Customer Reviews

Iomega 31308 FotoShow Digital Image Center

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I purchased the Iomega Fotoshow when I purchased a new PC. I knew I wanted to get a digital camera eventually, but I wanted a ZIP drive immediately. At first, I used this exclusively as a ZIP drive attached to my PC and it worked like a charm. No better or worse than other ZIP drives I have owned, so it is certainly not worth the price if that is all you intend to use it for.

When I purchased my digial camera, the Fotoshow's extra features proved to be very useful. I just pop my compactflash card and a ZIP disk into the Fotoshow and press one button to copy my photos onto the ZIP disk. Piece of cake! I can see this being a really handy tool if you go on vacation and want to dump your photos onto a disk and don't have access to a PC. The fotoshow is not that tiny, but smaller than a laptop or desktop computer would be to carry with you when you travel. And, at 100 or 250 MB disks, you don't need many disks to tore your images.

Another great feature of the Fotoshow is the ability to connect the it to a television (through a coaxial or RCA connection, cables included). Using this feature, you can selectively copy the contents of your memory card onto a Zip disk, perform some basic touch-ups on the photos (like removing red-eye and cropping), or you can give a slide show presentation through your television! All this through a small remote control! What is also nice is that you can give a slide show presentation of images on your ZIP disk as well. So, your presentation can be from images generated anywhere, no just your digital camera. Very, very cool!

I do have some complaints about the Fotoshow that prevent me from giving it a 5 star rating. 1) If it is plugged into a PC and you are using it as a ZIP drive, you cannot read or copy from your memory card. Only if your computer is off or the Fotoshow is disconnected can you copy images to a ZIP disk. No big deal, really. 2) Also, a feature I would REALLY like would be to have the ability to give a slide presentation on a COMPUTER screen directly from a memory card, but alas you can only view a slide show through a television.

If you travel with a digital camera, I recommend the FotoShow. You can use 100 or 250 MegaByte zip disks to store your photos on the road. This will free up your expensive flashcards or MicroDrives for more pictures! You can also hook it to a television to review your photos, though I find that you need to either go through a VCR or else use a a converter kit (available at consumer electronics stores) to hook up to most televisions. Despite this, I find my FotoShow useful on the road for storing of photographs from a recent trip. If you are like me, and inflict photos of your travels on the few remaining friends you haven't alienated with this practice, the FotoShow is a good way to do it. I find the "zoom" feature is particularly useful when doing this, you can zoom in on selected parts of the image. You also have the ability to do some modest photo editing (rotating, redeye removal, lightening/darkening) with just the FotoShow and a television. Finally, you can hook it to your computer and use it as a conventional zip drive. I do have a few quibbles that keep me from giving FotoShow five stars--You need a small converter to hook into most televisions directly. I had a bit of trouble copying photos at first, till I figured out a couple of tricks. And I dread losing the remote control, since none of the imaging controls are duplicated on the device itself! To my knowledge, FotoShow will not work on non-US televisions, though you can use it to back up pictures anywhere, even without a television. Finally, (though this isn't really a fault of the device) Zip Disks are a bit pricey. According to the manual, FotoShow works best with 250 MegaByte Zip Disks, use of 100s will make disk access slower.

As someone who shoots a lot of digital images and edits and organizes them in various software programs (Photoshop, Image Expert, etc.) I bought the Fotoshow primarily as a means to display pre-edited slideshows on tv screens to friends and associates. Technically, the machine works great: Great quality images, smooth transitions, easy to use. My quibbles: The unit's firmware has a default setting to display photos according to the file date. This means slideshows you have meticulously edited and arranged on a PC program will come out extremely scrambled on the ZIP slideshow. The ONLY way to change the order is to go through and click and drag them around on the TV screen with the remote control -- unbearably cumbersome compared to click and drag on a screen. The only other workaround for this is to resave all your image files on the computer, so they share the same file date, at which point they're displayed in order of file name. If you work with lots of images, this can take a long time, and it's a major hassle. Also: When you place images on a ZIP disk and load them up for the first time, the Fotoshow must imprint each with its video encoding. This takes about 5 seconds per photo -- which can leave you staring at a "please wait" screen for an hour or more if you have a slideshow with several hundred fotos. Only happens the first time you view each pic, but a major hassle. Overall: A firmware/software update giving users some flexibility -- and especially the ability to organize images through the PC, before plugging into the tv -- would make this an absolutely ideal device.

I bought FotoShow to take with me on an international trip, figuring that zip disks would be cheaper than buying a few 128MB compact flash cards for my digital camera. When I got it, it turned out to be VERY big for traveling. It's a large unit with a heavy power supply, which is not what I had in mind.

