Customer Reviews

Kodak Easyshare Picture Viewer

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I bought this for my husband before we embarked on our first vacation without our son, knowing that he'd be going nuts without all his photos (at least!). Unfortunately the version of EasyShare software it was packaged with when I got it was not the version it needed to work - so I didnt have time to get it working before we left. A call to customer service when we got home was all that I needed though - the right software was available as a free download from the website. It was only frustrating because nothing in the package indicated that was the problem, or that an update was needed.

That said, once I got it working and loaded all of his favorite pictures on it, my husband has not let it out of his sight. He loves having it to look at on the bus to and from work, or to be able to show people pictures whereever he is. I may end up getting another one for me.

Just bought this one at C.C. and it will be $50 after rebate. It is a slick little unit but loading pics to the internal memory sounds like a lot more trouble then its worth. You can simply drag & drop pics to an SD card (using a card reader) and pop it in the slot and your pictures are immediately viewable. BUT, this expandability feature is somewhat wasted because there does not appear to be any way to organize your photos. I had 3 separate 'folders' on the SD card but the viewer just finds all the pictures and ignores the existance of folders. Therefore, if you want to store 500 photos on your SD card and organize them into numerous folders, forget it. This viewer will show all 500 and you will have to scan from number 1 to 500. The 9 picture multi display can speed things up a bit in order to get to picture #250 but its too bad that they couldn't support some type of quicker navigation. If anyone finds any tricks to get around this, please let me know but it looks like you will need to keep your picture count at a small level.
One more thing that is a little disappointing is the file name feature limits the display to 8 characters!!! This goes back to the dark days of DOS. Hard to believe in this day and age especially since this device has 32 meg built in.
UPDATE - 11.21.05
I went to Kodak's website and got the latest version of EASYSHARE software since I believe it is the only way to transfer pics to the internal memory. I think they better rename this software because in no way is it easy. I tried the install on my desktop and laptop and it failed in both cases. I went to their site and got their 'fixit' software to correct the problem and still no luck!
I still feel this little unit has some potential (at the right price) but don't count on using the internal memory. Just use an SD card. It really is too bad that they couldn't simply make it like any other flashdrive product and have it instantly recognized by Windows as a drive. They probably wanted to force you to use their buggie software. Hey, maybe they will release a firmware update in the near future to remedy this.

This is great replacment for carrying around a Grandma's (or Mom's Aunt's..you get it)Brag Book or packets of 4 x 6 photos. It's small and compact (fits easily into a pocket or purse), has a slideshow feature, and in multi-photo mode allows you to select an individual photo to view from what's available on that screen (but not from all photos). I asked for this for Christmas, but my husband wouldn't buy it due to some of the negative reviews posted here (software issues). I really wanted it, so I bought it for myself and had no trouble with the setup and download of pictures from my Computer.

I don't own a Kodak Easy-Share camera or printer, so don't be put off by the title that it's only for use with either one.

It's a stand alone digital picture viewer that's very easy to use! It's nice that you can use it with your Kodak printer if you have one, but I don't want to carry around photos, so it's fine with me.

One small drawback..when you slide the viewer into the case (provided) you can accidentally turn it on when you put it away...slide it in backwards to avoid this.

Wow! If it wasn't for the great people who had written reviews and shared their pain and solutions in this forum, I would not have this neat device working. I can only confirm that you NEED the software upgrade from the Kodak site and the Kodak instructions are totally worthless. My only mistake in the software install was to not accept all defaults. I had configured the software to only transfer photos, but not synchronize. I don't know what the 'synchronize' actually does, but if you don't have this setting, the software thinks the photo viewer is a camera and only tries to download pictures from it, instead of transferring pictures from your PC to the device.

I do not consider myself a novice with software and computers, but this install tied me up for 3 hours, and that was AFTER I read all of the great info in the previous reviews. If I had accepted all of the software defaults, I would have been done in 20 minutes.

In the end, it's a pretty cool device for the price. At the same time, it has limited intelligence and puts all pictures in a single album. This makes it almost worthless for storing lots of pictures. There is no way to organize the pictures in the device, so you have to scan through each one until you find the desired photo.

