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Media (Apple) Businesses Media Apple

iPod Media Reader Slowness 87

gsfprez writes "According to an official statement by Belkin over at iPodlounge, the reason it takes 22 minutes to transfer a few pictures from your digital SLR's CF card to your iPod with their $99 iPod Media Reader is that, well, that's how they designed it. They wanted to 'address the needs of the largest percentage of owners of digital cameras and iPods,' because -- and let's be honest -- when you want to transfer 128 megs of pictures from your $200 digital camera, you think '$600 worth of iPod and media reader please!,' and not $14 flash readers." Belkin did say they are trying to work out a solution with Apple, perhaps in the iPod firmware, but it seems the problem may be with the design of the reader itself.
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iPod Media Reader Slowness

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  • by xanderwilson ( 662093 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @06:40PM (#7342550) Homepage
    What's the fastest media reader out there? Are there firewire SD readers, etc, and are they much faster than their USB 1 counterparts?

    Alex.
  • by commodoresloat ( 172735 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @06:44PM (#7342574)
    That's nothing; you should try copying a 17M file....

    *ducks*
  • The sarcasm is so layered and the syntax is so awkward that I'm not sure what we're supposed to be upset with regarding this.

    What does the Submitter mean. Can somebody translate it for me?
    • According to the Belkin site, the iPod reader allows the user to send files to their iPod, instead of to their hard drive, for storage. You put the CF card into the Belkin reader, then connect the iPod by Firewire, then use the iPods delivery system to move files off the CF card and onto the iPod's harddrive.

      But Belkin's reader is slower than the $14 reader, so it would be a waste of money to buy the thing.
    • Yeah, this statement, "They wanted to 'address the needs of the largest percentage of owners of digital cameras and iPods,' because -- and let's be honest -- when you want to transfer 128 megs of pictures from your $200 digital camera, you think '$600 worth of iPod and media reader please!,'" doesn't parse too well for me. The company is saying that they wanted to address the needs of people who own digital camera and iPods. I understand that that is what the company stated. But why then does the submitter
    • Yeah, the text of the submission is poorly written. It seems Belkin sells a media reader that plugs into the iPod and allows you to transfer digitial photos (for example) from your camera to the iPod. Evidently, the media reader costs $99-$109 but the data rate is extremely slow over (even though it's over the fire wire port). Also, Belkin is looking into the issue.

      I have no idea why this is news either.

      • no, its not poorly written - that's exactly what i said. And Belkin is "looking into it" to see if they can get a little more more speed, but they are certianly not saying that they are going to give the real users of this devices what they want - firweire speeds - like as are physically possible with a FireWire port.

        If you RTFA, you'd see that the issue is that this $99 reader underperforms a $14 USB adaptor - and the reason why is that Belkin assumes that "typical consumers using a 128 meg card" are the
        • If you get this many complaints that your submission was poorly written, then face it: it was poorly written. In the future, I suggest you stick to a concise description of the story, and resist the urge to add a sarcastic editorial of your own.
        • I did RTFAs. That was the only way I could figure out exactly what was going on. If I were new here I'd be surprised by your immature response to criticism.

          The real problem is that you bought a card reader based on price, not performance. As you stated, you were expecting the Belkin reader to outperform the $14 reader simply because the average user would never spend $99 on a card reader. You should have done your homework.

          If the card reader wasn't meeting the advertised data rate, you'd have a s

        • Touchy aren't we? Yes, your submission is poorly written. I am doing a cross disciplinary PhD which involves linguistics and I had to read it three times before I could make sense of it. Your response to this criticism is utterly uncalled for. Pathetic.

  • by windex82 ( 696915 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @06:49PM (#7342602) Homepage
    ..the "ive been copying files in/with "X" for 17 minutes" troll got his own story!
  • by Anonymous Coward
    ... that slashdotters are using that same connection to post to this story. It's been 20 minutes since it's posting, and this is only the sixth comment!
  • I was ready to hit up the local apple store and buy this puppy and an iPod. Oh well.

