TekPicks

I have owned the original 2 GB Eye-Fi for several years and while the concept was neat, I never got much use out of it. For me anyway, transfers were slow and never seemed to work quite right. Needing to replace a lost card this week, I thought I would browse by their site to see if the technology had been updated. Not too surprisingly, it had and with some very nice features.

The two biggest improvements I found were the addition of what Eye-Fi calls “Endless Memory” and “Ad Hoc” transfers. Endless Memory automatically removes the oldest content on the card that has already been uploading to your computer once the remaining space available on the card hits a user set threshold. And while that is neat enough, Ad Hoc is where the real magic is at. Typical Eye-Fi cards upload via your Wi-Fi Network. No available network – no upload. For anyone working away from an internet connection you were out of luck. No more! The Ad Hoc feature creates a private WLAN connection that allows for direct transfers from camera to phone including photos shot in RAW.

Unfortunately the Ad Hoc feature is only available on the 8 GB Pro Card, retailing for $100 +. The TP budget did not have quite enough in it this month for that one so if one out there has had a chance to play with it, tell us about it in the comments. Considering how many fire scenes ETC works without power or internet access, Ad-Hoc sounds like a perfect way to review and share photos in real time, especially if it works with the iPad.

I did go ahead and upgrade to the 4 GB X2 card and other than the slight disappointment of not being able to assign an local upload destination based on connected network, everything worked as advertised. To solve that minor annoyance I just set the upload destination for my Flickr account and never set a local one.

Link: Eye-Fi X2 Series