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Lexar Professional Series 8 GB 300x UDMA CompactFlash Memory Card CF8GB-300-381 Description:

300X high-speed CompactFlash card * 45MB per second minimum sustained write capability * 8GB card stores up to 2,200 12-megapixel JPEG digital photos depending on your digital camera’s settings *

• Brand: Lexar
• Model: CF8GB-300-381
• Format: CD
• Dimensions: 1.50″ h x 5.00″ w x 6.00″ l, 1.00 pounds

Features

• 300X high-speed CompactFlash card
• 45MB per second minimum sustained write capability
• 8GB card stores up to 2,200 12-megapixel JPEG digital photos depending on your digital camera’s settings

Customer Reviews:

Excellent speed if used with a UDMA-capable card reader
I bought the Lexar 8 GB UDMA card to use in a Canon 5D Mark II, which writes very large (20MB) files when you shoot in RAW mode (which I do). The place where I see an advantage is in downloading these large files to my computer.

Mated to a UDMA card reader, the card transfers about 72 files a minute or a bit better than one per second. My old SanDisk Extreme III card in a non-UDMA-enabled reader takes about 3-4 times longer. And of course if you have a camera that writes large files, 8GB gives you some headroom when you’re out taking large number of photos — it can take about 240 RAW images on my camera.

There’s also an advantage to a high speed card like this if you shoot continuously with this type of camera, since files will be written more quickly with a fast card. If you have a UDMA-enabled camera and shoot often in continuous mode, this may be a worthwhile purchase for you. If you have a need for lots of capacity with any camera and you have or buy a UDMA-enabled card reader, this card will speed up file transfer very significantly. In my experience Lexar makes very reliable cards that do not have compatibility issues with major brands of digital SLRs.

Hardcore Card
Here’s my story —

At the end of a shoot it began to pour down raining, so I ran to my car and drove home. When I got home, I realized I lost my Lexar 8GB card and the only place it could be was somewhere in the park where the shoot was held. The next morning I went to the park to look for it. Fortunately, I was able to find it in the parking lot. It had been raining pretty hard all night and I was afraid that the water had damaged the card and I would have lost over 400 photos. Needless to say that the card was unharmed and I’m still using the Lexar as my primary card today.

From now on, the only cards I buy will be Lexar Professional.

Fast for now
This card is so fast and so well suited to the Sony Alpha 700, that I set the camera to shoot JPEGs at high speed and use it to make movies!
If you buy from Amazon affiliate Adorama (B&H too) in 2008 and by a certain date, there is an $[...] rebate on this card.
Being a “pro” card simply means it is fast and more durable.
If you never ever shoot sports or animals, get the 8GB 133x CF on sale or if they have a rebate on that, and save some money.

WACOM CTE450S Sliver Bamboo Fun Tablet with Pen, Mouse And Graphics Software New!, NOT REFUB Description:

Now there’s a simple, easy, and fun way to harness your creativity. Bamboo Fun makes your computer your canvas, allowing you to freely express yourself by simply touching the pen tip to the tablet. Touch up digital photos, draw by hand, create artwork and paintings, and even write in your own handwriting. Bamboo Fun includes full editions of valuable creative software to help get your creative juices flowing. Edit photos with Adobe Photoshop Elements, create artwork with Corel Painter Essentials, and apply photo effects with Nik Color Efex Pro. Bamboo Fun works with any software, and is the perfect mate to those software applications with special features and tools that are designed to be used with a pen. Tablet Size - 8.4 W x 7.3 D x 0.3 H , active area is 5.8 W x 3.7 D****************What’s in the Box::Bamboo Fun pen tablet, Bamboo Fun mouse, Bamboo Fun pen , Pen stand ,USB cable, Quick start guide , Installation CD (includes tablet driver and electronic user manual), Software DVD that includes: Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 Win/4.0 Mac, Corel Painter Essentials 4.0, and Nik Color Efex Pro 2.0 GE , Package of 3 replacement pen nibs

