[Leica] OT Epson P5000

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

At 4:40 PM -0700 8/21/07, Steve Barbour wrote:
>On Aug 21, 2007, at 2:38 PM, Henning Wulff wrote:
>
>>  At 9:34 AM -0700 8/21/07, Steve Barbour wrote:
>>>  Is anyone using the Epson P5000 for image storage and review...?
>>>
>>>
>>>  Your opinion and comments about it would be appreciated...
>>>
>>>
>>>  Steve
>>
>>  I had the P2000. Nice screen, but slow and sucked batteries. Also, 
>>it's extremely hard to exchange hard drives for larger ones.
>>
>>  I now use something called the 'Nexto CF' which is extremely fas 
>>for dowloading cards to the hard drive (up to 1Gb per minute, 
>>depending on the card), can be used with any 2-1/2" ATA drive, 
>>allows downloading 100Gb per battery charge and costs all in 1/3 
>>what the Epson does. No, it doesn't have the nice colour screen, 
>>but that turned out to be almost useless anyway.
>
>now it's 80gB capacity..also about  2.5x faster...I don't know about 
>the batts??
>
>
>
>why Henning, was the screen useless?
>
>
>Steve
>

The screen was very slow, and couldn't display half the file types I 
wanted to. If you want to display pictures, the P5000 might now work, 
but as a storage device it still lags way behind the Nexto. You can 
put as big a drive as 250Gb in it, and the cost would still be 1/2 
that of the 80Gb P5000.

The speed issue is significant, as I can download 2 - 4Gb cards to 2 
different backup units in 8 minutes, whereas even the new P5000 
speeds take a lot longer. I haven't tried this as I don't have a 
P5000, so I may be just blowing smoke, but my understanding is that 
downloading 8Gb of cards takes about 30 minutes.

Then, the battery life is hugely better (about 5 or 6x), and the 
Nexto units are smaller. Mine can connect with Firewire or USB2 to 
the computer.

I checked out quite a few different types, as I had been disappointed 
with the P2000 and another brand that I had before, and I wanted to 
make sure i got a versatile and efficient storage unit this time.

Again, get the Epson for the screen, and make sure that image to 
image times and other scroll functions are fast enough to be useable, 
and that it can display what you want to. Otherwise get something 
like the Nexto (there are other good storage devices).


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    *            Henning J. Wulff
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