    I work as a photojournalist at a local newspaper, just about to switch to digital photography. It would be great to have a small multipurpose device to backup a compact flash card but ~22 minutes for a 512MB card? Half-time at a football game isn't even that long...

    My USB 1.1 card reader doesn't take that long...

    I certainly hope they fix this problem. This looked as though it could have been yet another killer app for
    • I work as a photojournalist at a local newspaper, just about to switch to digital photography. It would be great to have a small multipurpose device to backup a compact flash card but ~22 minutes for a 512MB card.

      Using an extra $100 under-performing clunky gadget to send data to a device with no image viewing seems like a losing proposition. I like the look of the new Lyra [amazon.com] ($400) and Archos [amazon.com] ($600... too rich for me!). Both seem to have CF built-in, and support other media with adapters. Both feature full-

    • There's something very similar at Compgeeks, so you can dump the contents of a flash card onto a laptop disk. You have to provide your own laptop disk, but the USB 2 version should be pretty fast.

      X's drive USB2 [compgeeks.com]
      They also have a regular usb version
  • belkin and macs... (Score:4, Informative)

    by irving47 ( 73147 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @06:59PM (#7342665) Homepage
    Belkin might make some spiffy hardware, but their commitment to Mac OS X is questionable. Ask anyone who's had a Belkin USB-DB9 Serial adapter for the last three YEARS and Belkin just won't get off their asses and release any drivers for it. They flat out lied to me on the Macworld show floor last January...
    • Don't forget that any Belkin firmware is disributed in a .exe. How can my Mac or Linux box update the firmware on the Belkin USB KVM? Not that they released any yet.
      And why do they use a parellel cable on a USB device for the firmware?
      And why does the Belkin USB KVM suck? It does not release the shift key at times, and using the arrow keys with a Mac really messes it up by pinting 4's or 6' accross the screen.
      • I also had the misfortune to buy a Belkin KVM and not hook it up before I could return it.

        I bought an Omniview KVM and it works pretty well with both Mac and PC (as it should, actually claiming to support OS X on the box) - the only problem is the audio control keys on an Apple keyboard do not seem to make it through.

        I also had some video display problems with the Belkin. I have come to the conclusion they must be a bunch of talentless hacks, and I doubt I would buy anything from them again.
        • the only problem is the audio control keys on an Apple keyboard do not seem to make it through.

          I tried the ioGear USB KVM. Same problem. Apparently USB KVM switches "cheat" by pretending to be a generic USB keyboard and mouse. That's what they tell your computers, no matter what kind of keyboard or mouse you actually have installed. At least (IIRC) the Belkin unit is flash upgradeable, unlike the ioGear unit.

          In my case, I was forced to get rid of the ioGear unit because it was repeating keydown events

          • I had that repeating problem (and numbers showing up when I used the arrow keys) with Belkin, but not with ioGear - did you use the four-port model?

            I agree we have a really poor set of KVM's around right now - I can't believe these things have not been updated more by now as a lot of people at least have a USB mouse.
            • Yep, the 4-port ioGear with OSD. The hardware was wonderful, the USB firmware sucked. I'm beginning to suspect a common OEM chipset source here. Does the Belkin use a tap ctrl, shift, alt, digit sequence to switch displays?

              The ioGear also had a pair of "Device" USB ports which didn't go through any keyboard/mouse translation, but those were not switched from the front panel buttons. You could only switch them from a key sequence on the "console" keyboard! (Console keyboard meaning either the front USB

    • If you're talking about the Belkin F5U109, the lack of an OSX driver isn't a loss. I wrote a driver for it for FreeBSD (umct.c), and I can honestly say that the device is a smelly piece of poo. It drops charaters when switching bps rates, mis-marks its USB endpoints, and doesn't come even close to supporting real RS-232 line discipline.
      I originally bought it for my wife's TiBook with the intent of writing an OSX driver for it, but I'm not going to bother anymore. I'd suggest looking elsewhere. It's sad
      • Ah well. Thanks for the info. I'm not surprised to hear it's buggy on a hardware level. I didn't mention, but the keyspan equivalent can be found on ebay for 10 bucks or less, quite often. They update their drivers all the time.