• Amazon Sales Rank: #274 in Consumer Electronics
• Color: Black
• Brand: Wacom
• Model: CTE450S
• Dimensions: 7.60″ h x .50″ w x 8.40″ l, .77 pounds

Features

• Package contains pen tablet and pen, mouse, pen stand, package of 3 replacement pen nibs, USB cable, software DVD, and more
• Great for digital drawing and painting, touching up photos, or writing in your own personal script
• 512 levels of pressure sensitivity to more accurately mimic physical drawing
• Compatible with all major software
• Works with both Windows and Mac operating systems

Customer Reviews:

Great pad, great features, better than the new Bamboo!
I just got my CTE450K today. It’s sold as refurbished but appeared to be brand new to me. It works great! I recently got the latest Bamboo pen tablet and decided to get this one, too, to compare the features and performance (we have more than one computer).

Features this has that the latest Bamboo pen doesn’t:

- The mouse. I’ve read negative comments about the mouse before. I don’t know what they mean. I like the mouse a lot. It’s comfortable, precise, and it lets me share the same space for the tablet and mouse (more convenient than using a separate conventional mouse).

- The eraser end of the pen. This lets you flip the pen over to erase instead of having to choose the eraser tool in your program and then choose your drawing tool again. Nice to have!

- The touch ring: this lets you scroll and zoom with your finger. It works well, but it’s not a huge deal to me.

- The programmable buttons: I really like having buttons to program keystrokes and functions for quick access.

- The included software: this Bamboo Fun includes Photoshop Elements and Painter Essentials (and more). With the latest Bamboo, you get one or the other, depending which model you order.

The tablet works very well, just like the latest Bamboo. The latest Bamboo has a few less features to lower the price (I assume). This previous version has all the features and originally sold at a higher price. But with these refurbished ones, you get the extra features and actually pay less than for the latest Bamboo! I highly recommend these as the way to go compared to the latest Bamboo pen.

(Note: the latest Bamboo comes in versions that support finger touch in addition to the pen functionality. I didn’t get one of those, as it didn’t seem worth the higher price for what I was going to do with it (artwork and photo editing). My recommendation of this version over the latest applies to the pen-only versions of the latest Bamboo. If you want finger touch (including multi-touch), you’ll want to go with the latest (and pay more).)

About the size: I debated quite a bit between pads with 4×6 active area and 6×8. This was before trying a tablet. Now that I’ve used the 4×6 tablets for a while, I’m quite sure it’s the perfect size. The 6×8 would have me moving my hand/arm much more than I’d prefer, and it would take up more desk space. There’s plenty of resolution in the 4×6 area for all the precision I’ll ever need.

Great product, great price! I love it, and my kids love it!

Pentastic
This is a great product and I’m extremely happy with mine. Just a few points that others haven’t touched on…

The first thing I’d like to address is what “refurbished” means, as there seems to be some confusion, based on the general tone of other reviews, as well as having talked to many people in my four or so years of working in retail electronics. It doesn’t mean that it was an old, used item that was collected out of the trash and dusted off. It just means that someone bought it and returned it, either for a minor defect or simply because they didn’t want it. Then the manufacturer fixed the defect (if any), and then tested the product to make sure it works (because they don’t want to see it again.)

In many ways a refurbished product can be BETTER than “new” because of the amount of care and testing that it goes through where a new product might not. They make sure it works because if it gets returned again as defective that’s a lot of money down the drain. In fact I think the only reason they sell them at a discount is simply because there’s a lot of stigma attached to the word “refurbished”. Their loss, your gain. A generally better than retail product for half the retail price.

So, on to the product…

I chose this model over the newest model because of all the features, like the programmable buttons, the touch wheel, and the mouse. They thought of everything with this model, from the way it can tell when you flip the pen over to use the eraser to the pen stand. Yes, the stand! It has a hole if you want it to hold the pen upright, but it also has a groove across the top if you want to lay the pen down sideways, which is one of those little details that makes Wacom great. I find I store mine upright, but when using the mouse or keyboard I lay it down because it’s quicker and the stand keeps it from rolling away.