The alternative was something like a digital wallet; smaller footprint (I assume) and one disk to hold lots of 128MB downloads. However, a digital wallet won't let you view the pictures unless you have a PC with you.

Having said that, it does seem to work well when viewing pictures on a TV. It has good resolution and useful features. The remote control is lousy, though. Cryptic buttons and cumbersome menus that I never seem to be able to remember without help from the manual.

Note: I have not yet been overseas with FotoShow. I am assuming it will work where I'm going, but an earlier review said that it's incompatible with foreign TVs. I'll find out soon, I guess...

Feature 1. USB zip drive.
Feature 2. Compact Flash/Smart Media to zip drive transfers.
Feature 3. Television Display of Images.

The biggest reason I got this was the ability to dump my compact flash card to disk. A 20 gig hard drive digital wallet would be
nice but, its about 3 times the cost.

I plan on going to Australia from the US, and did not want to lug by laptop with me. I bought it for this reason alone, although since it was a ZIP drive as well that gave me extra incentive.

I tested it this weekend on both smart media and CF flash and it worked perfect.

Copy of 38 images off smart media took less than a minute. It seemed the same for compact flash.

Retrieving the images from the Zip drive to a computer was efficient. The photos are under a folder called originals.

Hooking it up to your TV and having it display is simple, it just takes a bit of time to process NEW images.

The TV display is so so. SOme of the editing capabilities are nice, but a bit cumbersome.

It was a big plus to display the images on the TV for my wife and parents.

AS a sample of the usefulenss. A friend had about 150 pictures on A CD of my daughter playing baskeball. I copied the images from the CD to the zip drive, (when it was hooked up to my computer of course). I brought the unit to "grandma's" house. Hooked it up to the TV turned it on, and it took about 15 minutes to "process" the picutres. After that we had a nice slide show....

I think grandma is going to buy one......

The only minor issue I had is

The AC power adapter is only 110 60 cycle. Most digital products these days the AC power adapter is 110/220 60/50 cycle. I have a UNIVERSAL power adapter so I should be OK.

It have nice resolution, but the transfer time to Zip drives are extremely slow!, it take about 30min to transfer a 128mb Compact Flash to a 250M ZIP drive.

This would be a great product if they added one thing - decent picture quality when you view it on TV. I compared the exact same images viewed with the Fotoshow and with my Sony Camera -- both through the TV. The difference in quality was huge. For some reason, much of the resolution of a good photo is lost when viewed on TV. Since that's its main feature, I had to give this a low rating.

The Fotoshow is a great device although there are some issues with it:
1) The disk that came with mine was bad so the drive kept clicking and clicking and wouldn't work. Luckily I bought some others that worked.
2) The machine doesn't read your original image file each time it displays it. The first time it sees a new file on the disk, it stores a highly compressed version of that image that it uses for each subsequent access. This causes a major delay each time you load a bunch of new images on the disk (as it creates the low res images), but speeds things up big time after that first time. The fact that it displays this low quality version of the file is why some people complain about the quality of the display- I find the quality to be more than satisfactory- it's on a TV anyway. It even lets you zoom in, etc. Note that the editing features obviously do save to your original image file.
3) The interface is a little confusing- the default view is not full screen which drives me nuts to have to keep selecting full screen over and over.
4) I don't know why the power adapter weighs like 5 pounds- it's ridiculous.
Overall it's a fun device that helps you archive your photos on zip disks and also bore your friends and family with slideshows.
The sound effects can be quite entertaining too.

I got the Fotoshow mainly to serve as a zip drive and as extra storage for my digital camera when I go on vacations. As a zip drive, it works as expected. It's nice to have the option to take it with me as additional storage for my digital camera. I thought of going with a digital wallet, but the thought of carrying (and dropping) a harddrive with all my pictures in it worries me.

There are a few things that I think would make the Fotoshow better.

1. The card slots are useless when the Fotoshow is connected to the computer via USB cable. It would be nice to be able to use the Fotoshow as a card reader.

2. The power transformer is big and heavy. It should be smaller and lighter for travel.

3. Option for battery/portable power.

4. Faster operation when using the TV.

Overall, I like the Fotoshow. I would like it better if Iomega would fix the items above.

I needed a zip drive for school projects. (Computer graphics using Photoshop, Flash and Director, so they're way to large for regular disks.) I also have a digital camera.

For a couple of bucks more than a 250 meg zip drive it also gives me the ability to use my flash memory without having to find a computer to download the pictures that I take pictures of my friend's band for a website. On long weekends it really comes in handy, especially when we're traveling. And it's way cheaper than any digital wallet I've seen.

But I also did a lot of research before I bought it so I knew what I was getting.

I agree that the power adapter is really heavy, but I find I use the car adapter more than the power adapter on the road.