      • Speaking of...

        Do you know of a USBSerial dongle that is actually GOOD? I have problems with my belkin piece of crap all the time.. I have to reset the com port so that it starts receiving every byte that comes in, etc... Don't even get me started on how the bastard device supports (or rather doesnt) power management. I am looking for port-powered if possible but using an external power supply will work also if it's simply the only way to get a good device...
        • Keyspan's USA-19QW works a treat on OS X, Classic (within OS X) and Win98SE.

          The only annoying thing is the "You unplugged the device while an application was using it" pop-up if you're using it with Palm Hotsync and you unplug the dongle. Normal applications that actually close the device when they're done won't have this problem.

    • I have an HP laser printer and I purchased thier piece of garbage Parallel to USB printer adaptor. The thing was very buggy for OS 9, and they haven't done shit with OS X. Almost as bad as UMAX and their horrible scanners.
  • Whats the big deal? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by neverkevin ( 601884 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @07:02PM (#7342700) Homepage
    I don't see what the big deal is? This add-on isn't a "pro" add-on. Transfering 128megs in 6 mins sounds reasonable to me, that was about how long it takes to transfer the data off via the USB on my camera. It is a $100 add-on, what did you expect?
    • by gsfprez ( 27403 )
      the big deal is that it IS a pro add-on. Why would you spend $99 if you were an "average" user? You wouldn't.

      And even so - you could buy 6 128 meg CF cards for the price of this lame reader...

      ripping out a CF card and copying its contents to an iPod because you ran out of space is a PRO thing to do... average users will just either jam in their other 128 meg card or they will stop taking pictures.

      the reader is $100. Most "average" cameras are about $200. That seems already to be out of range in price
      • by Johnny Mnemonic ( 176043 ) <mdinsmore@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @09:09PM (#7343629) Homepage Journal

        Ok, enough. I'm in the market for this, even after reading your muddled commentary. I spent $700 for my camera, because I like the features that that quality of camera added. Which means, incidentally, that I fill up my CF cards faster than a cheap camera, because my pics tend to be higher res, and therefore the pics take more memory.

        So--when I travel to distant and exotic lands on vacations of a few weeks, I would still much rather take an iPod with this adapter and dump photos from a 256M card, than have to take an iBook and find places to charge it.

        If it means that every 2-3 days, when I've filled up a 256M card, that it takes me 30 mins to upload to my iPod--yeah, I'm happy to do it. And I'll buy the adapter to do it with. I would still rather do that than carry my iBook through the hinterlands of Russia and Turkey.

        So get over your damn self. Sorry the product didn't work for you. I still think it'll work for some people. Reporting the facts w/o sarcasm would have made for a better case. As it is, it seems like you're bent on convincing everyone else that this product will also suck for them, regardless if their needs are not your own.
        • With such long transfer periods, how long do you think the battery of your iPod will last?

          • Well, it gets 10 hours when playing music, so I would expect at least that. But this requires much less power than music playing, so probably a lot more. 10 hours would provide 20 transfers; twice as many would be 40 transfers. And then I maybe need to charge it, once. So I don't think that'll be an issue, either.
            • The iPod runs for 10 hours because it has a 32MB buffer that it fills. The iPod then stops the hard drive and waits until the buffer needs to be refilled. Copying photos from a memory card to the iPod won't have the same benefits. The hard drive will run while the import is happening and you'll have reduced battery. I'd guess it'd be 5 hours maximum.
      • This is not a pro add-on. I am an average user and I don't think $99 is unreasonable, so don't tell me what I would or would not do. Please get off your high horse. Something like this would be perfect for a vacation, I could take as many pictures as I liked (with my $250 camera no less) and not have to carry around a dozen CF cards or bring my laptop. I don't know why you think only pros would run out of space or want to copy stuff to their ipod, looking at the reaction of other on /. not many other agree
        • You can buy one spare 512MB CompactFlash card for the price of this reader. If you're not a pro user, chances are you won't need more than that (you probably won't even need that much at all).

