{"id":474746,"date":"2010-03-25T03:36:08","date_gmt":"2010-03-25T07:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"tag:betanews.com,2007:article-1269502568"},"modified":"2010-03-25T03:36:08","modified_gmt":"2010-03-25T07:36:08","slug":"review-eye-fi-x2-my-ctia-secret-weapon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/474746","title":{"rendered":"Review: Eye-Fi X2, my CTIA secret weapon"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Tim Conneally<\/a>, Betanews<\/a><\/p>\n

Two years ago<\/a>, Lexar brought the Eye-Fi brand into the mainstream when it released 2GB SD cards endowed with Eye-Fi’s 802.11b\/g wireless connectivity. The capability turned any camera with an SD slot into one with Wi-FI. Since that time, Eye-Fi has grown its product line<\/a> to include support for 802.11n, improved security features, improved capacities, and overall performance improvements.<\/p>\n

\"Eye-FiOn Tuesday, Eye-Fi’s new X2 series of wireless SD cards hit retail, bringing the 4GB Connect X2 ($49.99), 8GB Explore X2 ($99.99) and 8GB Pro X2 ($149.99) to photographers across the country.<\/p>\n

I’d been toying with the idea of pairing up an Eye-Fi camera with a MiFi portable hotspot for a sort of goofily-named dream team that could provide a constant connection for shooting tons of pictures that instantly piped up to the cloud. Since I was headed to Vegas for CTIA this week, and Eye-Fi was launching its new X2 series, I thought it was time to try it out with a 4G Sprint Overdrive.<\/p>\n

So I’ve been walking the showfloor with a WiMAX hotspot in my backpack, and the Eye-Fi Connect X2 in my point-and-shoot Canon. Short of having a camera with a built-in mobile broadband module<\/a>, this is the best way to shoot pictures. While I have been concentrating on getting exciting shots, Eye-Fi has quietly been uploading them to photography-sharing sites the second they’re snapped. When I finally get to sit down in the press room, all the photos are up, sorted by date, and geotagged online, and when I connect my computer to a hotspot, the photos automatically download to my Eye-Fi desktop folder.<\/p>\n

I stuck to sending all the photos to Picasa, but I could have chosen Flickr, Snapfish, Photobucket, Shutterfly, MobileMe, Fotki, Facebook, Whrrl, Evernote, Dotphoto, SmugMug, TypePad, or even to a custom FTP site. Eye-Fi offers 28 different destinations that your photos can be sent to. Additionally, it can send video to YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, SmugMug and Photobucket.<\/p>\n

The only troublesome aspect of the X2 was installing the software on my computers. I first tried it on a Vista PC, but it kept crashing it, and then I tried it on a Mac running the older 10.4 Mac OS, and it also did not want to work after half a dozen attempted installs. Eventually, however, it managed to get itself installed and has been running ever since.<\/p>\n

Though the Eye-Fi helps heat up my camera very quickly, it has not had an appreciable effect on its battery life. In the three days I’ve been using it, I have not run out of battery any quicker than I would have if I was using a regular SD card. This will no doubt vary from camera to camera, and I intend to test it with other models to corroborate. Not all SD-supportive cameras are compatible with Eye-Fi SD cards.<\/a><\/p>\n

And it doesn’t require a mobile hotspot in your pocket for Eye-Fi to be useful on the go. Eye-Fi users have automatic free connectivity at 21,000 U.S. hotspots including Starbucks coffee shops and Harborlink hotspots such as BP gas stations.<\/p>\n

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010<\/a>

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By Tim Conneally, Betanews Two years ago, Lexar brought the Eye-Fi brand into the mainstream when it released 2GB SD cards endowed with Eye-Fi’s 802.11b\/g wireless connectivity. The capability turned any camera with an SD slot into one with Wi-FI. Since that time, Eye-Fi has grown its product line to include support for 802.11n, improved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6429,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-474746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6429"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474746\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}