Another thing I like is that you can set the pen to track like a tablet, where every point on the pad corresponds to a point on the screen (put the point of the pen in the upper-right corner of the pad and the cursor appears at the upper-right corner of the screen.) OR you can have it track like a mouse, where you drag across the pad, pick the pen up and move it, and then move it along the pad again and the cursor picks up where you left off, just like it would with a mouse or laptop touchpad.

In my preparations to buy one, I’ve seen a lot of reviews for these where people complain that it’s hard to do some everyday tasks, as if they bought it solely to replace their mouse, and I would argue that it’s not really want these are for. If you do use it to replace your mouse, I would change the tracking to “mouse style” and it should make things easier as the cursor will move smoothly rather than jumping around to specific spots on the screen. But keep in mind that generally these are intended for doing digital art and digital handwriting, not so much for moving files around and navigating the internet. Not saying it can’t be done, but don’t buy one and then be frustrated.

I can’t say enough good things about it, and certainly not much more than what others have said. I guarantee that if you’ve been doing digital art with just a mouse, this will instantly double or even triple the range of things you can do. It takes a little practice, but not much. It’s really not a whole lot different than using a pen or marker on a piece of paper, except you have infinite colors, infinite shapes, and infinite redos. =o)

Wacom CTE450K Tablet , a great deal and a great product!!!
My review is on this refurbished model in particular, and I must say its great. Looks new without a mark on it. I was really impressed, was a little concerned about a Factory Refurbished item, but I was pleasantly surprised. The Tablet works just like a very expensive CAD system tablet but at a fraction of the cost. My unit came packaged just like new and worked perfectly first time.

NeatDesk Desktop Scanner and Digital Filing System Product: NeatDesk Desktop Scanner and Digital Filing System Discount. List Price: $499.99 Amazon Price: $389.67 Click Here To See Amazon Sale Price Add to cart to see low price@ Availability: In Stock Usually ships in 24 Hours Free Shipping Available

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home or on the go. Key features: scan receipts for expense reports, digitize business cards, prep for taxes (IRS accepted!),

• Color: White
• Brand: NeatDesk
• Model: 00315
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP
• Format: CD-ROM
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 9.00″ h x 9.00″ w x 13.00″ l, 7.70 pounds

Features

• Desktop ADF scanner with unique paper input tray
• Faster scanning
• Proprietary industrial design

Great Concept But A Few Fatal Flaws
I purchased a NeatDesk scanner awhile ago to answer a growing need at home for more robust scanning. I’m one of those people that needs to have everything neatly filed away even though I will probably never see it again. I also religiously enter all my personal receipts and track my personal finances in detail. This seemed the perfect product to answer both needs.

I was used to the Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 that I have at work, but in addition to an arm they also wanted a leg. The price of the NeatDesk is substantially less (about 40% for what I paid), and the promotional material for the scanning software was really sexy. So I clicked buy.

After a few days, my conclusion is that although it could be an outstanding product with a couple of tweaks, it’s just not ready for primetime. This may be the case of a small company working on tight margins with a product that got too big too fast. It remains to be seen whether or not they can keep up with their new-found popularity.

Here’s the dirt:

Hardware:

Good Stuff
- Attractive design.
- You can click the hardware “Scan” button all day, but you don’t have to file your scans until you want to.

Bad Stuff
- No adjustable paper guide. Unless you hold it as it’s sucked in, every single document is crooked.
- Not enough paper support. Creased documents (like a bill) flop back and aren’t grabbed properly.
- I found the slot for receipts and documents to not match any receipt or document I had… Nice slot for business cards though.
- The output tray is not attached to the scanner body. Huh?
- It came with the grim spectre of having to clean and calibrate your scanner. You don’t have to clean or calibrate the ScanSnap, although the ScanSnap does include “consumables”, so maybe it’s a tie.

