Mymediagear has several portable products for storing your photographs on the road.
The The Flash HD To Go! (ja, that's the name) is a 20GB hard drive unit that reads most memory cards used by cameras (US$200). There are models with 40GB ($250) and 60GB ($300). Now, this unit is pretty simple -- no MP3 player, etc. In fact, I am not sure you can use it to view photos.
You plug the memory card in one end, and press the Copy button. The LCD screen displays on the copying status. A USB connector lets you later transfer photos to your computer.
Its built-in battery can be charged with the charger or through the USB port.That's good news and bad. The good news: you can recharge the unit by plugging into the USB port of any computer. The bad news: it doesn't appear you can take along extra batteries. The Web site lacks specs, like how long the unit runs on one battery charge.
At one time I owned a similar system from Iomega that used 40MB Clic discs to store photos. It came with a CompactFlash memory card adapter. I took the unit along to Budapest. When I tried to back up photos from the memory card, the drive complained that every one of the ten Clic discs was bad. Ever since then, I have difficulty trusting these kinds of backup systems.
My solution? I switched the digital camera's quality to a lower setting so that I could store more photos on the memory cards. After a week in Hungary, I came home with 400 photographs. Later, on a trip to New Zealand, I used both my notebook computer and the 20GB PhotoTainer to back up the 1,600 photos I took in two weeks; I had no problems at all.
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