On Sep 4, 2006, at 2:25 PM, Shel Belinkoff wrote: > http://hyperdrive.com/shop/index.php > > Would anyone who's used this care to comment on it? > > If you've not used this device, is there any obvious downside or > problem > that you can see from the material on the site?
When I was planning my trip to the UK last year, I decided not to carry the laptop to save on weight and gear that I had to carry through airports. The CompactDrive PD7X had just come out and was the top pick between those storage devices that did not have an imaging display. One of my friends (also a Pentax DSLR user) had gotten one and was very enthusiastic about it. He liked the fact that it used the same batteries as his Pentax and was fast. The Epson P2000 had also just come out, was compatible with Pentax PEF file display, and was about twice the money for a 40G unit. It was almost as fast as the PD7X and had this huge 3.5" display for reviewing the files stored on it. It had a rechargable, Li-Ion battery instead of AAs ... so another charger to carry, which I considered a downside. After some debate, I decided that the P2000 was worth the premium and charger annoyance, and went for it. In the course of a year and some's use, it has operated flawlessly, reasonably speedily, and the rechargeable battery has not proven to be any problem at all. One full charge will download about 13 1g cards worth of data (about a week's normal shooting for me) and runs for several hours on a playback with music if you want. It's about the size of a paperback pocket book and weighs about a pound. I used it throughout my trip last year to backup my data and review what I'd been shooting, have used it throughout the year since to do the same thing as well as present collections to prospective buyers. It's much more convenient to carry and use than a laptop when you are not going to be editing your work in the field. Meanwhile, John upgraded to the PD70X and remains quite satisfied with it. I'd consider the CompactDrive PD70X (aka HyperDrive) as being a very good choice if a display was not important to you. Otherwise, I'd pick the Epson P4000 (80G capacity) if I were buying now, and that's the one I'd buy. Godfrey -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
