Home > Consumer Reviews > SimpleTech CompactFlash Reader (Mass Storage Compliant)

Oh, wow. In terms of devices that make me happy, this ranks way up there.

I bought this CF reader to use with my Canon Elph S200 digital camera. Although the Elph comes with software and cables to download via the USB port of my computer, and this CF reader also connects to the USB port, for some reason downloading via the CF reader is far, far faster. You plug the CF reader in, it shows up in Windows as a new drive letter, and you can access the files on your CF card (open them, copy them, delete them, etc) the same way you'd access files anywhere else on your computer, and just about as quickly.

You can also use the reader to transfer data between computers, any kind of data. I have one networked computer (with no CD-R or zip drive) and one non-networked computer. With this tool I was suddenly able to transfer up to 256M of data (the size of my CF memory card) from the networked computer to the non-networked one, easy as pie. Hallelujah!

The reader is very simple to install. On some operating systems you just plug it in and it goes. On others (like Windows 98) you have to go to the SimpleTech website, download a driver (6.5M for Win98), install it and then plug it in. Either way it was very quick.

Overall a very satisfying little tool.

The reason for why I bought this item was that I did not want to connect my camera always whenever I wanted to transfer pictures from my digital camera to my computer. Why? Just a bit more flexible at the same time as I spare the batteries of my camera, and for this price, I think it is worth it.

There are a lot of CF-readers on the market but this one I feel comes with a good price. Paying more for a thing like this would be a waste of money. I feel that as long as the functionality is the same, there is no need for spending more cash. This CF-reader is also very flexible since it allows you to detach the cable from the reader. If you have "easy to reach" USB connections you can connect the reader directly which in combination with usage on Windows 2000/XP (requires no special drivers) makes it a very small and portable solution.

There is only one thing you should remember before buying this CF-reader if you are a user of older versions of Windows, e.g., Windows 95/98. Then you need to install some drivers before first usage on a computer. So, it is not possible to just connect it to any computer without first installing the drivers (for example connecting it to your friends computer to share pictures). This is however not a big problem but it removes some of the flexibility of being able to connect it anywhere.

An alternative for Laptop users with a free PC Card-slot can be a PC Card CF-reader. These also come with a good price (cheaper than a USB-reader) and usually (the ones I have used) do not require any special drivers.

Once you are ok with what I have mentioned above, I recommend this as a buy. I have used the CF-reader on several computers with no problem at all. Good value and easy to use.

Talk about convenient. This reader is very small, fits in your pocket and can even detatch from included cable, so you can plug it in to your USB hub or notebook like a key to transfer data to and from type I and II compactflash cards. Plus this reader is really fast and mass storage compliant, so no drivers needed if you have Windows 2000 or XP installed on your computer. If you have Win98, just load the included driver once and then you never need to load it again. This product is great and I recommend to anyone wanting to read and or write to compactflash cards.

At first I was kind of worried about compatibility. My homemade machine has a rather old motherboard (ABIT BH6) with only two USB ports. I had to buy a USB hub (Xircom 7-port) to accommodate all my USB devices: joystick, racing wheel, web cam, scanner, PDA, digicam, etc. Also, I'm running Windows 98 (not even SE). People have complained in the reviews for some other USB CF readers here at Amazon about trouble with hub and Win98. Although I do plan to upgrade my machine and also upgrade the OS to Windows 2000 in the summer, I certainly don't want to buy a reader that wouldn't work right away or even crashes my machine with buggy driver.

I'm happy to report that none of my worries happens. It works smooth with my hub and Windows 98 after a 1-minute driver installation. It's faster, though not overwhelmingly, than directly going through my Canon PowerShot S30, and much more convenient (which is the point). The USB connector on S30 just looks so fragile to me that I'm afraid it'll give up with constant plugging in and out. I have a Viking 128MB and a SimpleTech 256MB CF. Both posted about 1MByte/s when I did drag-n-drop copy using Explorer. Consider that USB max out at 1.5MB/s, that wasn't too bad. Canon's imaging program, Canon ZoomBrowser EX, recognizes the reader immediately and treats it just like the camera, i.e., it marks images already downloaded and shows the original exposure settings. Of course, with the reader I have the freedom to use Explorer or anything else for downloading and managing images, but I'll probably stick with ZoomBrowser.

The only glitch I encountered was with Norton Utilities 3.0. Norton Disk Doctor, a utility for checking and fixing your disks, crashes when the reader is plugged in. It's probably because Disk Doctor does not understand the new logical drive created for the reader. Just unplug it, and the new drive is gone and Disk Doctor runs as usual. NU 3.0 is rather old, too, and it wouldn't surprise me if Norton has fixed the problem.

I don't usually give products 5 stars, but this little guy exceeded my expectations. I run Windows XP Professional, and it took me far longer to get the package open than it did to install this thing and get it working! I plugged it in, and about 20 seconds later, I was downloading pictures from my digital camera. It reads quite fast, and can take high capacity type II flash cards - making this a good investment, as I believe that the majority of cameras/MP3 devices are going to begin to migrate to type compact flash type II storage, as it offers a lot more capacity and speed than SD or MMC storage types. It's working fine with my Viking 256 meg flash card.

Pros:
+ easy installation. It appears as another drive on your system, making it as simple as copying to and from a floppy.
+ good speed.
+ cool silver appearance - no ugly translucent junk.
+ ability to take type I and type II cards means that you most likely won't be left out in the cold with future upgrades to your flash memory using devices.

Cons:
- could be a little smaller, with perhaps a keychain loop. - Perhaps in the next revision .