USB Device Lets You Copy Your Digital Pictures to Your Computer Quickly and Easily

I own a digital camera, and I love it.  Unlike my wife, who effortlessly works magic with her 35mm camera, I take pictures that are...well, let's just say not all that great.  The digital camera is a godsend for somebody like me.  Take a picture, look at it immediately, delete it if I don't like it, try again.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

Getting those pictures to my computer is pretty easy, too.  It's a matter of powering up my camera, hooking it up to my PC via a USB cable, clicking on "My Computer" on the desktop, finding the external/removable drive in the list, opening it, finding the folder with the pictures in it, and copying files to my computer and renaming them...ah, crap!  My camera battery just died!!

If you've had that scenario happen to you, you know it can ruin not only the picture you were copying, but can also potentially mess up all the pictures in the camera's memory as well.  If only there were a way to transfer those files without having to worry about a battery croaking during the transfer.  Well, guess what - there is!

For awhile now vendors have been manufacturing something commonly referred to as a USB card reader.  It looks a lot like a USB flash memory drive, with one exception:  It's got an open slot in it.  That slot holds a memory stick from your digital camera.  All you do is remove the memory from, say, your camera; stick it in the slot on the card reader; and plug the reader into a USB port on your computer.  Then go back up to the second paragraph, start with "My Computer", and continue.  When you're done, remove the memory from the card reader, put it back into your camera, and you're finished.  There's no battery in the device; it gets its power from the PC.  No running down your camera's batteries, no error during copying because you've lost power.

Sounds cool, right?  But what if you have several devices that all take different types of memory devices?  Ah, the vendors thought about that.  They also manufacture a USB multi-card reader that - surprise! - has multiple slots for different types of memory.  So you can copy data from your camera, and from your PDA, and from any other device that uses removable memory to store data.

You can pick up this item at your local computer or electronics store.  And they're not expensive, either.  Most run in the $10 to $25 range.  (Hint:  This would be a GREAT STOCKING STUFFER idea for Christmas!)

Isn't modern technology wonderful?!