 "Be Careful with Future Upgrade Capacity of the P-4000" | 2009-05-20 |
| - Reviewed By Robert Rickert from Chesterfield, MO USA |
In general, I have always been impressed with the Epson P-4000. Solid performer and great screen. Long battery life.
There are a couple of issues which force me to look elsewhere to replace my current unit.
The card reading is extremely slow. This has not been a major issue because I use it for backup only so I rarely need to look at the files transferred from the card quickly.
The absolute over riding negative issue for me is that the unit will only read up to 2 GB SD cards. This was fine when we only had cards with up to 2 GB. I bought a couple of 4 GB cards for my Nikon D 90 and the P-4000 will not read the cards.
I checked with Epson and they indicate that there is no plan for Epson to provide fixes for this problem.
As a result, I would really encourage folks who are looking at this or other Epson Storage Drives that the unit will be able to read the cards they use currently and anticipate using in the near future.
In my case, I have only been able to use the P-4000 for two years and now it is of no use to me. This was an expensive mistake and will not buy other Epson units because they take this limited upgrade policy.
If you just need field backup of SD Cards there are far better alternatives available at far better pricing. |
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 "Problem with WA compact flash cards" | 2007-07-09 |
| - Reviewed By John R. Pitcher from Toronto,Ca |
| Epson has admitted to me that all their storage devices have problems with loading WA cards e.g. Lexar 133x, Told to watch for a fix. |
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| "Unimaginably slow" | 2007-02-09 |
| - Reviewed By Alexei Lebedev from New York, NY USA |
I use a Canon 5D and shoot RAW. The files are 12-15 megs each, so they eat up the 8GB of flash fairly quicky. I got this viewer for a trip so I could in effect have 10 8-gig flash cards of backup. On the very first transfer I realized I can't live with it -- it took this device 2.5 hours (!) to import the photos. Once the data was in, the battery was nearly dead.
When viewing files, it takes maybe 15 seconds to populate one screen (about 12 thumbnails) with data. Until that happens the thumbnail slots are blank, so you can't quickly find what you need. Even once cached, it takes several seconds to draw a screenful of thumbnails. For a dedicated device the size of my camera, I expect it to be at least as fast! Instead, it's lethargic. To import 22 RAW files, it took more than 5 minutes -- 14 seconds per photograph, or less than 1MB/sec. What is it doing with all that time?
When viewing RAW files, it only shows the JPEG ewmbedded in the RAW file, so you get no zoom at all. For that, you have to select Jpeg+Raw in the camera, which is a feature I avoid, because it results in twice as many files on my computer, and nearly half the space on the card. I tried that mode, and of course the Epson now takes twice as long to build the thumbnails, and since you now see two identical thumbnails instead of one, you lose half the screen. One thumbnail is zoomable, the other isn't. What Epson should have done is detect that there are two files with the same name, but different extensions -- .cr2 and .jpg, and by default displayed only the .jpg. What photographer would want it any other way?
All in all, this device is just not usable for the high volume of photographs it was designed for. |
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 "Epson P-4000 Multimedia Storage Drive" | 2007-02-09 |
| - Reviewed By Victor Sonnino |
Once you have loaded images into the drive it works very well. The pictures are crisp and easy to see. You can organize pictures in folders which is useful but not initially intuitive to do. It gets easier with more use.
A major complaint is that the drive does NOT accomodate all cards. For instance to use a memory stick duo, you must have a CF adapter. Problem...they are very difficult to find, if you can find one! Sony has discontinued them. Some other brands are available but not in USA markets. In addition the adapters are quite expensive.
I found this misleading and problematic given one of the cameras we use.
The newer units may take care of this but at a higher initial purchase cost |
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 "Perfect For Me !!!" | 2006-10-09 |
| - Reviewed By S. Newton-young from Albuquerque, NM |
| Love the Epson P4000. It's perfect for me. I have been afraid of a computer crash for sometime now. So I have been backing up my photos on CD's. Talk about taking a long, long time! I arranged in folders (just the way I wanted them) and loaded into the P4000 about 4000 pictures in about 4 hours. Everything worked just perfect, which is a very good thing for me as I am not a computer geek. I have not used it for video clips or audio and do not plan on doing so. Therefore I can not comment on the use of the P4000 for those applications. I can't wait for my next trip as I can now pull this little gizmo out and show people I talk with my pics of Africa or Russia or China or even my little dog !!! |
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 "Very good" | 2006-08-30 |
| - Reviewed By An Amazon User |
| This takes the place of a laptop to store my images in the field so very satisfactory. I have not had a chance to really try it out but what little I have done is very sharp and it's easy to use. The big screen is great. |
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