and get it done
Rating: 
Summary: Lexar USB 2.0 Driver Crashes Win2000 Pro
Review: Beware of possible Windows 2000 USB 2.0 driver issues with the supplied Lexar drivers. I receieved one of these readers recently, and found that the driver packed with the unit (which matches the one you can download from their site) will crash my Win2000 Pro Service Pack 3 system, with a 'SPINLOCK_NOT_AVAILABLE' kernel error, whenever I plug the unit into the USB connector.I emailed Lexar tech support and got no answer (except the automated one) after several days. I managed to get through to a live technician on their 24/7 online service this evening (after failing to raise anyone last weekend), and his advice was to *not* use any driver on Windows 2000. This is contrary to all the printed materials packed with the unit, mind you, as well as the version matrix found under drivers on the Lexarmedia web site. Perhaps the latter Win2K service packs supplant the need for a 3rd party USB 2.0 driver. It would be nice, of course, for the driver installer to sense this, and not install a conflicting driver, which appears to be the case. I uninstalled the driver, rebooted, and after telling the device manager to update the driver (it came up with an yellow exclamation point), it found a usbstor.inf file on my local drive, and installed it. Now, it works like a champ. Nice, stable, high speed transfers.
By the way, I preferred the Lexar reader because I found (at least the older USB 1.1 ones) they run just fine on Linux, as well, so I can use them on either my desktop or my Linux laptop, running SuSE 8.1. I don't have USB 2.0 ports on my laptop, so I can't tell you if the RW018 runs under Linux, there, yet. On a related matter, I had a SanDisk Ultra 128 MB CF card go bad on me recently (couldn't write or format the card) and SanDisk replacemed the card for me under their 5 year warranty. They even paid UPS shipping both ways. The replacement card carries a lifetime warranty. Very responsive technical support, compared to Lexar, I must say.
Rating: 
Summary: Not compatible with WIndows 98SE; HELP not good!
Review: I bought this unit to work with WIndows 98SE as listed on Amazon; it does NOT! I contacted Lexar HELP and they sent a new driver file that would not load.
The device would NOT show up as an added drive. My PC recognized the device when attached to the USB port but the driver software, after a declared "succesful" installation, was "not found."
I do not recommend this device with WIndows 98SE!!!
Rating: 
Summary: May be incompatible with certain systems.
Review: I feel like I have come out of the Ice Age into the new century. Much faster than my older USBI reader (now that I have a newer PC), but more importantly I did not have, until this product, a reader for the Smart Media cards used by my Olympus digital camera... I'd estimate the Lexar High Speed Reader loads these 1.3mb images about 25X faster than using the camera-to-computer serial link. With the XP operating system on my PC, I just plugged it in and didn't need to load or download any software. I wish everything was this easy!
Rating: 
Summary: Wow
Review: I feel like I have come out of the Ice Age into the new century. Much faster than my older USBI reader (now that I have a newer PC), but more importantly I did not have, until this product, a reader for the Smart Media cards used by my Olympus digital camera... I'd estimate the Lexar High Speed Reader loads these 1.3mb images about 25X faster than using the camera-to-computer serial link. With the XP operating system on my PC, I just plugged it in and didn't need to load or download any software. I wish everything was this easy!
Rating:
Summary: Great reader, great support
Review: I had Rev A of this reader (purchased about a year ago). While it worked great with my Transcend 256MB card, it didn't work well with SanDisk cards (both Ultra II and the new standard cards). While I could copy files off the SanDisk cards, I was unable to write TO them using the Reader.
I called up Support, and they took care of me. They didn't ask me where I purchased, when I purchased, etc. They had me ship them my Rev A, and they sent out, for free, a Rev D. All I can say is: Wow. Reading the cards with Rev D is so much faster than the Rev A (twice as fast). And writing to them works perfectly.
Please, call up Lexar support. Tell them the reader doesn't work with SanDisk cards. They should take care of it.
Rating:
Summary: Doesn't work with new CF cards
Review: I have the RW-018 Rev.B model. I even upgraded the firmware from the www.lexarmedia.com website. However, it will not work with my two Sandisk Ultra II 512mb cards! This reader takes many minutes to write large multimegabyte files, and when reading back the file it is corrupted! Many others with the same problem have reported this problem, and so far there is no fix but to get another brand USB2 card reader. Too bad. I am very disappointed. (The reader works fine with my 25x Transcend 512mb card, which was made almost 2 years ago.)
Rating:
Summary: Works great on Mac OS X Power Mac G4
Review: I have used it on my Power Mac G4 OS X and it works great. I use a USB hub that is powered (plugged in to an outlet.)
Rating:
Summary: SO glad I bought this
Review: I remember the last couple years thinking I would never need a card reader. recently I bought a 1 Gig compactflash card for my digital camera and I read that these card readers can read the info faster than the camera. Not only is that true, but I don't have to use the rechargeable batteries in the camera to get my pics onto my pc. Not that it was that much of a problem, but this is much easier to use. Anyway, this unit is light, small and tremendously convenient.
Rating:
Summary: Good value drive for file transfers
Review: I was thinking of purchasing a USB drive to transport large files from one computer to another, but I saw this drive and decided to take advantage of the compact flash memory I already owned for my digital camera. One of the great things about this drive (it is a reader and a writer) is its size. It is quite small and convenient to carry about. Once you plug the drive in, four new drive letters are added, one for each memory card slot. The Lexar drive has the same problem of all drives of this type in that the computer does not indicate which drive letter has the compact flash and which drive letter has the other media. But since the drive designations are the same each time you plug the Lexar drive into your computer, you can learn which is which. The first time that I plugged the Lexar drive into my XP computer, the computer kept telling me that I had added new drives which was a bit annoying. However, this only happened the first time and I have had no problems since. I chose this Lexar drive due to its being USB 2.0. My current computer does not have a USB 2.0 port, but my next computer will and so I wanted to plan ahead. Windows gives me a warning that I have plugged a high speed device into a slower USB port, but it works just fine, just at the slower speed. (I can only vouch for how the drive works with XP. I don't know how well it works with other operating systems). Overall, a great little drive to transfer files. I would recommend it to anyone with a digital camera or anyone who wants to transfer large data files between computers.
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