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60 of 67 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Design flaws make it hard to recommend., October 1, 2007
To start, to turn it on, the instruction manual says to push the power button "for a few seconds". I've never had it come on in fewer than 15 seconds, and it often takes 30 or more. That's 30 seconds of sitting there like an idiot holding your finger on the button, wondering if the thing is actually defective. Have you ever even HEARD of an electronic device taking that long? Would it kill them to install a simple on-off switch instead?
The 5 operating buttons on the back are identically shaped (except for the round power button). This makes it difficult to use since you have to look at the front of the screen and feel for the buttons, usually hitting the wrong one. You end up having to turn the frame over and back many times to go through the menu and make your selections. It's understandable that they'd put the buttons on the back, given it's intended use as a wall hanging, it just would have been more user friendly if they varied the size and shape of the buttons, or their location, so you could distinguish one from another without having to visually confirm it.
The manual says that you can download files directly from your PC to the photo frame using a (not supplied) USB cord and a somewhat fussy procedure. I tried this and it didn't work. I ended up downloading my picture files using the same compact flashcard reader I use to download the files from my camera to my PC, and then inserting the card into the photo frame. If you load directly from your camera to your PC you might have a problem.
So far, I haven't had the problem identified in one review of having the compact flash card fall through the opening to loosely rattle inside the device, but after reading that and checking the unit, the writer is right. It would be easy to do, and a major pain. You do have to be careful.
The menu gives you the options of randomly choosing picture files to display and whether or not to repeat them. It doesn't give you the option of viewing them in chronological or filename order. Because most cameras name photo files with a numbering system, you assume that the computer chip would default to showing them in that order. That's not how this device works. It may be a result of how the computer saves the files to the memory card, but it doesn't display the files in the order they appeared on your PC when you downloaded them. That may not be a problem in some cases, but will be in others.
Potential buyers should give some consideration to the orientation of the photo's they may display (portrait vs. landscape). By default, portrait oriented photo's are displayed in landscape format, greatly reducing their size and adding some distortion. The software allows portrait formatted photos to be changed to display in full screen, but it's an 8 step process requiring the aggravating back and forth motion described above and it often doesn't work. It's much easier to do it on your PC (a fact the manual points out). Mixing the two formats is not advised if you intend to hang the frame or display it on a table.
A related enhancement would be to give you the option of displaying all portrait oriented photo's and then the landscape oriented ones, although this would only be useful for hand held viewing. If you regularly mix the orientation of your photos, this might be an issue for you.
The MosaicView is hardly the " exciting new technology" lauded in the manual, but rather a minor obstacle most users will choose to ignore. After all, why pay a premium price to buy a photo frame with a larger screen, only to display images at a quarter of that size? MosaicView makes the orientation problem even worse because it packs 4 photos on the screen, which just squeezes and distorts the portrait files even more.
The stand that attaches to the frame is easy and convenient for landscape view, but a pain to convert to portrait. Instead of integrating that option into the design, you have to remove 4 teeny tiny screws, turn part of the stand platform, and then replace the screws. Unless you routinely carry a jewelers screwdriver, plan on at least a 10-minute job.
The power cord is 6 feet long, making it just long enough to reach from your average wall socket straight up the wall for an average height viewer. A few more feet would cost next to nothing and at least give you the option of trying to hide the cord behind a curtain or the woodwork as it works its way up your wall, or alternatively, to pass the frame from person to person while sitting in your living room.
After using this thing for a couple weeks, my biggest gripe is that I think the designers really missed the boat on what could be the best use of this product, which is as a hand held picture viewer. IMHO, what this country needs is an easy way to share digital pictures when you're not sitting at a computer. I'd hoped that I could use this as a replacement to prints in informal settings. I thought that at work, in a restaurant, or when I have friends over and want to pass around my latest vacation photo's, I'd be able to pass it from person to person, letting them advance each frame by pushing a button. While you can do that with practice, the power cord and button location makes this pretty inconvenient. If this thing was battery operated and had more user-friendly operating buttons, I think the market would recognize it as the final link in the digital loop, a convenient way to carry and show your digital photos.
For those that feel my criticism is misplaced because it focuses on a use not intended by the manufacturer, you're right. If all you want to do is hang this device on the wall and forget about it, these concerns probably won't be much of a drawback. To be fair, the screen delivers very acceptable sharpness at a resolution of 800 x 400 and the small size of the files required at that resolution mean you can pack a lot of pictures onto a pretty inexpensive memory card (one caveat noted below). That capacity is poorly matched to the software's navigation system however, which requires you to move through each picture one at a time if you want to save a picture to the internal memory (on the other hand, the manual gives no reason why you'd want to do that, so most people won't bother). In the final analysis, I think most users will want greater flexibility to use this device as a portable photo album. If that's important to you, you should think about waiting for the next generation.
One final note: For users of compact flash cards, a word of advice. The quality of the card makes a difference! I first tried an old Kodak 16MB card because it was large enough to handle the 200 pictures I wanted to view after I saved them to an 800 x 400 resolution, but I noticed distinct digital artifacts making squared lines in circle or wave patterns through what should've been a smooth transition of color in many pictures. At first I thought it was a reflection of the 800 x 400 screen resolution, but after switching to a 1GB Sandisk card, the problem went away. This probably goes for other types of memory cards as well.
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
pretty good large display price - not too user friendly, November 25, 2007
I haven't had the problems that many others who've reviewed this product have had. Basically, I just need a large size electronic display for my digital photos. As it is, I found it to be a decent option for the price.
I think size wise, it's very nice. I had a 7" frame which was too small to be seen properly from across the room. At 10", this one is quite visible. And, close up, the picture is bright and the resolution is good.
I do find the fact that the camera displays pictures in an odd order a little annoying. The buttons could definitely have been better designed. But, for just putting a few pictures on a memory card of some type and turning it on and forgetting about it, it's not bad.
When you read the other reviews, think about how much control you want. Are you looking for a decent priced, large electronic photo display, or do you need a sophisticated, user friendly media display device?
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Great when it works, July 31, 2007
We bought 4 of these frames for family members. Two of the four had problems with mosiac view freezing up after about 5 minutes. This occurred with both the internal memory and compact flash memory card. When the frame works it's great. We decided to return all 4 frames due to these problems.
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