Downloading pics from camera to computer

I posted the following as part of a reply in the troubleshooting section, and thought that it might be useful to others who are new to digital photography.

I personally never use the bundled software for downloading images. All you need is a little batch file like this:

move G:dcim100pentx*.* D:Newpics

This will move any file in G:dcim100pentx (which is the path to my images on the card) to my picture folder, D:Newpics.

All you have to do is change the paths to what works on your computer/camera combination and save the file as a text file called anyname.bat (it's the ".bat" that matters).

Then click on the icon for the file and watch your pics download. Much quicker than waiting for the Pentax download software to fire up.

Just one point. My Fuji camera has to reformat the card if I delete all the pictures on it in the computer (which is what happens when you use "Move"). So for the Fuji I use "Copy" instead of "Move", and delete in-camera. I don't know how the Pentax P&S digitals work, but "Move" is fine with the *ist D.

George