Glad to hear you at least got the Serial connection to work. I do find that the USB works much faster. The Serial would work on my husband's laptop too but not the USB - maybe you could email JamCam and they could help you with that.
The memory card we have is about the size of a postage stamp and goes into the expansion slot on the camera. It stays there all the time and needs to be in the slot in order to download the pictures. As I said it will hold 69 pictures. We took approximately 500 pictures with it when we were in Florida last November and just downloaded them each night into the laptop (by that time we had the USB connection working and it went fairly quickly).
The camera is not of a very high resolution but in the right conditions it will take a great picture. We also took 6 rolls of 35mm pictures as well of the most important things to be sure they turned out.
Our camera actually belongs to my two boys - it was a Christmas gift to them, and is perfect for them to take on school trips etc., I don't have to worry about them losing or damaging a more expensive camera. Their classmates just love it when we post a field trip on the internet for them to share with their families.
Another camera hint - use rechargeable batteries. This camera eats batteries for breakfast. I had my brother (electronics techy) make me a 9V adaptor to plug the camera in. It does not come with an AC adaptor port but he built me something special.
Thanks for your kind thoughts and hopefully my DH will have some beginners luck when he starts making calls on Monday for a new job.
Ruth