SanDisk Eye-Fi 4GB SD Card

What are the benefits of the SanDisk Eye-Fi SD card over the standard SanDisk SD card? On the face of it, not that much.

 

I bought this one as a gadget. It was at the very right price but still more costly than the standard 4GB card.

 

The card doesn't give the full 4gb as it contains a little software that is installed on the PC. Firstly, I installed it on our Acer Aspire One notebook. It's most likely the computer we would take with us on a trip as it only has a 10.1" LED screen and is very compact.

 

The software loads really easily and there are basically three steps: 

1 - Stick the card in its own USB reader in a slot.
2 - Install the Eye-Fi Center and follow the instructions to set it up for your wifi.
3 - Put the card in a camera and take a pic.....

It took about 10 minutes to load and about half a minute to recognise the card in the camera and then a small window appears in the bottom right of the screen and it loads the pix.

 

In the Eye-Fi Center you can set up other wifi networks and also direct-link, that connects the card and computer when the wifi is turned off.  I haven't had time to test that, but will later and report back. Without wifi I can't upload this review.

How to demonstrate?  Take a pic, then as it appears take another.....

 

Another option is in the Eye-Fi Center is that you can set "Endless Memory", effectively a redundancy level for photos. It saves you deleting the photos off the card as you can set a percentage of the card, default is 50%, that will be freed by automatically deleting downloaded photos to keep the card available for new photos.

 

I actually bought the card for the Nikon D50 and came unstuck as Nikon built a camera that can only take a 2GB SD card!!  My older Canon 300D takes a 4GB CF2 card! 

So far so good. I'll report back when I have been able to use it a little more.

 

UPDATE: I tried the direct connection option and it didn't work at all. Switching off wifi should switch the card/computer interface to connect directly. I gave it five minutes and nothing happened so I turned on the wifi and within a few seconds photos I'd taken started to upload.

 

I decided as the Eye-Fi Helper has a link for Technical Support that I would raise a call about the problems I have had and I have since had the initial response back.