With the number of devices on the market today that requires portable memory, it's a shame not any one standard has been accepted. For the most part, CompactFlash (CF) is the most popular, but competing standards such as Secure Digital (SD) are also very popular… particularly among PDAs.
Most devices have the ability to transfer data to and from a PC using whatever connection they are equipped with. The problem with the multiple memory types though, is that if you have a PDA that uses SD, a digital camera that uses CF, and a Sony device that uses a memory stick, you'll have to hook up all these devices to your PC to transfer data. If you're lucky enough to have the free spots, you can certainly hook them all up the same time, but that means you'll have a lot of wire clutter. If you only have room for one device, it will just be time consuming to swap out devices when transferring data.
Memory readers are nothing new, but when it comes to memory, and the markets revolving around it, you can always count on to have their hand in things. They recently announced a new product, the , which as the name implies, has the ability to read and write to six different memory types. They actually have several readers available, but we chose to look at their top-of-the-line reader.
Specifications
Media Support:
Type I/II CompactFlash
SmartMedia
Secure Digital
MultiMediaCard
Memory Stick
IBM Microdrive
OS support:
Windows 98/98SE/ME
Windows 2000/XP
Mac OS 8.6/9/X
Interface:
Supports USB 1.1
Power Source:
USB Port
There isn't any mention of Windows 95 support, which to be honest, doesn't surprise me since Windows 95 didn't have native USB support. Windows NT is not supported either. There isn't any mention of Linux support on their site.
The package consists of the 6 in 1 card reader, one USB, a driver CD and an instruction guide. Sadly, the reader is only a USB1.1 device, which means we don't have the bandwidth of USB2.0 for file transfers. If you only got a 16MB to 64MB memory card, this probably isn't that big a deal, but 256MB cards will take forever if you have to move a couple hundred megabytes of data. In Crucial's defense, the majority of portable devices use USB1.1 anyways, so it's not like you're going to be "downgrading" yourself.
The card reader is designed to be portable, and considering it can read six different memory types, Crucial did a great job of packaging a product that is not only compact, but looks really sharp. With its soft curves, and silver finish, it will not look out of place even on Martha Stewart's desk. Then again, if her desk ends up in a prison cell, I guess it may not suit the décor.
Cards are inserted through the front of the device. There are only four slots available, but a couple serve dual memory types. There is one slot for Compact Flash/IBM Microdrives, one slot for Memory Sticks, one slot for SD/MMC cards, a slot for Smart Media Cards.
A bit of a surprise for me is the fact that the card reader requires no external power. I guess this shouldn't be much of a shock since memory cards don't draw much power, so the power supplied by the USB port is sufficient enough.
Turning on the drive is as easy as plugging it into an available USB slot. As soon as it turns on, all the slots in the drive are automatically enabled.
Each drive is assigned to a specific memory type. Unfortunently, in Windows Explorer, there is no way to differentiate between drives since there's no description. What you can do though is reassign the drive letters in such a way that you can make it easier for yourself to remember. Since I am only using CF memory for now, I chose to make it the highest drive letter not used by my hard drive partitions or optical drives.
Testing
Test Bed: Epox 8RDA+ nForce2: Athlon XP 2400+ provided by (15x133: 2.0GHz), 2 x 256MB Crucial PC2700 Ram, ATi Radeon 9700 Pro, 120GB Western Digital SE 8MB Cache, Windows XP SP1, nForce 2 Unified Driver Package 2.0, ATi Catalyst 3.2
As much as I would have liked to have tested with a half dozen memory types, I only have three CF cards. All the cards vary in size, so there's no real way to do an apples to apples speed test, so performance tests will be done as follows:
Synthetic Tests: SiSoft Sandra Disk Benchmark - Sandisk Ultra 256MB CF
Real World Tests:
Compact Flash - Kodak 32MB vs Crucial 64MB vs Sandisk Ultra 256MB - 31.4MB file transfer.
Media Testing: AVI and MP3 playback
Synthetic Tests
Synthetic tests were run with a blank Sandisk Ultra 256MB CF, with a standard Sandra 2003 file system benchmark.
Not much to say here than what isn't obvious. It's certainly faster than a Zip drive when it comes to copying files. I did a real world test with a parallel Zip and found this to be the case as well. If you have some extra memory cards, they would make a decent choice for some additional storage, though don't expect great performance.
Real World Tests
The real world test was done transfering 31.4MB worth of JPEG files. Using both a Kodak Camera Dock (with a Kodak DX3900 camera) and the Crucial 6 in 1 Card Reader, we timed the amount of time it took to transfer the images to the PC. We chose to use three different cards for this test just to see if there would be any odd numbers.
For the most part, both the camera dock, and the Crucial reader were neck and neck. This actually doesn't come as much of a surprise, since both devices are USB1.1. Although this isn't a CF review, it's worth it to note that the Sandisk Ultra leads the pack. I'm going to admit that this is a nice CF card, and the speed not only saves time, but it should also save battery power as images seem to save much quicker when I take them.
Media Testing
I loaded up a series of MP3s, and played them through Winamp 3.0. The MP3s played fine, though switching between tracks, there was a slight pop, and a bit of lag (about a half second). Playing the tracks off the hard drive didn't exhibit these problems.
I then copied a small 50MB MPEG-2 segment from WWE: RAW with the Rock and Hurricane (damn, those guys are funny together), and played it through Windows Media Player. The clip played fine, but fast forwarding, or rewinding resulted in an audio lag.
Final Words
The Crucial 6 in 1 reader rates right up there as one of the more useful products I've had a chance to tryout. Although I was limited with my memory selection, there's no reason why there would be any issues with any other memory types. Although I was very pleased with the product, a few things did bother me…
I don't really understand why Crucial chose to go with the USB1.1 interface, as opposed to USB2.0. I'm aware that small file transfers won't take long, but with the large memory cards gaining popularity, a faster interface would have been a nice addition.
I would have also liked to have seen a USB jack built into the front of the device. The reason for this is thumbdrives are another popular memory type, and along with the other six types they support, this would have really covered all the bases.
Convenience is the key here. Rather than plugging in a bunch of devices to read different memory cards, you now can use only one. For the sake of argument, if you own a digital camera, and it uses CF cards, you probably have a few cards kicking around. Naturally, one card will likely always be in your camera, but you can use your extra ones for portable storage. Then there are the digital cameras that need to run on battery power to transfer images to your PC. Not all cameras have docking stations, and others cannot operate with a power cable plugged in, so to save on battery power, just pop the card out, and into the reader.
Crucial set out to make an attractive and portable card reader, and they succeeded. Supporting six memory types, you can be comfortable knowing that whatever memory you may have, this reader can probably handle it.
Pros: Good memory support, attractive appearance, compact.
Cons: USB1.1, no extra USB jacks.
Bottom Line: It's a little expensive, selling at about 50$ US, but considering the overall package, and the typical Crucial quality, it is actually quite a bargain. If you have any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.
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