December 25, 2009
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Christmas Gifts
Even though our family rule is: "If you can't eat it or drink it - or possibly wear it, Don't give it - we have too much stuff already", this Christmas my wife received one of those Insignia digital picture frames from her nephew.
I didn't think it was much, but found it came with a gig of memory and is very easy to access from a Mac (just plug in the included USB/mini cord and it appears on your desktop)
I just uploaded about 700 photos into it - using about half the memory - it will run for hours without repeating itself. She is very pleased. It's super easy to change,dump, and load new photos - I recommend it heartily.
What did Santa bring you for Christmas?
Comments (12)
my son got me one of those several years back and I liked it but now I tired of it and gave to a friend that doesn't have a computer so she can enjoy it.
Hope you and your wife had a good christmas and have a great new year! Hope you both have great health and many more good years ahead!
Jilly - These new frames are much improved over those that have been around a couple of years - they work with my computer just like a (rather stupid) HD but are very flexible and the photos can be very quickly dumped and replaced. My wife doesn't like to have to view photos on the computer and it's a task to hook it up to the TV - so this is a delight for her.
700 photos is a lot of pictures. Displaying each for 1 minute meand it will take 11 1/2 hours to make one complete cycle. One minute is not a very satisfying display, so setting it for a 5 minute display means a cycle time of 58 1/4 hours; 15 minutes means 175 hours before a new cycle begins. Hummm. Could take quite a while before you see them all. Hope you have plenty of your favorite beverage, some chips, and a comfortable chair. Uh, some nodoze would help too.
LOL
I set it for 10 seconds this time around. I just went back and edited the collection to eliminate duplicates - now down to about 650.
This frame comes with its own little remote so you can stop the display or go back or forward. One problem is that it displays jpgs alphabetically by title so unless you have them all coded into sub-groups, you get a strange mixture of subjects.
It is a fun gadget to mess with - providing you do the messing on your computer - the frame's adjustment programs are very slow but it accepts my computer's revisions quickly. You can leave it running for weeks on end and just glance every now and then, if you wish.
You can set it to change photos every 24 hours - that would, of course, take years to view all the photos if you have it fully loaded.
The frame is small (9" picture with photo displayed at 800X640 format) and has only one power cable - can be placed just about anywhere - need not be hooked up to anything. Plugs into the computer with a USB/mini USB cable (Provided) also accepts just about every size camera chip.
@tychecat - Alphabetic by title is indeed very strange. I don't believe I've ever heard of that mix before. There ought to be a way to tell the frame to display them in the order loaded or in a random sequence. But let's be honest now; do any of us really have 700 pictures that we consider worthy of being framed and on display in our home. Some family, some friends, some particularly good shots from vacation spots. Unless someon is a semi-professional shutter bug, I doubt that they have more than 100 (maybe 200) really worthy pictures. The rest are take it or leave it shots. So why load it up?
Susan, I just loaded a group of photos under a large file heading - FL -2000-09. This file contained about 12 files each with varying numbers of photos. When I moved these over from photoshop I gave each a descriptive title. I just downloaded the whole bunch into the digital frame which apparently collected them in one file according to alpha-numeric photo title. As I said the frame OS is a very rudimentary one.
The next group I load will be 1. coded, 2. more selective.
Incidentally, I have about 3800 slides, most of which I have digitized (quite a chore - done 4 at a time) as well as several hundred digital camera photos. I guess I am a semi-professional shutterbug. I really regretted giving up my many-lensed Minolta SLR for digital and am now using a Kodak Z712 IS which I find barely satisfactory - but certainly handier as far as accessing the results goes.
@tychecat - I eventually got tired of packing around several lens' of varying types, so when I went digital, I looked around for the most flexible lense I could find. I ended up with a Leica digital SLR capable of 12 megpixel resolution and having a non-changable lense with a built in 12X optical zoom (35mm to 450mm). And if that isn't enough, I can then add additional digital zoom. The camera takes the best pictures of any digital I've ever owned. I only wish I had a little more of a wideangle capability, but I didn't want to spend the money. Anyway, I'm quite please with the results I get, and no more extra equipment to lug around. Guess I'm just no a purist.
My next camera will be something like that - now all I need to do is think up an excuse.........
(I've tried dropping the Kodak - it just bounces)
Damn, i hate those digital frames! What's the point to suck more energy just for something that doesn't give anything more than a normal photo in a frame? That's just a waste of energy.
Well... sorry... maybe i was too strong eh?
Hi Dario;
My wife has been bugging me to print out a lot of the digital photos of the past ten years for her photo album. Now all i have to do is load them in the frame and she can browse to her heart's content.
:-/ i am not very comfortable to all that technology. Just try to imagine that electric energy will lack... say... just for one year. If we survive, for sure our memories, stored on chips that need to be refreshed with charged batteries every now and then, will be lost forever...
mmmmh... one could say we will never miss electricity in the future - i don't see it so much far the idea. Nowadays there are intere nations without electricity!