Belkin F5U249 Customer reviews

Ratings

Category: Personal Computers
Brand: Belkin
Model: F5U249
Availability: FREE SHIPPING (USA)
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Belkin F5U249 Review

Belkin F5U249 Review by P. Scholz

Belkin now has the Revision 3 (three) of the product available which supports 2GB SD Cards. Check if you have a little sticker on the bottom of your cardreader.

I contacted technical support if the product number and asked "guess what my problem is", Support guessed right and assumed its the 2 GB SD problem and offered an exchange free of charge.

I give Belkin a big plus for the hassle free exchange, however a similar big minus for selling outdated products in the first place and hoping no one notices. Therefor, three stars.

Belkin F5U249 Review by Stephen Clary (Tulsa, OK USA)

With the size of memory cards going up and up, you don't want to be stuck with a reader that doesn't support > 1GB size cards. And no, they don't tell you that it doesn't support > 1GB in their product literature or manual. Note that I checked with Belkin Tech Support (who I must admit replied relatively quickly). See below:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Belkin Technical Support. Unfortunately our media readers do not support media over 1Gig. If you have further questions or comments, please feel free to contact us at (800) 223-5546 ext. 2263 Between the hours of 6:00 am - 5:00 pm Pacific time.

Brad Mergenthaler
Belkin Technical Support

Belkin F5U249 Review by Gadgester "No Time, No Money" (Mother Earth)

The Belkin Hi-Speed USB 2.0 15-in-1 Media Reader & Writer allows you to transfer files between your PC and flash media cards. You can also transfer files between flash cards, since they just show up as external drives (e.g., F:, G:, H:, etc.) in your Windows Explorer. The 15 supported flash formats are:

1. xD Picture Card (used in Fujifilm and Olympus digicams)
2. CompactFlash I
3. CompactFlash II
4. Microdrive (from IBM or Hitachi or Toshiba)
5. SmartMedia
6. Secure Digital (the most popular kind of flash)
7. Mini SD (used in the latest Sanyo cell phones and various Pocket PC phones)
8. Multimedia Card
9. RSMMC (a smaller type of Multimedia Card that requires an adapter)
10. Memory Stick
11. Memory Stick PRO (higher-capacity Memory Stick)
12. Memory Stick MagicGate
13. Memory Stick Duo (half-sized as Memory Stick)
14. Memory Stick Duo PRO
15. Memory Stick MagicGate Duo

As you can see, many formats are just variants of one another. The reader/writer has four slots, so you can stick in at most four flash memory cards at a time.

The reader/writer installed painlessly and started working right away, but I soon found out speed was not consistent, even when reading from or writing to the same card. I use this with Windows XP Professional SP 2. I usually get about 10-15MB/sec of performance with my external hard drives (e.g. Sony Micro Vault 5GB, Seagate 200GB USB 2.0), and with my previous Dazzle media reader/writer, I was getting around 5MB/sec on average. (I actually use a dedicated Sony Memory Stick reader/writer which I bought a while ago for my PSP, and its average speed is around 10MB/sec.)

But with the Belkin -- which is powered directly by the USB port -- I get anywhere from 1MB/sec (USB 1.1 performance) to 10MB/sec. It's not a question of file size as my measurement has been normalized around that. (What I mean is, no matter what operation system you use, it takes more time to read/write a large number of small files than a small number of large files, even when the total size is the same. This is due to the way file systems handle files -- think of them as databases that must retrieve or create data entries.)

This is disappointing to me, since I like predictability when it comes to performance. This is true esp. because I got this to use with my laptop to transfer pictures on-the-go. If it takes too long to transfer, my laptop's battery might run low or I might be in a hurry to board a flight. Anyway, while the overall performance of the Belkin is tolerable, I'm disappointed.

But it still deserves 4 stars because it's small, stylish, and installs easily. And it does accommodate pretty much all the different kinds of flash memory you can find. If you need a versatile media reader/writer, this is worthy of a look.