Doubleu, you are correct, it has no hard drive, it only burns CDs. If you want a unit that does both, you need a laptop computer. I have ordered one and expect delivery tomorrow. One of the reasons I chose a CD burner over a hard drive was so that I could burn CDs for the friends I am travelling with as well. I would be happy to do it for anyone on the bus if they supplied the CDs.

I ordered the CD burner on the weekend and it was delivered to me 2:30pm on Monday, wow that's good service.
It does all it is supposted to do, copied a 128Mb card in less than 2 minutes, you can add more data the the same CD as you go along. I'm impressed. Paid A$380 and will get $38 back on GST.

I got mine yesterday and I am really impressed. It is a lot lighter than I thought it would be, and really easy to use, even for a non technical person like me. I really like the playback facility on a TV so I can prove that the pics are really on the CD.

Are there any CVS type stores over there? You can bring you cards to CVS and have them burn them on CD for you here in the states. That is what we were thinking that we would do. Has anyone tried this?

fI posted a similar comment in another thread which I can't find now, but....

Just returned from Italy and was surprised at how often I came across camera shops whichi provided downloading from a memory card to a CD. I took enough memory cards that I didn't require the service, but many of my tour companions used them and had no trouble locating stores to do it. The one time I enquired about the price, it was 5 Euros if I supplied the CD and 10 Eruos if they supplied it.

i am thinking about picking one of these up for my tour. Is it light enough to carry without any bother?

I just returned from the Italian Escapade and found there were Internet shops close to most hotels. If not all hotels has a computer that you could use. Most internet shops would burn a CD for you for as little as 5 euros and would let you check it on their computers for free. There was one almost next door in Venice. Also in Rome. If you have a camera that is over 2 megapixels dial it down to 2 unless you are going to make a poster. That was you will get many more pictures per card.

I recently finished the 21 day Romantic European tour + an extra week in the UK. I took 2 memory cards totalling 1.5GB, and I still had about 500MB spare after taking 1200 photos.

The portable card readers with hard drives or CD burners add yet more weight to your luggage once you take into account the recharger and batteries.

A word of warning though if you want to only take memory cards, make sure you stop into a photo shop and burn them to CD at some point. One of the people on our tour had their camera pickpocketed from them in Florence and lost ALL their photos for the whole tour. Regular backups will limit the pain.

Or perhaps instead of buying a very large memory card, you should buy several smaller cards.

If your digital camera doesn't provide a new compression standard (which is usually only found in the high-end cameras), a large capacity card ( > 512MB) will slow down the read and write speeds. As the card fills up, you will notice severe degredation in performance when you turn the camera on, and when you take a photo.

In summary, my recommendation would be to purchase a few 256MB cards (unless you have an 8 Megapixel camera) and enjoy travelling without the added weight of another device.

<If your digital camera doesn't provide a new compression standard (which is usually only found in the high-end cameras), a large capacity card ( > 512MB) will slow down the read and write speeds. As the card fills up, you will notice severe degredation in performance when you turn the camera on, and when you take a photo.>

Foghorn,
I haven't heard this before, what sort of compression are we looking for?

I know there are plenty of experts around but my view is just use memory cards which are about to get a lot cheaper, supposedly about Aus$30 (US$22) for 128mb at Woolworths. At that price they can be used for permanent backup storage. I find that 2 megapixels is more than enough for good pictures (unless using digital zoom) and see no need for CDs until you get home. It is not my intent to promote Woolies but their 47 cents for printing is pretty hard to beat! This is my first visit since the new BB format so hello to anyone who remembers me.

Regards
CGARA