Customer Reviews

Portable Innovation Technology PIT MemPlug SmartMedia Adaptor Memory Card Springboard Module

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I've owned my MEMPLUG for almost five months now and it just keeps getting better? How? The program PiDirect expands the usefulness of MEMPLUG. I had quickly run out of room on my 8 meg Visor Prism. Adding the MEMPLUG and a 64 Meg SmartMedia card, initially just increased my storage capacity but was cheaper than buying a 16 Meg internal ram upgrade. Then PiDirect was released in June 2001. The curtain lifted and the stage came alive with the abundance of programs I wanted to carry and easily access on my Visor Prism. There is still a fairly steep learning curve to using PiDirect, but nothing beats it for utility, stability, and price. It has a minimal drain on battery power when compared to Compact Flash cards. The Manufacturer, PIT, is the most responsive author of software out there with a tremendous customer service team that answers questions and troubleshoots around the clock, 24 hours a day. I never waited longer than 1/2 day to get a response to an email (usually within an hour). And, they upgrade rapidly in response to validated "bugs" and the practical "wishlists" submitted by customers. If you have a Visor with only 8 or even 16 Meg ram, you'll love this product.

I highly recommend this product, but not straight out of the box. Out of the box you get a good product. A product that allows you to use smart media (or compart flash with another model) to view docs, photos, and back up you palm (to ease concerns of the dreading the possible hard reset). The programs that come with MemPlug to allow you to do this are more plentiful than any of the other modules in its league that I know of. What these programs are I will not belabor here (go to memplug.com for more details).

The product out of the box, however, does not earn it a 5/5. When PiDirect is purchased (about $10 currently), however, is when MemPlug comes to life. With my 128 smart media card I now run over 20 MB of games and over 80 MB of medical software. PiDirect does this without flaw. Storing programs like SkyScapes Taber's Medical Dictionary, 5-Minute Clinical Consult, and DrDrugs on the smart media card (over 12 MB of info) and running it smoothly has made being a 3rd year medical student a lot easier and my pockets a lot smaller.

One mixed note, the products and software are still growing to address customer concerns/suggestions. This means that there is room for improvement, but Portable Innovations has been quick to address these comments and get updates out to registered users. If they stay true to their initial efforts this product and company will have a bright future. Also PiDirect is not currently compatible with visors running Palm OS 3.1, so visor delux and solo owners are can not take full advantage of MemPlug's potential. This concern, however, I do not believe will be long lived if they pursue OS 3.1 compatibility with the drive that they had to make it work with OS 3.5

I hope everyone enjoys it.

I cannot say enough good things about Portable Innovations and the MemPlug. I am a gadget geek without shame and have used Palm devices for many years. With the advent of PIDirect, the MemPlug represents the best value in an accessory that I have purchased.

I now have a Prism with 136mb capacity. I can store thousands of documents, hundreds of pictures, scores of applications and still have 70mb free.

The level of service and communication that I have experienced with PIT is unsurpassed. If you have a problem with the MemPlug, they will solve it, even if it means writing code. It is almost worth the price of the MemPlug just to for the pleasure of experiencing their excellent customer service.

In addition to the additional memory, the MemPlug has a backup app and gMovie, which allows you to run big movies directly from the card. If you have a digital camera, you can take the media out of the camera and slip it in the Prism to look at the pics.

If you are looking to expand the capacity of your Handspring unit, look no further.

I have an "old" Visor Deluxe. I ended up giving away my 8MB flash module when I got my MemPlug. I use Launcher III as my application launcher. It automatically recognizes the PRC files in a specific directory on the card. It works seamlessly and flawlessly for programs like games where no databases are involved. In fact, I have over 100 Palm games on a 16MB smart media card. The fact that I might have to move some database files to RAM in order to launch the game is not really an issue. Most of these wouldn't run from my flash module either. I have another card with 32MB of books and Bible translations on it. If I want to look something up, I don't have to wait until I get home to hotsync. I just stick in the card and copy it down.

The card *has* made me rethink how I use modules. It is less like floppy disk that you can read and write to and more like a CD-ROM...capable of huge amounts of data and capable of running directly off the CD in some circumstances. The amount of data I can now carry with me (80MB on 5 cards) is well worth the few seconds it takes to copy some data file down to the Visor Ram. And, as we have already seen, Palm developers are beginning to recognize the possibilities here and program for them. I would definately buy this again.

I wanted to load up my Visor with a bunch of books and my 8 MB memory module was full. The MemPlug for SmartMedia seemed like a good choice. I did not buy the SmartMedia card bundled with it, but looked for a better deal, as the cards are available everywhere... I downloaded the PI Direct for the ability to store applications on the SmartMedia. I had trouble creating directories and subdirectories, as I do not work in a computer related field and it was foreign to me. Portable Inovation's tech support by email responded promptly and after 3 or 4 emails I got it figured out. I then had a problem when I was moving files around and accidently put a copy of my Datebook Plus on the memory card. It caused me to get a warning that my memory was full, and then it would cause a soft-reset crash. I couldn't figure it, out so I emailed tech support again and they called me on the phone from Hong Kong, diagnosed the problem, and got me going again. That is pretty impressive tech support in my book. I have LOTS of applications, many photos, and more than 30 books and I still have more than 30 MB to spare. That is pretty amazing. I have only had the product about 3 weeks, but I am impressed so far, and would recommend it.