          It's only when the media you require becomes more expensive or bulky than the media reader itself, that the media reader would be beneficial. And I'm sorry, if you are taking that many photos, or of a high enough quality, that an extra 512MB card is not enough for your vacation, then you simply are not an average us
          • It may not make sense for the average user, however that doesn't make it a "pro" device. I would consider buying it if I had a new gen iPod. From what the Belkin rep said in the article it sure seemed like they are targeting average users. Belkin always targets the average user with their products, they do not have a high end or pro line of product. Sure, you could arugue that it is a product with out a big market (and it doesn't have one) but you posted gsfprez's comments about it being a poor "pro" devic
  • by Snuffub ( 173401 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @07:06PM (#7342740) Homepage
    The whole point of the belkin reader is that you dont need a computer (which the $14 flash reader requires) so if im shooting with my digital camera out somewhere where I dont have a laptop handy I dont have to stop taking pictures when my card fills up.
  • Dudes Relax (Score:2, Insightful)

    Most people who have 1 gig cards have at least two. While your downloading the one you just filled up and can be shooting with the empty one.

    As most programmers/developers know it is hard to balance the needs of ones users. For some the speed issue is a big deal, for most it is a slight inconvenience. If you have an iPod spending $100 for the convenience of a digital wallet is a lot better then spending another $600 and a dedicated/fast digital wallet. But is you have money to burn and you can't figure
  • iPod woes (Score:4, Funny)

    by nacturation ( 646836 ) <nacturation&gmail,com> on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @07:23PM (#7342917) Journal
    I think the submitter had this in mind:

    I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you iPod fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of an iPod (30GB) for about 22 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to my iPod. 22 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this iPod, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

    In addition, during this file transfer, songs will not play. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even the backlight is straining to keep up as I type this.

    I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on this iPod, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen an iPod that has run faster than other music players, despite the iPod's faster chip architecture. My Vic 20 with 16KB of ram runs faster than this iPod at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the iPod is a "superior" music player.

    iPod addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use an iPod over other faster, cheaper, more stable players.

    • My music seems to play at normal speed on my iPod. :)
    • Oh, this is so, so funny! I wish I had some mod points. Well done!
    • For once, this is actually funny.
    • Well, I haven't had my iPod for that long, and I wouldn't consider myself a rabid iPod fan. I think it's a nice player. I wish I would get a bit more use out of it after spending so much money on it. I guess it was a fairly frivolous expenditure.

      Anyway, to make a long story short, there is clearly something wrong with your setup. I have no such delay when copying files to the iPod. Yes, music doesn't play while copying, but since it happens in a few seconds for any reasonable size file, i never figured it
  • by node 3 ( 115640 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @07:24PM (#7342933)
    Assuming I buy one, this is how I plan to use it.

    I'll have two cheap memory cards (either 128MB or 256MB), and when I fill one, I'll put it into the iPod adaptor and start the transfer while using the other card in my camera. That should be about 10 minutes to load a full 256MB card. I don't expect I will fill the other 256MB card that fast (if I do, then I *really* worry about how fast I'll fill my computer's HD at over 1GB/hour!).

    The real benefit here is I can take my camera on vacation, or just out and about, and not have to carry around my notebook. This is a *huge* benefit. Couple that with only needing two memory cards (even two 128MB cards will be enough), and this is looking real handy *and* cost saving (I already have an iPod).

    The drawbacks? It's not instantaneous and it takes batteries. Not a huge problem, and if it's something that can be done better, someone will. If not, I'm still better off than I was before.

