Memory sticks
 

I am looking to purchase a memory stick or two, mainly for the lappy ..

is there anything other than the brand name/size that suggests one is any better than another?

There are appears to be quite a few on the market here in Oz .. the best one so far appears to be so far ahead of the others price wise .. $50 for 256mb .. about $10 more than a 128mb stick ..

That's a good price, Voice, I'd just buy it. I bought a generic one a year or so ago and never had any problems with it; nothing much to go wrong really.

I recently bought one off ebay for £1.29p. 128mb, brand new in the box with some excellent free software included. Try ebay first and see what is available. Primary use is for taking things off my laptop here and plugging in to the work one.

I saw 1Gb inteligent stick's (A very slimmed down memory stick) for £40 on ebay this weekend. Buy it not, shipped from the USA so I guess there could be vat and duty to add.

Mobile Memory - another use for your camera
 

Here's a tip that could save some of you a few dollars:

One day I was looking in 'My Computer' while I had my Nikon Coolpix camera plugged into a USB port. It appeared as a removeable drive so I tried shuffling files into and out of it just to see what happened. It worked just fine as a 'memory stick' and still works as a camera with the non-image files on it too, so I haven't bothered buying a separate memory stick. Just plug the camera's USB cable into any plug 'n play equipped computer and its recognized straight away as a removeable drive. I no longer bother with the special software for getting pictures off the camera either - I just move the image files across using My Computer. I have more than one card for it and who keeps a full 256 Megs of photos on board their camera anyway?

I don't know if this works with other cameras, but I don't see why it shouldn't. It just depends on what you use the memory stick for - they're just the job for carrying working files around in your shirt pocket, but if, like BRL you just want to transfer files from one computer to another, its a cheap option. The camera is always in my briefcase anyway...

Blacksheep, a useful tip indeed, but it will only work with cameras which are recognised by Windows as 'USB mass storage'. Canon is one of the manufacturers who doesn't use this method, and although the camera will still show up in 'My Computer' I cannot transfer files to it. These cameras use PTP (Picture transfer protocol) to connect to and communicate with the 'puter, and this only allows images and movie files to be copied from camera to computer.

Thanks Bino's .. I'm off to buy one!! :)

iPods and most other digital music players also work as USB drives. As most people don't usually have 20GB, or more, of music there is generally plenty of room available.

goates