Review: Lexar Shoot-n-Sync SD Memory Card
Wirelessly Transfer Your Digital Photos
January 8, 2009 By Grant ClauserLoading pictures from your digital camera to your computer and then onto your online place of choice can suck all the fun out of taking pictures. If you take a lot pictures, the process can be time consuming as you find yourself sitting in front of your computer watching the little status indicator poke along. If your computer doesn't have a built-in card slot you have to search for your card reader and hope you have an available USB port. If your computer does have a card reader that works, then you still need to pry open the card slot on your camera and risk damaging the card each time you handle it. Maybe I'm a bit lazy, but for all of the above, I really like the Lexar Shoot-n-Sync Wi-Fi memory card I've been playing with lately.
The Lexar Shoot-n-Sync is essentially a re-branded Eye-Fi card. Lexar now licenses the technology from Eye-Fi. The card is a standard SD camera card (2 GB in this case) with a built-in Wi-Fi radio. Yup, they've put a whole Wi-Fi device on the tiny camera card while still leaving room for your pictures. This turns any digital camera into a Wi-Fi enabled camera so you can wirelessly transfer your photos to your computer.
The device requires a minimum of steps to get it set up. It comes with a USB card reader (in case you don't already have one). The first time you insert the card in your PC it installs the Eye-Fi Manager software. You then have to configure the software by syncing it to your wireless network and creating a password. Then you can select what folder you want the card to send your pictures to as well as what online photo site where you'd like them automatically sent (the PC does the uploading, not the camera, so you can't send pictures online without syncing with a PC--or Mac). There are about 20 online services Eye-Fi works with including flicker, shutterfy, facebook and snapfish. I selected facebook.
Once that's all done, just put the card in the camera. You'll see the Eye-Fi manager identify your camera, then you're ready to shoot. After shooting a few pictures I placed the camera, powered on, near my computer. The card automatically began sending my pictures to the computer. The software also sent them to my facebook page without me having to do anything. All the uploads where organized by date. Photos uploaded to facebook aren't immediately available for viewing by visitors--you have to go to your photo albums and select or delete. This way you can avoid accidentally sending something embarrassing to the Web before you have a chance to delete it.