    I don't understand the sarcasm of the story's submitter. Sounds like the guy has issues. I bet he doesn't have an iPod or he'd see that Belkin has put to market something that can add to the utility of his iPod, if he wants it. If he doesn't want it, he's no worse off than he was before and he still has an iPod.
    • no offense... but you can buy 3 256 meg cards for the price of this reader.

      my "issue" is that the biggest audience for this is pro users who want a quick easy way to dump their 512 and larger cards on the run... and that Belkin said it happened at "Firewire speeds".

      300kb sec is not "Firewire speeds" on anyones planet. Its not even USB 1 speed.
      • by node 3 ( 115640 ) on Thursday October 30, 2003 @01:01AM (#7345022)
        I took "Firewire speeds" to mean the speed the iPod will sync the photos to the computer. There's no flash memory fast enough to keep up with FireWire (that I'm aware of). Do you expect the USB 2.0 flash drives to transfer data at 480mbps?

        There's no way the biggest audience is the pro user. The pool of potential buyers are iPod owners who also own digital cameras and have a Mac. The device has reduced battery life when used with a microdrive and doesn't even support MemoryStick Pro. It's clearly not targeted at the pro market, but the iLife consumer. Belkin is offering them, for $100, the ability to completely stop worrying about running out of flash memory at their friend's birthday party, at the beach, on the slopes, etc.

        You have the tone of someone who never really considered buying one, but enjoys taking arms against Evil Corporations(tm). If you were a pro who thought this was a pro quality device, you'd just pass up on it after seeing its limitations and go buy another 3GB microdrive. If you were the target consumer, you'd not really complain because for it's lack of speed, it's still better than what you already have, and it might even be worth $100 to you. If you are a "prosumer", well you should be used to the frustration of prosumer digicam equipment which is rarely pro quality or consumer priced.

        You didn't submit a review of the device giving it the thumbs down for speed, you spat venom at Belkin and did it in such a way that leaves the reader confused about almost everything except the fact that you seem to be upset.
        • A 3GB microdrive doesn't compete with a 40GB iPod for photo storage. I have a Canon EOS Digital Rebel and had planned to buy this since I can only fit about 30 pictures on a 128MB CF card. If the transfers are as slow as they say, I'm definitely not a customer.
      • How much is this tied to the speed of the storage medium? I'm talking the secure digital, smartmedia, compact flash, memory stick, etc. I ask because I've recently been looking into getting another digital camera and Sandisk (probably others, too) now sell an "Ultra II" compactflash card that has sustained read/write speeds somewhere in the vicinity of 10MB/s - which is phenomenally faster than standard compactflash. At this point, is the Belkin reader the bottleneck or would it support the max speed of the
  • I am a professional photographer who shoots digital and I am often in remote/poor areas. I either have to lug a laptop (thief magnet) along in a backpack or carry a digital wallet (MindStor 20gb) that is old and from a company that went out of business.
    I was real excited about this reader because it was the one thing keeping me from buying an iPod. This slowness, however, is a deal killer for me. I have heaps of flash cards but I still like to back everything up as soon as a card fills (and I don't use huge
  • by gsfprez ( 27403 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @10:46PM (#7344257)
    This device is a "firewire device", yet it operates at slower than USB 1 speeds.

    You wouldn't put up with that if it was a USB 2 device operating at 300 kbps, would you?

    On the Apple Store's webpage, it clearly and openly says..

    "Using software support that's built into your iPod (iPod software version 2.1 or later), transfer your pictures quickly via FireWire technology and you're ready to start shooting again. "

    A reasonable person would assume that such a device would operate at such speeds. Or do we all quickly forget the 1st gen pre-Oxford 911 based IDE hard drive cases that were horribly slow and never mentioned that they couldn't possibly give you back even the the bandwidth of IDE, let alone Firewire. MacAlly got hammered in the press and by their customers over that whole debachle - as well they should have.

    A reasonable person purchasing this product would assume that "transferring pictures quickly via Firewire" would not mean - "transfers slower than USB 1 devices".

    "My issue" is that this $99 "Firewire technology" reader gets its ass handed to it by a $14 USB 1 device. That's unreasonable.

