Eye-Fi Wireless Card

The Eye-Fi SD Card not only turns your digital camera into a wireless one, but it also saves you a few steps in the uploading process. The 2GB Eye-Fi provides a simple, reliable way to transfer your photos from your camera to your PC, photo-sharing site, or social networking page and does so automatically, so long as you're within range of your router. It's one of the coolest accessories we've seen in years, and it works like magic. We just wish it worked beyond your home network.

 

In the box, you get a 2GB SD Card, an SD Card reader for your PC, and a short instruction booklet. After installing the software (conveniently stored on the card) and creating a free account on Eye-Fi's Web site, you select a wireless connection and choose a destination for your uploaded photos (after your intial setup, you can sock the reader away and never use it again).

 

Up to 18 sites are available for uploading to, including Facebook, Flickr, and Photobucket, or you can use a folder on your hard drive. Although you can choose to upload to both a Web site and a folder on your PC, you can't designate two Web sites.

 

Your computer must be on if you want to upload to a folder, but if you want to upload to a photo-sharing site, all you have to do is power on your camera in the vicinity of your router. You can't upload photos when you're connected to public Wi-Fi, since many of these sites have initial splash screens. That's a bummer, especially because we're most likely to fill up our SD Cards when we're away from home. Eye-Fi doesn't work outside the U.S., either.

 

The transfer process is as easy as promised, although not as satisfying as you'd imagine. Uploading images directly to Flickr using an 802.11g notebook and a home router took about 45 seconds per picture. When we set the Eye-Fi to upload to our PC, it took 1 hour and 37 minutes. On other tests, however, uploading to the Web took just 15 seconds.

 

According to Eye-Fi, this variation in upload times is normal; the type of broadband connection and your distance from the router both affect speeds. One complaint: Because the camera doesn't have an interface that tells you photos are being transmitted, you're never quite sure when it's safe to turn your digicam off--unless you're watching your PC or your photo-sharing site of choice.

 

Although you can store any file format on the card, you can upload only JPEGS. On the other hand, we like that the Eye-Fi automatically resizes photos according to each site's standards. Before you begin the transfer process, be sure to disable your camera's power management, or else it's likely to turn off by default. If you forget to do this, Eye-Fi will pick up where it left off once you power on the camera again. We were pleased to see that leaving our Pentax Optio Z10 on for several minutes didn't put a dent in its battery life.

 

You have to log into Eye-Fi's Web site to change your upload settings. Moreover, not all the photo sharing sites allow you to adjust privacy settings through Eye-Fi Manager. Facebook, for instance, makes photos private by default, and you can't classify them differently until you log into the site. Flickr, on the other hand, asks you if you want to privatize photos uploaded through Eye-Fi.

 

Although the Eye-Fi is innovative, it leaves a bit to be desired. We wish it were faster, worked over a public Wi-Fi network, and let you upload more than one file type (and video for YouTube would be nice, too). Nevertheless, the concept is a brilliant one, especially for those who never get around to sharing pictures with friends. Its convenience is undeniable, and at $99 (about $50 more than a regular SD Card), it beats splurging on a Wi-Fi camera.

 

 

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