Vosonic VP5500

Have been thinking of upgrading my old Flashtrax for some time and following the demise of the auto backup function I decided to change to the Vosonic VP5500. So for the benefit of any others who might be thinking along these lines here are my initial conclusions. Bear in mind they are against the old (What I call “vertical style” Flashtrax). The later version would undoubtedly be better, but I am not sure if Flashtrax is still in business and various sites reported “no stock”. I could not find their web-site anymore but you may know different.

Positives
Fast file transfer
Neat Leather case
Small size (same as Flashtrax)
Allegedly better battery life than Flashtrax
Excellent LCD
Reads Pentax RAW and .DNG (amongst many others)
SATA HDD that can be changed easily for upgrade
Uses easily obtainable Fujifilm rechargeable battery

Negatives
OS not as flexible as Flashtrax (but perfectly adequate for purpose)
4 Way navigation button too small and very sensitive
Need to set up directory structure via PC (limitations of OS)
Does not play music (but I never used that facility on the Flashtrax anyway)

Overall
Like most things it is not a straight win situation (that silly little navigation button is a pain) but on balance I would recommend it

Hope that is of some help

I've not used the VP 5500, but be wary of the build quality on Vosonic products. I had one of the older models without the colour screen. It did what it said on the tin for about 4 months then died unexpectedly. I opened the back to discover the HDD was held in place with nothing more than a piece of foam, and had come unclipped.

Plugging the HDD back in resurected it for the remainder of its warenty period, but it died completely a few months ago.

I have no reason to suspect all Vosonic stuff is this badly made, but it can't hurt to be vigilent.

We have an old Vosonics image tank, without picture viewing capabilities - it works just fine, acts just as a portable hard drive with built in card reader (so no OS or problems reading file types). Never had a problem with it and I am very happy with it.
Next time I may go for something like the ESUS EEE plus flash drive instead of an image tank.

That was my solution to the "my image tank is broken" problem. seems to work pretty well, and the eee is more generally useful than I expected.

Looked at one in PC World the other day just to see one in the flesh so to speak. Liked it a lot, but does not quite fit my pocket (unless I get one of those old window-cleaner's jackets:lol. The plan is to get a Linux system up and running on my PC first but that is tomorrow's job and tomorrow never seems to arrive in this house.

Once I have mastered Linux (any recommendations on which version would be best for image reviewing work (I thought of Irfanview for that job)would be appreciated) then I might take the plunge EEE-wise for other uses.

hi oldtimer,

I'm using Ubuntu on my main laptop and PCLinuxOS on my EEE. Both seem well rounded and easy to set up and use. I particularly like Ubuntu because on the face of it it's easy to use, but if you want to break out the command line and get into the nitty gritty then it doesn't get in your way. Be warned that the world of digial photography on Linux isn't especially mature. All the programs you need are available, but you will have to compile some of them from source code. The good news is that doing this isn't even close to as daunting as it first appears, and there are now a few of us on here who have done it so someone will be able to help you if you get stuck.

I use UFRAW for my raw processing and there are any number of packages for dealing with JPG/TIFF images once you've processed them. GIMP is great as an editor, it can do just about anything photoshop can do that you will actually use on a daily basis.

Also Silkypix seems to run pretty well under WINE (think of WINE as a windows emulator, even though technically it isn't). The only reason I don't use Silky at the moment is I can't justify the cash for a paid for version, and the free version has no batch mode.

PS this post brought to you via my Asus EEE 700. My advice is get the 701 if you can, or one of the new ones with the big screen. Only having 2G of primary storage is not a show stopped by any means, but it is a pain sometimes.

[quote:3496ace15f="Mongoose"]......... and there are now a few of us on here who have done it so someone will be able to help you if you get stuck.
/quote]

Thanks for the offer. I might well take you up on it "tomorrow".

An update on the Vosonic VP5500 having just used it in earnest during a trip to Canada.

BEWARE that the date attributed to the files is the date that they are stored on the unit and not the date the image was created. This causes problems if you then try to tie the images back to the itinerary using the date. Fortunately, I had a stack of SD cards but was forced to buy some more en route so that I did not have to re-use any cards.

So what then is the use of this device? If the date is not important, then it proved to be a very satisfactory image and review tank. Even if the date is important it still served as a Backup and Review device. In fact I did delete some images on various cards after saving the whole card on the VP5500, but retaining some for each day, so I could identify them by reference to the image number sequence. I could then redate them using eXpress TimeStamp Toucher v1.1.0 - a small but FREE download which allows date changes for a complete folder at a time (which sometimes means temporarily segregating specific files for re-dating.)

Not a very elegant solution but it works and is free. There are a few other similar programmes which might be a little more convenient so one day I will have another search.

Hope this is of some use

Graham

Surely the image tank doesn't alter the date in the Exif though - thereby making it possible to relate the photo to the itinerary? And if you back up every day then the folder will have the correct date to further help.

I shall stick to our old, screen free version - it reads anything - we used it to back up the GPS tagger as well as photos on our US trip, as it acts purely as a hard drive, with no OS.

it sounds very much as if you have the same one I had Gwyn, so just be a little wary of its resiliance. As I said the HDD on mine was held in with a piece of foam