    If they (Belkin and Apple on their store page) were to point out "while this uses Firewire, it does not transfer ANYWHERE near Firewire speeds, and in fact, its slower than USB 1", then there would be no "issue"
    • Your 'issue' (Score:4, Insightful)

      by thatguywhoiam ( 524290 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @11:49PM (#7344608)
      This device is a "firewire device", yet it operates at slower than USB 1 speeds.... rant rant rant rant

      Just chill out for a sec and listen.

      Yes, the iPod,/i> is a FireWire device. The card-reader is NOT. The issue is not FireWire. It has nothing whatsoever to do with FireWire. It has to do with how Belkin has implemented this card-reading tech.

      I mean, it sounds a tad slow to me too, but a 128MB card in 6 minutes.. on a portable device that has an 8-hour battery.. is not a big deal. It's still way more convenient than lugging around a laptop.

      By the way, it sounds like you've got an axe to grind about FireWire though. I'll give you a bit of advice; its okay to hate a plug. The plug doesn't hate you. Move on to other plugs if you hate that one.

      • By the way, it sounds like you've got an axe to grind about FireWire though.

        Did you USE any of the early FireWire to IDE bridges?

        You'd have an axe to grind too; the OP was very clear about the pre-Oxford911 chipset bridges. They sucked. They sucked camels through soda straws. They were slow; they would crash the whole bus; they would not work with each other for no apparent reason. Total crap.

    • Well, to be fair it isn't bait and switch [reference.com], their advertizing is just misleading. They say it is quick (which is relative) and it uses firewire but they don't quote any actual speeds (hell, their website says it not even for sale yet). It is a good thing most decent stores have a 30 day return policy so you are not stuck with hardware that doesn't live up to expectations.
  • X-Drive (Score:2, Insightful)

    by GoRK ( 10018 )
    Damnit people, you can get devices that do this better and faster than repurposing your damn walkman to do it!

    I have an iPod and $99 for this big bulky media reader junk is just stupid. I currently use some off-brand (sigma is maybe the brand name, i think..) device that has a compactflash port and takes a 2.5" HDD. It dumps out the cards to the HDD at 5-10MB/s and sometimes a little faster with microdrives.. It was about $200 including a 30GB drive. When I need to get the files off of it, it's got a slick
  • $300 full-speed "pro" version coming in 5-4-3-2-1

    Yes, I'm being sarcastic...
  • I was interested when I saw the Belkin reader, and I'm still interested. Sure, I'd love to see it perform a little better, but the device would serve me reasonably well the way it is. I carry a compact 3.2mp camera and two or three CF cards. I've already got an iPod, so the Belkin reader would make it really easy to dump the cards onto a device that I already own, and avoid toting my PowerBook with me when I take a trip. So, yes, let's be honest here... when I'm using my digital Elph, a $99 CF reader that w
  • Another idea (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Equuleus42 ( 723 )
    Slightly offtopic, but how's about a Gameboy classic emulator for the iPod? It would need an adapter for the dock port, but the screen resolution is about the same (160x128 for the iPod, vs. 160x144 for the original Gameboy). Then you could have it disable the music channel that the game uses, and replace it with your own music... Hmm! Even better would be the ability to store your games on the iPod, and be able to select them from the built-in menu. The only problem I immediately see is that the contr
  • My main problem is that they wont add Memory Stick Pro support to this thing. Sony only makes the 256MB and higher cards in that format so I'm SOL to be able to use this toy. Then I agree that they need to fix the file transfer issue. Couldn't they also make it run off the iPod's battery? I'd much rather have than with a really small reader as opposed to this big thing that takes 4 AA batteries. I've written them vial email to add these features but they basically come back saying "we have no plans to ever
  • Here's a hint: it's not the iPod. This technology is basically a point to point firewire link, and it's obvious that they've used a rather poor chip to handle this process. The iPod, the flash media and the transfer medium( firewire) all have the ability to transfer at higher speeds than this setup is acheiving. The only thing slowing it down is the point to point bridge chip they must be using.

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