Saturday 11 June 2011

5 Things You Can Do With Flash Memory


Got flash memory cards? They aren’t only for your digital camera. Probably the coolest yet overlooked ways to use your flash memory card is as floppy drive replacement. Think about it, a flash memory card is really a form of storage disk.

Most notebook computers today don’t come with a floppy drive anymore. I’ve personally been in situations where I needed to share a file with someone and haven’t been able to because they handed me a floppy disk.

If you already own a card or a digital camera, chances are you already have the necessary equipment to read the card and transfer files to and from them. If you don’t it’s easy. Get yourself a flash memory card reader – they are so inexpensive these days you can even pick one up free after rebate if you watch the deals. Hookup it up to your computer and pop in the card. It will show up on your computer as a new drive. When you’re ready to save data to it, just drag and drop. It’s no different than a regular floppy or hard drive. Once you see in this light there is a whole bunch of things you can use your flash memory card for and here are 5 ideas for you.

1. Use as a greeting card. Hey there’s always an occasion around the corner. If you’re already thinking of sending a CD greeting card – use your flash memory card instead. With the large storage sizes you can afford to have multimedia in your ecards too and when that person gets tired of it, the card itself is a gift for their computing convenience. As if that wasn’t enough, you can probably get by with less postage too.


2. Use as media storage. One of the best things about flash memory cards is how much its small physical size can pack in. With memory sizes up to several Gigabytes, you could use it to store your media like video clips, picture clips, audio files and just about any downloadable content. Its small size also makes it highly portable without taking up valuable space on your notebook computer hard drive.

3. Sharing files or transferring files from one computer to another. If you need to do this often, here’s a quick tip. Carry with you a USB card reader. Many of them are very compact and no heavier than your cell phone. Doing this has advantages over carrying a flash memory drive. Flash memory cards are smaller and a tiny catalog of cards can offer you much more memory than a flash drive. Better carry two things than a bunch of drives.

4. Build yourself an ebook library. Are you a book worm? One tiny flash memory card can store a lot of ebooks since most text based files are smaller than media files. You can store whole libraries of ebooks in various topics either on one card or dedicate one for each topic you are interested in. Again, they are easy to share and very portable – you’ll never run out of reading material again even when on the road.

5. Run small software from it. Yes, there are tiny software that don’t need to be installed and can run from the card itself. This is particularly helpful when you’re using someone else’s computer. Now you can carry your software with you too.

Now that you know – gather up those flash memory cards and start using them. Just because your new camera isn’t compatible with it doesn’t mean you should let it go to waste and the best part is, you won’t have to worry about obsolete cards anymore.

A Guide To Buying A Digital Camera Equipment


How to Buy Digital Camera Equipment 

There are so many digital cameras that it can be confusing trying to buy digital camera equipment. Here are some tips to help you decide which the best choice is for you and buy digital camera equipment that you will get the best results with:

• The first step before you buy digital camera equipment is to set a basic budget on how much money you want to spend. You do need to be realistic about the fact you won't be able to get the best of every feature, as you may have to make tradeoffs when you actually buy digital camera equipment.

• Your experience level has to have a big influence in your decision to buy digital camera equipment. There is no point in buying too much buy digital camera equipment than you can actually use. For a novice you should buy digital camera equipment that is point and shoot so that you don’t have to worry about manually changing any settings. Digital zoom is not as important a part in the process of choosing to buy digital camera equipment as you may first think. Basically it just means that the camera crops the picture and gives you the center piece of it. You do not need to buy digital camera equipment that does this as you can do it better yourself after you take the picture. You can usually move closer to the subject anyway and to buy digital camera equipment that includes an optical zoom can add a lot of unnecessary cost and weight to the camera. Of course, expert photographers will want to buy digital camera equipment that gives them more manual control over the exposure process.

• Next you need to consider what you will use your camera to capture before you set out to buy digital camera equipment. A fast shutter speed is necessary for moving subjects. You can also buy digital camera equipment that has special features to enable you to take multiple pictures in quick succession for high-action pictures.

• There are a number of helpful websites that give reviews on photographic products to help you decide on the best camera for your needs before you buy digital camera equipment. Of course, you can also ask friends and family about their digital camera choices. Price comparison websites are also essential to help you to buy digital camera equipment at the best possible prices. Remember that when you buy digital camera equipment there are often a list of extras that you may want to purchase, including batteries and memory cards.

Don't be tempted to go for a trendy-looking, colorful camera if you really want to buy a less cool looking one that does more of what you want. Make sure that you have got as many of the features that you wanted to have in the first place and haven't compromised too much on them for the sake of a few extra dollars. It is important to ensure that you buy digital camera equipment that you are happy with and enables you to take the photographs that you want.