I don't have a USB connection, and I wonder if it is worth the expense to upgrade my motherboard to install one. I find the floppy disk adapter method of downloading my smart media photos to be very slow... superior, of course, to a serial port connection. Is the parallel port reader by Lexar a satisfactory solution?

-- Lee Custer (phoebe@laguna.com.mx), April 13, 2000

Answers

I have a Lexar parallel port based smartmedia reader, it works fine on both my tower and laptop. It transfers at about 550KB per second or an 8MB card of images in about 15 seconds. (That's in ECP mode, EPP and standard parallel port settings are a bit slower) That seems to be very close to what you ACTUALLY get out of USB based units.

You know, you don't need to replace your motherboard to get USB. Several companies sell USB cards for PCs. I've seen them from $20 to $40 retail and just saw a $20 unit in a CompUSA store with a $20 rebate, net cost $0! Have look, it's probably still on sale. It was on the front page of their circular and may be in the specials on their website.

Good luck, either way.

-- Gerald M. Payne (gmp@francomm.com), April 13, 2000.

Thanks Gerald, that's what I wanted to know. I did buy a PCI USB card, and I have Windows 98 SE, but I can't get USB to function. I downloaded a little program that is supposed to tell if your machine is OK for USB, and it says that my hardware won't work with USB.

-- Lee Custer (phoebe@laguna.com.mx), April 14, 2000.