We take pictures everyday on our solid state drives, but where would we all be without the power of our handy card readers to get the job done for image processing? Nowhere. But luckily, there is the Sandisk Imagemate All-in-One Reader/Writer at your convenient reception that is nothing short of a must-buy.  With support for an indelible amount of memory cards and software capabilities and applications to further enhance the experience, adumbration of the style also matches the quality of the product itself with reliable 34 MB/s read/write speed on most cards (not just Sandisk brands), and stability and ease of installation, this is something worth all the money.

Opening up the package does not reveal itself to anything complicated. The sleekly designed unit is nestled in plastic, with an included USB cable for docile connectivity. With the product, comes a very cool addition of a metal stand unit that uses magnetization to simply snap on to the bottom edge of the unit. It’s fast, easy and nothing that needs much detail —and that’s the beauty of this unit.  Installing the unit was just as easy as connecting the wire in and it works great tested on both OS bit-counts of XP and Vista.

We did thorough testing with Sandisk cards and non-Sandisk cards for real-world testing basis and ran some transfer rates on both ends of the spectrum to make sure the efficiency holds up at a constant integrity.  For the most part, most of the results showed speeds up to 34 MB/s and slightly even more so using cards that supported higher speed.

It’s clear that the Sandisk Imagemate All-in-One Reader is a product that values efficiency, affordability, sleek style, and does nothing more than what it written on the well-designed case. If you’re looking into great card readers and writers, with a stable application suite, and even better operation — this item is the one to definitely get.

Panasonic has added a new model ’super zoom’ Lumix cameras army through the FZ18. Based slightly on the FZ8, the FZ18 is a new thing with more zoom and flare for photographic lovers of all kinds. The optically stabilized lens has increased at both ends and now supports 18x (28-504mm equiv.) zoom, putting the FZ18 into competition with Olympus’ SP-550UZ. The FZ18 squeezes more pixels onto its 1/2.5-inch sensor, although the increase has been fairly moderate from 7.3 to 8.3 megapixels. More features include a dedicated AF/AE button, Face Detection and a new Intelligent Auto mode which integrates Image Stabilization, Intelligent ISO, Face Detection and Scene Detection into a ‘Super’ Auto Mode. The FZ8 was impressive when we reviewed it a while back, and the FZ18 isn’t stopping there with its zoom range and pixel count.

Primary Differences VS DMC-FZ8

• 18x optical zoom (28-504mm equiv.) – FZ8 has 12x (36-432mm) zoom
• Smaller maximum aperture at long end of zoom (F4.2 vs F3.1)
• 8.3 megapixel sensor (vs 7.2 megapixel)
• Face Detection
• Intelligent Auto mode
• Manually selectable ISO 1600
• ISO 6400 High Sensitivity mode
• AF/AE lock button and dedicated AF/MF button
• 1cm macro (was 5cm)
• Custom mode and extra scene modes (plus ‘advanced scene modes’)
• Five level Noise reduction (was three level)
• Slower continuous shooting (burst)
• Heavier and slightly larger