I posted a previous story detailing the problems I’ve been having with SanDisk’s 1GB SD media in a new Casio Exilim EX-Z55. Essentially the card won’t read in my PowerBook G4 1.5 GHz for love or money, and to make matters worse, I had to shoot a whole card of excellent shots to find this out. Needless to say, your fearless editor is pretty fired up about this issue. Read on…
I posted a previous story detailing the problems I’ve been having with SanDisk’s 1GB SD media in a new Casio Exilim EX-Z55. Essentially the card won’t read in my PowerBook G4 1.5 GHz for love or money, and to make matters worse, I had to shoot a whole card of excellent shots to find this out. Needless to say, your fearless editor is pretty fired up about this issue.
Some suggestions that came in from my post on the Apple Discussion Forums were to make sure that the lock tab was not enabled (it isn’t) and to try repair disk permissions on my ‘Book – no worky. Other things I have tried include another brand-new SD card, using the cradle as opposed to the PC Card reader, trying two other PowerBooks.
So with that folks, I give up. The Casio Exilim EX-Z55 is going back to Circuit City under their 14-day return policy. It’s too bad, really. I was really gung-ho for this camera.
Some of the other things that annoyed me about this otherwise cool-looking 5MP camera (with 2.5-inch LCD):
– It must be cradled to use USB. Casio didn’t include a small USB > camera cable so you’re forced to around the docking cradle if you want to charge the battery or purchase an external travel charger.
– Power is a separate cable (no power over USB). Perhaps the single greatest thing about my BlackBerry 7100t is that it includes two USB power cables in the box. I wish that more mobile tech manufacturers switched to USB power cables as they allow you to charge your device from your PowerBook’s (or any computer for that matter) USB port and free you from carrying multiple, heavy power adapters.
– On-screen menus are low-res. Although this is a minor nit, the menus and on-screen displays are ugly and appear to be low res. It looks like they were designed with Microsoft Publisher on a Tandy TRS-80.
– SanDisk SD card errors. See my previous story for the whole sordid tale. Multiple SD cards won’t transfer pictures to my PowerBook.
My criteria for my next digital camera are 1) ultra-compact, 2) 5 megapixel, 3) decent Macro mode, 4) large LCD, and 5) no Memory Stick (never again.) I settled on the Casio because it was right combination of the above features but never expected to have to spend over 12 hours trying to read from the memory card.
Other cameras that I considered along the way include:
Canon SD400 – Available Feb 2005?
Canon SD300 – US$319 – 2.0″ LCD
Pentax Optio S5i – Aug 2004 – $264 – 1.8″ LCD
If you are using an ultra-compact digital camera that you’d recommend, please drop me a line at our contact page.
