September 26, 2006
The Philips Digital Photo Frame
The great corporate master in the sky has bestowed upon me a Philips Digital Photo Frame. My wife has made it very clear that they aren't getting it back. She has also made it very clear that I can't regift it to my mother.
To start, the packaging is immaculate. It unfolds much like an Ipod box. Actually, "Apple" design is very evident in many of the features. To test the usability, I avoided looking at anything resembling a manual. That was easy, since the manual is on the CD that is still sealed closed on my desk. I plugged it in, connected the USB cable, and turned it on. XP immediately recognized it as an external hard drive, internal capacity about 12 MB. It also has an SD card slot and a memory stick interface. Physically, it is very sharp. A clear acrylic frame borders the LCD screen, and a brushed metal leg holds it up.
Loading pictures is as simple as plugging in a memory card preloaded with photos, or dragging and dropping. One idiosyncrasy I would like to see remedied is that it essentially caches the original photo, and upon unplugging the USB cable goes into a compression process to reduce file sizes. Since I was loading original images over, I had to load 8 or 10, unplug to process, plug back in, etc. Probably not a big deal as I suspect most people will use memory cards.
The display quality is simply stunning. I've never seen a dedicated portable photo display gadget that is even in the same league. You can fiddle with the transitions, image order, set it up to turn on and off automatically, and a bunch of other stuff with the buttons right on the frame. It's very user friendly. I immediately thought that getting one for each grandparent would be a great Christmas gift. Add a SD card preloaded with pictures, and every six months you can mail Grandma new high res pictures of the kids.
That assumes that $249 is in your Christmas budget. The price is really the only negative. When Office Depot is selling a brand new PC with Windows XP for $250 after rebates, it's hard to justify spending that much on a snazzy little photo display that is probably running a modified Linux kernel.
So sorry Mom. You'll have to make do with visiting Flickr for another year.
PermalinkComments
Drool ...
Posted by: Stephanie in TX at September 26, 2006 10:42 PMHow long does a set of batteries last? And what type?
Posted by: Daryl Cobranchi at September 27, 2006 01:54 AMIt's got an internal rechargable battery. I'm keeping it plugged in, so I have no idea what the battery life is.
Posted by: COD at September 27, 2006 08:09 AMSpeaking of Philips, have you seen this: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Yd99gyE4jCk
Posted by: Ulrike at September 27, 2006 05:45 PMPost a comment