iPod Adventures

Before the trip to Disneyland, I bought a Belkin iPod Media Reader. It's a device which attaches to the dock connector on new iPods, and allows you to copy the contents of various media cards (CompactFlash, in the case of my D70 camera) to an iPod. My plan was to move images from my camera's memory card onto the iPod, then delete them from the card, allowing me to take many more pictures than the 96 or so NEF files that the card can store. So instead of having to buy multiple cards, and stop photographing when I run out of them, I'd just fill up the iPod. With my current free capacity on my iPod, that gave me a headroom of 1200 photos. Never going to hit that on a single trip!

So I packed the iPod and it's power adapter, and the media reader, as well as my camera an it's battery charger. First day at Disneyland I filled the card up before noon, and stopped back at the hotel room to copy the images over. Plug things together, and the iPod says "no card inserted". Fiddle a bit, the card shows up. I push the button to start the copy, nothing happens. Push again. The "no card inserted" message reappears. Fiddle, fiddle. This goes on for ten minutes, until finally I get a copy started. It is slow. The connector is Firewire, but the transfer doesn't seem nearly up to that protocol's speed limit. Another gotcha: although the media reader uses AAA batteries, the iPod must still power it's hard disk for the copy (which I knew), and this puts a big drain on the iPod's built-in battery (which I didn't). By the end of the transfer, the iPod is ready for a recharge.

Every stinking time I needed to do a transfer at Disneyland, I had to go through the same drill. Fiddle, fiddle. Detach reader, reattach reader. Remove card, reinsert card. Reboot iPod to see if that helps (it doesn't). Eventually get a connection, begin the slow transfer. At the end, plug the iPod back in for a full recharge. Man, this sucks, I thought.

When I got back home, I resolved to hunt up the receipt and take the sucker back, at least for an exchange. This weekend I located all the relevant documentation, and set things up for a test run, so I could actually show the store how the device failed. It didn't. I tried several times, even taking it to a different location, and the card was recognized every time. It's still Godawful slow, and the iPod still chews through it's battery, but it works. So I'm keeping it, but am wary. We'll see on the Chatanooga trip if it continues to work.

So for anyone Googling on the Belkin iPod Media Reader, here is the summary:

• I experienced severe unreliability during one trip, fearing at several points that it would simply stop working and I would be left with a full memory card and no place to move the photos.


• Even after the reliability problems cleared up, it is slow.


• An unavoidable consequence of using it is to nearly drain the iPod battery when transferring large numbers of NEF files.


• This is the second unit I've had. The first one had a broken battery door. Their design has tiny locking tabs, and in the original unit they'd simply broken off (plastic, weak).

So caveat emptor, baby.