When I first got my MemPlug, I used it mainly to store files and for Backups, which worked very well with MemPlug's PiBackup. I could also run gMovie and read Docs via a special version of CSpotRun. Because of it's limited use, my main module was still the 16MB Hagiwara FlashCard.

However, the MemPlug's usefulness made a major leap when PiDirect was introduced. With it, I could now run almost any application right off a smartmedia card. I can even access any database stored on the card, databases that are many times larger than my internal RAM.

Currently, my TomeRaiders data alone is about 40 MB with the IMDB (12MB) and Encyclopedia (12MB) being the largest. Accessing these data was seamless and felt just a little slower than my 16MB.

This has made my Visor Prism a 128MB monster and with 256 MB cards coming soon...

PiDirect is a bargain at the intro price and compared to the 8MB and 16MB modules currently available. Also with memPlug comes installed application like gMovie 2.0 which supports sound and 4 other Pi software which works great. I have since put aside my 16 MB Hagiwara and is very happy I was an early adopter of this groundbreaking storage solution for the Palm platform.

After having my Handspring Visor Neo for a few months, I started to run out of space in the internal RAM. So I finally bought the MemPlug SmartMedia adapter and a 64 Meg card. Now almost all of my memory woes are finally gone.

The Memplug adapter fits into the springboard slot in the back of the unit. At most it adds about an ounce or two to the units total weight. It comes with several applications already loaded on the unit, including a file mover, photo application, and document reader. The document reader, CSpotRun, can access files that are stored on the memory card. This is what really sold me on the device. Since I like to carry around e-books on my Handspring, this will allow me to have more than two or three books available at any point in time.

One of the things that annoyed me about this device is the amount time that the applications that access the memory card take to load up. I understand this is probably because it is loading the file into memory. While it doesn't take that long, it is still annoying.

I also had one other minor problem. When I first started using the card it seemed to act strange at times. After a quick visit to the company's website, I downloaded a new driver for the unit and that cleared up everything.

In closing, the MemPlug SmartMedia adaptor is something that should be on the buy list for all Handspring users. It works well and does what it says. For the price, the ability to increase the memory available to your handheld is well worth it.

Ok... I would give this 4 stars, as it actually does require a bit of file manipulation, but i want to make up for the negative people below.

Basically, if you buy this, spend the extra money and buy a smart media reader for your pc. Then you can copy palm apps and documents directly to your smart media card, and thus the memplug.

It /does/ run apps directly from the memplug, using the recently released PiDirect. PiDirect is being sold seperately from their website for 19.99, but i think its 9.99 until october 1st 2001. It is worth every penny. It is also supported by Launcher III, which has a feature that will copy a program from the memplug and run it automatically. It's not as nice as PiDirect, but it's free.

I currently keep almost all my non-essential apps (read games, gizmos, etc) on the memplug, along with tons and tons of doc files and several pictures.

Like I said above, it introduces some file handling to the visor, and if you don't know what that means, this may not be for you. But if you are willing to put up with a little bit of file handling, you will find out how much fun it really is to have 40 megabytes of eBook with you at all times, and still 4mb free on your internal memory. :)

Highly reccommended.

This is an absolutely fantastic product. It does exactly what it advertises.In addition, it comes in Compact Flash Type 1 and Memory stick versions as well. My main issue with this product is its stability and compatibility. Having used it extensively for over 2 months, I have found that the product visibly slows down the operation of my visor. Taking it out, I found that the operation is much quicker. Secondly, having installed this module, I was unable to perform a soft reset without getting a "Fatal Exception" error each time, calling for a warm reset. Whilst installed, my network library was unaccessible. I tried to get rid of this any which way, remove hacks and all the normal procedures, but it simply will not go away. But mind you, using a 64 Mb SM card, I could put onto it several movies, heaps of photos, 3 Bibles, factbooks and dictionaries. It is truly an awesome product in that regard. However, this is offset by the fact of slower operation and more system crashes. To me, a Visor should be quick access device, with stability and reliability the most important issues. I now use normal flash memory. Although much more expensive and not as large in capacity, the operation is much more what I desire. Do I miss the movies, the Bibles and the dictionaries? Sure. But at the moment, I have installed 2 Bibles, 2 dictionaries, and still have room to spare. This product does push the limits the the Palm platform and it shows. If one is willingly to live with the limitations of this product, then it is the perfect companion to any Visor user.

The MemPlug may work just fine, with other visor models, but it needs Palm OS 3.5 if you want to run app's or access files directly from the module. The Visor Deluxe comes with Palm OS 3.1. You can still store stuff on the card, but you have to move apps or files back to RAM any time you want to use them. It makes retrieving data a slow and cumbersom process.