Software:

Good Stuff
- Recognizes dates, subtotal, sales tax, and credit card used. This alone almost makes the product an overall winner and definitely put it on top for scanning receipts.
- As mentioned above, you don’t have to file away your scans until you want to.
- Extremely fast search.
- It’s pretty–yeah, that’s important.

Bad Stuff
- Always takes the scan from the front but from the sheet in the back, which may be more intuitive for the beginner, but also means that a stack of double-sided sheets will go into the software backwards (page 2, 1, 4, 3, etc.) so you’ll have to sort your document before and after scanning. Maybe I just haven’t figured this one out, but it does seem like they emphasis multiple single-page documents vs. one multiple-page document.
* UPDATE: I figured out that you have to put the document in face up and everything is scanned in from the last page to the front. Your physical document will come out sorted, and the software will reverse the order of the scanned pages for you so the electronic document is correct.
- Does not auto-rotate to fix crooked problem caused by not having adjustable paper guides.
- Does not do auto-color detection–it’s either all black-and-white or all color and you must choose. Those “Scan” and “PDF” buttons on the front are great, but you have to go into the Quick Scan application to set up how everything will be scanned first, defeating the convenience.
- Viewing the documents that are in the library is difficult. Should have a simple hand-tool for dragging and allow multiple documents to be open at one time.
- Moving data around the library is laborious.
- Software installs SQL Server Express, which takes up system resources and at least for me causes the program to not want to start up (try again message a couple of times before starting). Sure the search results come back very quickly, but at what cost? As a developer, I actually already had SQL Server Express installed, but it went ahead and installed another instance… Not very nice.
- Lots of opportunities to categorize data, but searching for the categories is difficult. For example, to see what you marked for follow up click “Advanced Search”, click “Looking at…” and select “Action Type”, click “Selected in the List”, click and check box that says “Follow Up”. It’s more work finding out what’s marked “follow up” than to actually follow up.
- The heavy emphasis is on recording receipts for expenses that will be reimbursed by your employer or be tax deductible. So what happens when I have a pay stub for consulting work? I have to file it as a document where I can’t tag it’s dollar amount, can’t tag it as 1099 income, and it can’t be exported to Quicken. That’s one of the main reasons I got the scanner.
- Categories for receipts are very limited. Need a split? You’ll have to do it yourself when you get to Quicken if you can remember what the receipt was for. Sales tax is always exported as an over-generalized “State Tax”.

How it Could (Easily) be Made Great
- Package in or sell another paper guide that is adjustable. You can use the same snap-in style that is used for the receipt/business card guide.
- Add one inch to the pull-out paper support.
- Update the software to take scans from the face down position first on double-sided scans. Take the scan from the face down position only in single-sided scans.
* UPDATE: Even though this way seems more intuitive to me, the way the software does it is okay (see update above).
- Add in auto-color detection and auto-rotate so that scans always come out right. If Neat Co can do awesome text-detection, they could do this.

Conclusion
Seems to be an innovative company so I’ll keep it in anticipation of at least the software updates.

Amazing Organization Tool
I went to the store looking for the Neat Receipts scanner, and I came across this new product. I could not be more happy for buying it! I had 4 years worth of credit card and bank statements piled up in boxes, and with this scanner system I was able to scan them and organize them on my computer in less than a day (I’m talking hundreds of pages).

I have absolutely no complaints on this (other than the price, which is high, but it is a new product and it will come down).

The scanner can read 2 sided documents and scan both sides, in color! And it does it fast.

It also reads receipts and business cards and extracts the information from them (such as what store the receipt is from, how much total was, how much tax was, date of transaction, etc…) The best part about this feature is that it lets you edit the information (sometimes necessary if the receipt was very worn or wrinkled.

