Customer Reviews

Lexar Media USB SmartMedia Digital Film Reader (RW009001)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

In theory, this product would have been great for me. The interface through a drive letter is obviously nice. I have a toshiba digital camera and a boss audio sampler. However, when I put the card into the reader after taking a few pictures, and the software came up and said that there was an error reading it and would I like to format it. At this point, the card was completely erased and had to be reformatted, losing the pictures that it took. A *couple* of times it worked correctly, but I could not take the chance. I tried it with 3 brand new smartmedia cards of different sizes (16, 32, and 64MB) - I had less errors with the smaller cards, but that's annecdotal. I got in touch with a Lexar help person online, but they were not very helpful and we had connection problems for some reason. I guess the unit may have been defective and they were willing to have me send it in, but I just sent it back to amazon. I decided to get the viking reader that does compact flash and pcmcia cards as well. It [cost] more, but just got it today and it is working perfectly.

I purchased this smartmedia reader in a combo with my new FinePix 2800 Zoom camera (which comes with a FujiFilm 16MB smartmedia card). I have used the USB reader repeatedly with no problems, but have not yet tried other card sizes or different brands.

Setup was easy with Windows XP and did not require the included software for the drivers. My camera was bundled with the FinePixViewer software for downloading and minor editing of the pictures from my digital camera - but it also loads wonderfully from the Lexar card-reader, AND saves batteries! Overall, wonderful.

I bought this unit to replace a quirky and unreliable unit from Delkin that sometimes worked with a Mac, and never seemed to work at all with Windows.

And it works. Every time. What more could you ask for?

I bought this about two weeks ago, and I have yet to get it to work. I have two XPs, a 95 and two 98SEs and this sorry excuse for a peripheral cannot be read from ANY of these machines via USB. I even downloaded the latest driver from the lexar website. Actually, I say 'latest', but I should perhaps have said 'last'... for if you try and find this reader on their products page, it isn't to be found... why? Because it has been discontinued, that's why.

God only knows if this thing EVER worked (certainly, there were +ve reviews available), but I can only give my recommendation to give this thing a W-I-D-E berth and to spend your cash on a better manufacturer instead. I am very disappointed... it wasn't very expensive, and I certainly did not buy the cheapest, but I expected better things from Lexar...

I bought this card reader so I wouldn't have to fiddle around with cables every time I want to download pictures and so that it can go from an hour ordeal to a quick few minutes. This memory card reader works perfectly. I am running Windows XP Home Edition and have an Olympus D-460 ZOOM camera. I used a 16 MB Smart Media card also made by Olympus. In my informal tests I was able to download pictures several times faster as well as doing so without using any of the software that came with the camera. Also whenever I want to download pictures all I have to do is slide the memory card in then open the F drive. I would recomend this product to anyone with a old non-USB camera that would like to transfer pictures faster and with less hassel.

I use an Olympus D450, a 64MB Olympus Smart Media card, and an iMac with Mac OS 8.6. After downloading some free software from Apple to be able to recognize the reader (newer system software would eliminate this step) I plugged the Lexar reader in and in a split second, the card popped up on my desktop and I moved the the photos to my hard drive. I am impressed with this product.

I was tired of waiting for my 2+ year-old camera to download via serial cable to my PC. I was also tired of wasting battery life.

I bought the Lexar and plugged it in my PC's USB slot.

Navigate to the external drive in "My Computer"--it's that easy.

No headaches, no software or drivers to install (I'm running W2K)--what a great item! I shouldn't have waited so long to buy it.

If all you are looking for is a memory card reader so you don't have to connect your camera then this is it. However this reader is 3X SLOWER than the reader in my camera!!
My Olympus 4000 is 3x faster downloading the pictures than this reader is.
I'm using Win2k so there were no drivers to load for either device.

This SmartMedia reader worked fine a couple times. Then, after sitting unused for a month or so, did not work at all. Clearly, Lexar has no faith in the product, since they've discontinued it and offer no technical support for it. After this experience, I would be very reluctant to buy any other Lexar product.

I read four good reviews and one bad review, so I figured I probably wouldn't have any problems. Unfortunately, the one bad review was right on in my case. While this product would have been very useful, and I'm sure it works 4 times out of 5, if you're the fifth time then it is absolutely useless. Lexar Media's tech support even had this cool 24 hour online chat help, but when I actually used it they were not even remotely helpful, and just tried to ignore me until I went away. When I finally made them say something useful, they told me to return the product... So if you don't have any problems returning something if it doesn't work, then go ahead and take a shot, because when it does work everyone else seems to love it!