Sloooowwww 'puter?

[Greg K.]

Thought I'd throw this out there and see if any computer wizards have any ideas.

I just sold my sister my Pentax *ist, and I bought a K100d to replace it (which, btw, I love). Anywho, this is my sister's first foray into digital photography, and while she loves the camera, she's less than enthusiastic about what it takes to get the pictures OUT of the camera, INTO the computer, and then to a storage site.

She lives in rural Maryland (Howard County) where they do not have cable (!), so she has to rely on dial-up for internet access -- and she says the process for photo sharing is unbearably long and slow.

I really want her to get the most out of this camera, and not feel like it was a total waste of money...any suggestions? Are there any internet services you can recommend that she should investigate?

Me, I'm a Road Runner guy, and I use a mac (complete with iPhoto), so I have no problems at all -- I've always found it easy and fast.

Thoughts?

 

[Charade]

What size are the files she's uploading? If they are for online albums they don't need to be very large in file size or image size.

Unfortunately, resizing photos will add another step but there is a program (Irfanview) that makes it a breeze to resize photos in batch mode. Better than Photoshop.

www.irfanview.com

When I had dial up (along with a second line) and had large uploads or downloads I would set it up and walk away until it was done.

 

[Master Mason]

Can she get broad band through Satalite? With the size of files that are routinely sent now, I don't know how anyone could put up with dial up.

Also, though, if she is having troubles getting it off the camera, then I would wonder how old the computer is, and if it is older, it probably doesn't have enough memory or enough processor speed for todays applications.

Just a couple of things to check out.

 

[SplshMtn99]

Back when I was using dial-up & AOL, I would set up a "flash session" ( yeah, right, ) for the computer to go online in the middle of the night, upload pics, & then disconnect AOL when done. I did it in the middle of the night so I wouldn't tie up the phone line.

Sorry, can't remember the file sizes, but they were nothing compared to what I upload now in seconds on DSL.

 

[enchanteddisney]

I can tell you what I do is I have an external 160GB drive where I store photos. The ones i want to share I use photobucket. You can use others as well. It would be much faster to store them on an external Hard drive and easy for her to access them.

If she needs broadband, but can not get cable I would check and see if she can get dsl possibly. My mother lives in woodstock vermont and has dsl but can't get cable. You can always check DSL REPORTS to see if broadband is available.

Let me know how it goes.

 

[handicap18]

I don't know about all software programs, but with Picture IT! there is an option to save the picture for the web. This would take a 3MB picture file and compress it down to about 500K or less. Just big enough to view online and will make a world of difference in downloading from the computer to the internet. Just be sure to make the file a different name, even it if means adding a letter or number to the end of the original file name.

 

[Groucho]

I was just stuck using a dial-up connection for a couple days that was connecting at a pathetic 16.8 baud. To say that it was painful was an understatement! I'm used to Road Runner's 7meg speeds.

The speed of the computer is probably irrelevant, or at least not the big problem at the moment. An Athlon X2 5000+ on dial-up is just as painful as a Pentium 133.

Irfanview is a relatively small download so that's the first step. Then figure out what level of quality she can be happy with - resolution, JPG compression, etc. Once that's set, use batch mode to copy all the pictures to a web-friendly size, and strip out all the exif and similar data (every byte counts, on dial-up!) Shrunk down to about 640x480 with 75% quality will produce a picture that's decent for web viewing and relatively very small storage-wise. A far cry from full resolution, high quality, but better than nothing!

Of course, it goes without saying that the frustrations she's having would be there with any digital camera. If she's really concerned about the time to empty the camera, too, she could set it to take smaller photos at lower quality, but that kind of defeats much of the appeal of a DSLR.