ok.. as you can see from the date-stamp I ordered that VP6230 in the early hours of yesterday (tues) morning (from
www.techrific.com.au in Melbourne).
They offered *free* 3-5 day shipping, or I could pay an extra $10 and get it couriered. I'm a cheapskate who's not in a hurry, so I chose the free shipping.
I got an email yesterday (about 8 hours after I placed my order) saying it had been sent, and 24 hours later I get a knock on my door from a guy with a package!! :o
Wow... its always good when a company offers free shipping (especially when they work out the cheapest)... but when that free shipping turns out to be overnight across the country as well! That's above and beyond what I'd expect. I'm
very impressed with Techrific. And I've read a couple of other people tell similar stories on forums around the place, so it sounds like its the norm for them.
But down to the drive itself...
Well.. for the basics of what I need... it seems very good. It recognised my 60Gb drive without any hassles and the procedure for dumping photos from CF to HDD is very simple, logical and painless. It takes me 4 mins to dump a 1Gb card onto its drive, so it is neither the fastest nor the slowest when it comes to speed.
It came with a spare battery (it uses a fuji digital camera battery) and a car charger as well as wall charger, which is all very handy. It also came with an excellent protective case, headphones, lots of cables, and even a cute little keyring mini-screwdriver for undoing the screws to change drives if you want.
It reads my 350D RAW files no problem as promised, and the file viewer is fast and easy to navigate. The thumbnail view is excellent and makes viewing much more convenient than viewing on-camera (but you can't get thumbnails of RAWs). The screen is also nice and bright with fairly accurate colours considering it is a low-budget screen.
So far it seems ideal... but unfortunately its not all good.
The aspect ratio of the screen is out of whack, meaning photos are distorted and faces appear long when viewed normally, or wide when rotated 90deg. grrrr.. This won't affect checking photos for focus, colour and exposure.. but it does have a bit of an unsettling affect on faces.
It hardly plays any video codecs! I just did a rough test and copied about a dozen various avi's and mpg's (and a wmv) onto the thing and tried to play them.. and it would only recognise 3 of the files! While this has no bearing on my photography, I'd be really annoyed if I bought this thing as a video player. Maybe firmware upgrades will address this? But when it does decide to play a video it does a really good job of it.
The MP3 player isn't all that nice to use or sound particularly great. This isn't a big deal-breaker for me as I have an iPod.. but it means I will be keeping my iPod. (the drive is probably a bit bulky and fragile to be knocked around with like most mp3 players anyway).
Also the case itself is plastic (that looks like brushed aluminium) and feels quite plasticy. I'm sure it is strong enough to handle its job, but it does feel a bit cheap.
And the battery compartment is stupid! It's great that it has a easily available and replacable battery and that they even provide you with a spare... but to swap them you need to UNSCREW the battery cover and then sticky-tape a little tab onto the battery so you've got something to grip to pull it out!!??!?!?! I have no idea what they were thinking here, as the design is such that they went out of their way to make it like this!
But the bottom line is it does everything most photographers would need from it simply and without fuss.. and it also provides a number of excellent non-essential and entertainment features - even if some of them aren't implemented all that well.
For the money, I'm happy with it. Its not the best featured or the cheapest or the fastest device around.. but is pretty well featured, it is relatively cheap, and it isn't slow. It simply provides a balance of these things instead of concentrating on one aspect.