Nikon MSV-01 Coolwalker 30GB Digital Storage Photo Viewer

If you just want to copy your images from your CF cards and later to you computer it is good. Battery life is short, you can't copy 25gb on one charge...

Nikon does not support your copying files from your PC to it.

Does not even what to hear about copying files from your Mac to it.

They do not support files retouched from ANY application, ever Nikon Editor.

Only wants you to:

Copy images from your CF Card to it and off to your computer.

Reformatting your CF Cards.

Reviewing images taken off your cards.

It is not ment to be used as a image storage device or to use for a portable digital portfolio. I use my Photo iPod for that... Try giving the consumer what they want Nikon.

I bought a Nikon D50 after comparing the quality to the D70. The D50 though uses a SD card instead of the Compact Flash card mostly for making the D50 smaller and lighter than the D70. Anyhow, I still wanted a Coolwalker... as I'm going to be using the Nikon Raw Format most of the time... for you newbies that's an uncompressed file (the D70 compresses RAWweird) that's about 4 times larger than a 3008x2000 Jpeg. The Coolwalker has 30 Gig of space... so I treat it like a junk drive with a view screen. THe kicker was that the D50 DOESN'T use the Compact Flash Card and that's the only thing the Coolwalker uses. So I found the "Archos" brand (google it) 4-1 CF adapter. Another writer in this column didn't specify which name brand he bought... but the Archos is what you want. It works GREAT in my coolwalker. I use it EXACTLY as specified in the Coolwalker directions... inserting the card WITH the SD card already in the CFA into the Coolwalker BEFORE powering the Coolwalker up. It works GREAT. I might say that I "DO" follow the Coolwalker instructions and ONLY USE an approved SD Card. That might be the problem the other writer mentions when talking about a CFA. With it's big colorful screen and 30 GIG drive it's ALOT cheaper than buying 30 GIG worth of SD or CF cards! It's a no brainer.

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I got mine today very nice. Reads a 4 GB Microdive quickly. Great display, far better than the FlashTrax. Transferred all my photos to it, have room to spare. Direct printing is a plus!

Glad I bought it./

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First of all, I love this when used with my Nikon Coolpix 880, which uses a CF card. However, God help us, my wife has a Kodak EasyShare camera which uses an SD card.

Reading the description, I see that "It's also compatible with CompactFlash and Microdrive and can be combined with a CF adapter to enable use of SD cards too.".

So, no problemo, eh??

Not so fast!! First of all, I couldn't find a CF Adapter anywhere on Amazon. The way they throw out the above sentence, almost as an afterthought, had me thinking these cards would be easy to find.

After an hour Googling "CF adapter" I found a "4-in-1 adapter" that supposedly lets you plug in an SD card into this thing. Well, physically this does work, but crashes the Coolwalker if it is powered up with the card in place. IF you insert the card into the powered-up CoolWalker (something I'm not all that comfortable with doing on a regular basis!) it will transfer the photos on the SD to the CoolWalker.

These files will NOT PLAY on the Coolwalker, but I've found that they will transfer to my computer, apparently none the worse for wear, and will display there.

I guess this doesn't make me feel all that comfortable with this whole system as my wife and I get ready to take an anniversary cruise this fall, with her EasyShare in tow.

It does work with the Nikon CF card, but I'd be leery of compatiblity with other systems.

Jim

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I purchased this item with a hi-res camera, and it was a lifesaver on long shoots. The ability to back up my images immediately gave me real peace of mind, and the thing really worked as advertised. Although it would freeze every now and then, I never lost any images--the only drawback was that you had to remove the battery to restart it, as it stopped responding to all button inputs.

This morining, as I was preparing for a 5-day shoot, I turned it on to delete any old images and recharge it, and the screen was completely dead. Plugged into my PC via USB, it all still shows up, but I was totally depending on it for this upcoming weekend, and I have been totally let down. I have no choice but to try to navigate it in the dark, unless they want to overnight one to my hotel.