The software is extremely easy to use and very powerful. A great feature about the scanner/software is that you can load a bunch of pages and start scanning them. While they scan you can work on filing other documents. Once the pages are scanned they go into a sort of “inbox” where they wait for you to look at them and decide where to file them.

The two sided, color scanning is great and very fast. Another convenient feature the program has is the ability to combine several pages into one document. All you do is click on the different pages while holding down control and click combine … and you have one file for a multi page document!

All the files you scan into the program are searchable, so you can enter a search term and it will bring up all the documents (or receipts or business cards, depending on which section you are searching in). Very handy to search back on when you bought something…

Another great feature for those that do not receive paper statements is the pdf import feature! If you get your statements from online, you can still import the file into the program (as if you had scanned it in yourself) and have the searchable capabilites of the other files.

Keep in mind, this is probably not a good scanner to scan pictures with, but for a document scanner, it is fast, and very good. I just hope it lasts the wear and tear I’m subjecting it to right now. I am very thankful that this product has helped me get rid of all of my paper clutter!!!

Pretty Good!! Just some little issues and the cost.
I am a stickler for detail and this scanner brought this! Purchased it a couple of days ago and started to the scan in the documents. It was pretty quick on all sizes to include long receipts and long paper documents. You can manually push the button(s) on the scanner (I preferred this) or click on the scan button in the Neatworks or Quickscan software.

Nice color (I wish it was more color variations maybe piano black).

Now the bad (not real bad). The software is pretty robust, however between the scanner and the software, it could not read a color background with (lets say blue) and red letters, it would reject the receipt as a “blank”. Beyond that it scanned everything I through at it.

Neatco has a very detailed demos for most functions on their homesite, so if there was an issue with something I could not follow in the software, I went to the homepage and normally I could figure it out after watching a demo. The only thing I could not find from the demos was the location (I am using Vista) of the data files. I figured out how to do the backups, but I could not find the physical data… Neatco let me know!

Another issue though, it does not work with Microsoft Money. I hope in the near future they make this compatible with this software and that would complete close my filing issues out.

And last issue… The price is “little” high.

I can’t give a five star rating due to software/hardware issues/cost, overall though good fast “filing” of your data.

ASUS RT-N13U Wireless-N Router, Access Point, and Repeater Product: ASUS RT-N13U Wireless-N Router, Access Point, and Repeater-Retail $59.00! Sale Only $50.85! List Price: $59.00 Amazon Price: $50.85 Click Here To See Amazon Sale Price Add to cart to see low price@ Availability: In Stock Usually ships in 24 Hours Free Shipping Available

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ASUS RT-N13U- Wireless N Router with All-in-One Printer Server; Auto detect your internet connection type and manual free setup; Download Master: 24 hours downloading even PC is shut down; USB port for FTP/All-in-One Printer sharing; Universal repeater mode : extend your wireless signal coverage only by 3 steps

• Brand: Asus
• Model: RT-N13U
• Dimensions: 3.75″ h x 8.88″ w x 10.00″ l, 1.75 pounds

Features

• EZ All-inOne Printer Sharing - USB Port
• EZ Switch - Switch your operation mode only ONE-TOUCH (Router, Repeater, AP)
• Enchanced Download Master - Download your files directly to the USB HDD when the computer is off.
• 802.11b/g/n
• Diagnostic and Bandwidth Management Tools - Dr. Surf, EZQoS

For those looking for a cheap wireless N router + Print & FTP Server
For those looking for a cheap wireless N router + Print & FTP Server, this is an excellent buy!

I bought this router specifically with hope that it ‘might’ be able to do more than what it claims on the box, and it does, to some extent. Read on and you’ll find answers to your questions that any other reviews on the web aren’t able to tell you.

