SUPANugget: Tosh, Fuji and TDK get graphic
Published: 04 Jun 1999 16:19 BST
Posh voices offer us gifts, err that's products, to review in exchange for a thought in our editorial. So here goes, some unashamed gushing over a group of products Nuggets has been raving about lately.
First, Toshiba's 1.5 Mega Pixel digital camera -- which we looked at in March . Its only fault? It takes about 1.5 seconds after pressing the shoot button for the actual shutter to react, a real pain if you're photographing kittens or babies or anything else that refuses to sit still!
The real joy of this nifty piece of gadgetry though lies in its storage mechanism -- SmartMedia cards, in this instance from Fuji Film. This is cool technology. 8Mb or 16Mb discs about the size of a 50p that slip into the side of the Tosh and hold 12 and 24 basic 640 X 480 images respectively, less in higher resolutions.
SmartMedia really shows off when it snuggles upto the funky little SM-R1 SmartMedia adapter, also from Fuji. Not only is this the dinkiest removable storage device I've ever seen, but it has USB support too so setting it up and using it is a cinch.
TDK has also cottoned onto the idea that this SmartMedia stuff is cool. So cool in fact that for nearly a whole week it convinced the Nuggets team that it actually produced SmartMedia memory. After a bit of checking and a lot of apologies the TDK gang finally admitted it had got things wrong -- the company makes adapters, not the actual media!
Enter the FCD128N and the FC301 PC cards, both accommodate either 3.3 or 5v SmartMedia memory, the former is designed to handle a whopping 32Mb card which should arrive, according to Fuji, sometime this summer.
As you'd expect, both the TDK designs worked perfectly and for around £30 each do a great job of accessing files with a minimum of fuss. Cool gadgets that do what they're supposed to do when they're supposed to do it.
Bravo.
Fuji's 32MB SmartMedia card (planned for Summer release) -- £89.99
SM-R1 USB SmartMedia card reader (USB connectivity for digital cameras using SmartMedia cards) -- £69.99
TDK's SmartMedia adaptors
FCD128N -- £30
FC301 -- £30
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