Review of Sony’s HDPS-M1 Portable Drive

[Suhit Gupta]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/sony-hdps-m1-review.html' target='_blank'>http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/sony-hdps-m1-review.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"I have been searching for a device that will allow me to dump the memory cards from my digital camera (Sony DSC-F828) since I bought it late last year. I have been using my laptop for this purpose, along with a card reader, cables, and USB 2.0 PC Card. Picture me squinting at my laptop screen in bright sunlight, copying and pasting the files from my memory cards onto the laptop hard drive. This was not an ideal solution (Julie has often listened to me whine about the inconvenience of it all). I wanted something simple that would fit in my camera bag and hold lots of pictures. Imagine my joy when Julie told me about the device pictured below."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/portadrive.jpg" /><br /><br />The portable drive is available for $320 and comes with a USB 2 interface, CF and Memory Stick slots and 40GB of space. It is compact although the battery life isn't too great. However, the real downer is the fact that it is only available in Japan. Apparently, you can contact Brando at the <a href="Brando at the Brando Workshop">Brando Workshop</a> to try and have them ship you one of these, but given that much of the writing on the buttons of the device are in English, it may be coming out in the US shortly. Read the article to find out more.

[Chris Gohlke]

While no doubt useful, it is a one trick pony. For all but the professional photographers, you probably don't need that much space during a trip where you are away from a computer. Money better spent on memory cards. A pro spending a long period of time in the field is probably going to bring a laptop anyway to work on the photos. So, who would be the target market to buy this? Now, build this feature into an MP3 or PVP device and you have something.

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Almost right, except that after I've seen the way some people shoot, I'm not sure (can you say 2k photos a day?).

Plus, never doubt Sony. I know people who bought their overpriced thumbdrives (for the price of one 128mb I can get two 256mb, and equally small as well) and have no qualms about it.

[sylvangale]

I'd have to agreee with Goldkey. Heck you don't even need a laptop...

An Ipod's hard drive can store your photo's with...

The Belkin Media Reader (Apple Store Link)
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?productLearnMore=T7418LL/A
http://images.apple.com/ipod/images/access_media_reader_1010200.jpg

[Chris Gohlke]

I'd have to agreee with Goldkey. Heck you don't even need a laptop...

An Ipod's hard drive can store your photo's with...

The Belkin Media Reader (Apple Store Link)
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?productLearnMore=T7418LL/A
http://images.apple.com/ipod/images/access_media_reader_1010200.jpg

I wish they made something like that for my Iriver.

[Suhit Gupta]

I wish they made something like that for my Iriver.
Me too. :(

But I diagree with you about the space. Lee is right. I am currently in Hawaii and I have already taken several hundred photos (and it has been less than two days). I know I am not going to keep them all but I want to save them all to prune later. But more importantly, I have seen people going crazy with their video cameras and I think this would be a great idea for such people, i.e. for large/long videos.

Suhit