The picture is small, but there is a 2X magnify feature so that you can see the picture details. After you add pictures from your hard drive to the software, you must as a second step then tag each picture as a `favorite'. Only pictures that are tagged as `favorites' are transferred to the device.

I would have rated the viewer higher, but the instructions were very minimal. Although there is a CD to view a more extensive manual. The manual doesn't explain that the software that comes in the package (4.04) needs to be updated to the new version available online through Kodak.com. In order to download the the newer version you must register first. In order to transfer images to the viewer, you must open the Kodak program and then select 'Add Pictures'. You will need to select from the folders where your pictures are presently contained. After the pictures are placed in 'Album(s)' in the Kodak program, each picture must be tagged a favorite. This is done by selecting each picture, right click and the select 'Tag as favorite'. I did not find an easier way than selecting each picture individually. When it is time to transfer the images, you must connect the viewer via the USB cable. My viewer has transferred the pictures automatically, but you can change it to manual mode (I have not tried changing the default). I inserted a 32MB SD card in the viewer and was able to load 245 pictures. The viewer did get warm from viewing all 245 images. I purchased this for my wife so she can have her favorite images of the kids handy since all our pictures are on the computer since we bought a digital camera (about four years worth). I was thinking of buying the Spectare keychain viewer, but the images are too small and only holds up to 56 photos and doesn't have an expansion slot. The images on the Kodak viewer look alot better on the 2.5 inch LCD. You can also zoom in on individual images. I just bought this so I can not rate the durability or reliablity of the product. My only negative experience so far has been trying to get it to work without sufficient instructions.

Just returned from a trip to China. Shared with friends using my memory card--then, transferred best images to the internal memory. Easy to use. Love the size and id of device. Also, shared the trip with others by docking the viewer on my camera dock and displaying the slide show on TV.

Aside from the difficult time I have had with this product, I feel that is it very important for you to know before purchasing it that the rechargeable battery inside cannot be replaced. So, when it wears out, as they all eventually do, you throw this device away.

Personally, I am not in the habit of throwing out things I have spent $80 on.

I, too, have been unable to load pix into the internal memory. When I called Kodak's support line for help the person answering the phone was compleely unaware of the product. His final answer why it didn't work was incompatibility with my Mac Computer - v. 10.3. Our 2 kodak digital cameras work fine, seems odd the technologies would part ways here.

It's nifty and I was so looking forward to it. Oh well.

I purchased this when it first came out and I am embarrassed to say that I paid $150.00 for it. I have a love/hate relationship with it. I purchased it in June 2005 and it is currently being repaired at Kodak and has been for over eight weeks now.

I too had the wrong version of the software when I purchased it. After many calls to Kodak they finally figured out what I was talking about. They kept insisting that it was a camera. I downloaded the new software and worked my way through it and was doing fine when the viewer decided to no longer download photos into it.

Not only do you have to use the software provided (no drag and drop) but you also have to keep a file of the photos in another file on your computer. I use my pictures to load my photos from my camera. Then I use the easy share software to select the photos I want to download and make them favorites. If I then delete the photo from my photos, the software can no longer find the photo.

I am looking forward to getting it back from Kodak but I am not optimistic. In the meantime I bought an IRiver media player to hold my photos and it works beautifully.

The idea of this little unit filled with pictures of grand kids and beeing a wonderful holiday guift was appealing. However try as I would I could not make use of the devices internal memory. Down loading pictures direclty from the PC proved to be inpossable, and the instructions were lacking in any significant detail. The device acted as if the internal memory was write protected. It was not until I read other reviews that I realized the software needed to be updated. Downloading pictures to an SD card proved to be a good work around. It surprizes me that Windows drag and drop file transfer was not supported and the supplied software is not intitutive. The size and clairity of the picture are very good. The case is nice but it is dificult to get the unit out without turning it on. The power switch is in a bad place and can be inadvertantly turned on when trying to remove the unit from the case. A great little unit for the price. That is my story and I am sticking to it.

I was neve able to get pictures into the machine as per their instructons, I got around that by getting a memory card and loading the pictures directly into that, then inserting the card in the viewer, thus increasing the capacity as well.