1. Can a USB hub be used to connect multiple peripherals to the router?
A. Yes, but with certain limitations. I have successfully connected a printer and a hard drive to the router via a usb hub, and both work flawlessly! Here’s what you do: plug in the usb hub to the router, then connect the hdd to the usb hub, set up your ftp server on the hdd, then connect the printer to the usb hub, and set up your printer. You will only see the printer show up in the router’s main page, but the ftp serve works fine. However, hooking up 2 printers will not work because the print command is directed ip-to-ip (your pc to the router) and pass on to the usb port. When you have a usb hub with multiple printers connected the print command will be pass on to every port on the hub. Sometimes printing will come out from the right printer that you want it to, but sometimes the command will get send to the other printer which may cause your printer to malfunction. I have two printers: a HP inkjet and a Samsung laser. It happened to me when I want to print from the Samsung but the command got sent to the HP, and HP will keep feeding paper and print out an error message on the corner until I force power-down the printer; same for the Samsung when a HP print command was sent to the Samsung it just kept printing errors until the machine overhead and power-off itself.

2. When connected to a HDD, it can only be set up as a FTP server, not a network drive.
What the differences you ask? On a network drive you can stream files directly from it, while an FTP you can only upload/download files but no running directly on the server. But simutenous access from multiple users are possible. That’s an advantage over the so called “netowrk shared usb” where only a single user are allowed to use the peripheral at a time.

3. This router has a hardware repeater mode switch, which I consider a big plus. It’s the transparent repeater mode, meaning it will receive and broadcast the same SSID of the network you’re repeating; as oppose to ’stealth’ repeater mode where you can set your own SSID and security for broadcast. Note that the network printer won’t work in the repeater mode ’cause the print command will be pass on to the someone else’s router (one that you’re repeating). The Asus router still maintain its own ip and subset which the network printer belongs to, but it’s hidden in the repeater mode. You can manually configure your pc to connect to it and you’ll be able to print, but you lose internet. Not sure about FTP serve in repeater mode. Haven’t try yet. The router has good range. I can receive Safeway’s wifi which is like 300m from my place.

4. The router itself looks good IMO. I like the hidden antenna design.

What else? Msg me if you still have a question regarding the router.

Fast reliable WIFI print Server with expansion options
I had no issues adding it to my home WLAN. Once configured, it has worked flawlessly. The instructions were easy to follow. I have 4 computers (all different brands, three XP and one Vista) on the network sharing this printer. Range has been excellant - the access point is located on the second floor and this print server is stored in the basement. Compatiblity has been excellant with the other manufacturers equipment (D-link and Netgear) in my network - no problems. True Asus is not as well known for WIFI equipment but does have an excellant track record in motherboards and netbooks. The product allows me to add a future remote NAS - in the basement.

OK as a Router, Otherwise Crap
I had very little trouble setting this device up as a router; it does a reasonable job in that regard. However, as a file or print server, it’s a piece of junk.

First I tried to set it up as a file server. It simply would not recognize my WD external drive that works perfectly in every other context. After several frustrating emails and calls to Asus tech support, they finally told me that only EXT2 and FAT16 devices are supported. If you assume that everyone lives in a Linux world, this might be a reasonable choice. But in the real world, a lot of people are going to want to use FAT32 or NTFS. So, as a file server, relatively useless.

Then I tried to set it up as a print server. My Brother MFC-420CN printer was recognized and the correct drivers were installed, no sweat. However it wouldn’t print and wouldn’t give up any useful error messages. I worked with 5-6 Asus tech support people on this issue and only one of them seemed to have the vaguest idea of how this router worked. After upgrading the firmware and downloading new drivers, one of the drivers (vuhub.sys) suddenly started crashing my system. It took a couple days to identify the source of the problem and figure out how to remove it. Again, I live in the real world; my system needs to be available all the time. Random BSODs are not acceptable. So, as a print server, useless.

Lastly, the knowledge level, availability, attitude, and follow-through of the Asus tech support people I dealt with was astonishingly poor.

If you want to buy this router for its router capabilities alone, go ahead. If you want it for the features supposedly offered by its USB port, look elsewhere.