Gizmo

This product is a bundle of gizmos and not one single product.

It's an external 4 GB DrivePak hard drive, a Compact Flash (CF) card reader, a 32 MB CF card and MGI PhotoSuite III photo editing software in one box.

The kit's various pieces help manage digital images from a digital camera. The 4 GB drive plugs into a USB port on the back of a Windows computer. The idea is that instead of taking up valuable hard drive space in your computer, you keep all your photos separately on this removable drive.

The CF Card goes into your camera and can be used to store pictures as they are snapped. (Most cameras come with an 8 or 16 MB card.) The CF reader also plugs into your computer's USB port, so that you pop the CF card out of the camera and into the reader.

The reader can be used to move the pictures onto the computer or onto the DrivePak hard drive. This all works very well except for one minor glitch. The drivers for the DrivePak unit seem to be buggy.

So Windows 98 users will have trouble installing it. I tried it on two Windows 98 computers with no luck.

However it works just fine on computers with Windows 2000. It's a great bundle of gizmos stymied by poor software engineering. It's a real shame.

Price: $300 Canadian / $199 US
More info: http://www.simpletech.com
Buy it: In Canada, at White Knight, call 1-800-668-3381 or CompuSmart, call 1-250-382-3475 or www.compusmart.com. In the U.S., at PC Connection at www.pcconnection.com or call 1-800-800-5555.