20Gb Mass storage device (micro) review

The Premier DP 3520 Multimedia player - THINGGY

 

I have had my eye on an external storage device and on this little Gem in particular for over 2 years.

Today, I found one for sale at 70% discount? Yeah, so I brought two, and am selling one on flea-bay

which should more than cover the purchase costs!

 

So what does it do?

 

As a Photographer, my principle interest is that it can swiftly copy images from the memory card to the

20Gb memory and then confirm that they have been copied. Well it does, and it copied a 1GB Sandisk

Ultra2 full of canon EOS 5D RAW plus High quality small JPEG images in 4 minutes and 40 seconds. Now

I don?t know if that?s fast, or what kind of MB per second it is running, or even if it is USB2 but what I

do know is that in under 5 minutes I can transfer 69 Raw images from my camera to the thingy and

then free up my card for round two. With two cards, this means that I am pretty much sorted: and with

the 4Gb and 2Gb microdrive as well I don?t have any problems. When am I going to shoot over 1300

images without a break to find my laptop and external harddrive?

 

So, it displayed my photos with Exif data, and I could zoom in enough to see the dust on my sky shots!

Now you can view them as a slide show and naturally present them on the Television. This is great, It

stores most makes of cameras images, but the fact it can view and zoom in on Raw?s was great, I tested

it on my Nikon p2 and, well I don?t have any more digital cameras? but it reads from Compact Flash I

and II as well as Microdrives, and all Secure Disks MMC?s and also Sony?s Memory cards, I am waiting

patiently for Fuji?s update of the F31fd with SD slot and RAW and hopefully it will read those too.

Now obviously The Epson P2000 etc range are of better quality screen and such, just this is smaller and

has a larger screen than the Nikon coolwalker, plus did I mention that I brought this for GB 33 sterling?

That makes it a good digital camera cheaper than anything else!

 

But wait, theres more, you can record some of your favourite movies onto it, and watch them on the

plane as you fly to your destination about 4 hours playback, more in a dimly lit cabin. Its even better

than that I have small video spy camera that wirelessly transmits to a capture centre, this then plugs

direct to the THINGGY and Viola I have a 20GB (now that?s a lot of hours) surveillance recording video

camera of lowish colour quality.

Great fun when tied to the bottom of my doggies collar and chased through the bush! Now can you

imagine it left in a tree with a sheep carcass in Kenya, baiting Leopards: ha haa Close up heaven! ? I

now see that it only records 2GB at a time, then creates a new file.

To add to this it obviously supports MP3 play back, I mean it would have to in this day and age. So you

can record MP3 music to it as well to while away those boring hours, and the battery will last around 10

hours in this state. It also has a radio function, for when you have recorded over the MP3 files with your

images (mind you the reception is poor)

Naturally being such a dynamic THINGGY it can record Audio Dictaphone style, again really useful, for

situations where you want to directly recall an experience, or memory, or the Leopard ate your little

camera and battery and you now want record its bellows as she deals with the 9v battery in her

digestive tract!

Just when you thought that we?ve covered everything that an electronic device can cover, theres also,

wait for it: Obviously tetris for when you have given up on Voice of Kenya.

No the battery is not removeable, but it will take a 5V input, so you can run off the car battery with a

3rd party adapter. Wonderfully, the THINGGY comes with a (p)leather case and belt loop, so when

shooting your mates wedding you can keep it close at hand to transfer the files across whilst keeping it

on your hip. And its there to record the moment that he says ?I do?!

I have absolutely no idea if it works in minus 10 degrees C and I have even less intention of taking it

out in these temperatures, because when I do shoot in the cold, I keep everything back at base.

Are there better products? I don?t care! <div></div>

I know this is from a while ago, but I have one of these players. Do you know if I can update its software to view and download current format SD cards (from a Nikon D600)?