I have had quite a few problems with the Canon Powershot A5. Error messages that say my computer can't detect camera or there are no images in camera and when I turn the camera to pc mode to download picture to my computer sometimes the lens opens up like it is in picture mode. In other words the Canon PS A5 is a piece of crap!! My question is if I were to buy a compact flash card reader would I be able to get my pictures downloaded?

-- lori larsen (cmbtboots@uswest.net), March 23, 2000

Answers

Have found the Sandisk USB flash card reader to work awfully well with Sandisk and Nikon compactflash cards. It costs all of $40 and will transfer at least 700 kilobytes per second to your PC. In other words, you can empty a 48meg flash card in about a minute.

-- Russell Bozian (finaldesign@hotmail.com), March 23, 2000.

I'd be willing to bet you could get a 48MB CF card to the HD a lot faster than "about a minute"....I'm using a USB sandisk CF reader, the throughput is amazing...I've timed a 96 MB card, full mind you, to 53 seconds. At any rate, to be objective...it is a hell of a lot quicker than the serial cable my CP950 came with!

-- Sam (yosemitesamiam@hotmail.com), March 14, 2001.