Eye-fiPro
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Eye-Fi Pro X2 cards have arrived, and you probably want one
I pre-ordered an Eye-Fi Pro X2 from Amazon a few weeks ago. (Don't be too jealous, I did it when I decided that I was going to have to wait for an iPad for financial reasons.) This is not my first Eye-Fi card, as I bought a 2GB version a few years ago -- and quite frankly, I hated it and thought it was overpriced. We have talked about the Eye-Fi before, but if you are not familiar with it, here's a basic summary: the Eye-Fi cards are Wi-Fi enabled, meaning that you can upload your pictures from your camera without a USB cable or card reader. You can set it to automatically upload to iPhoto, or just to a specific folder on your computer. You also have the option to have your pictures uploaded to MobileMe, Flickr, Evernote, Picasa, Facebook, and many other places (see chart in new window). Videos can be uploaded to Flickr (only 90 seconds maximum, though), Picasa, YouTube, Facebook, Phanfare, and Photobucket. You can even set it up to send notifications via email, Facebook, Twitter, or SMS when transfers start, finish, or are interrupted. The Pro X2, at US$150, is still expensive and it is SD-only (sorry, CF users), but the new card comes with a host of new features which make it worthwhile. The first is the the card is a Class 6 device, meaning that it is fast. The older Eye-Fi card always felt like it was really slow to me, which meant that I didn't always want to use it. This new card is as fast as any card I own, and the limiting factor now seems to be my camera, not the card. There's a whole lot more.
Eye-Fi X2 series of 802.11n Class 6 cards ships today, AT&T WiFi hotspots added to the fold
The new Eye-Fi "X2" series we saw at CES is hitting store shelves and FedEx trucks today, bringing with it 802.11n radios, Class 6 SD card speeds, an "Endless Memory" mode, and expanded storage. What's perhaps even more interesting, however, is the fact that all Eye-Fi cards with an active hotspot account can now use AT&T's WiFi, which includes Starbucks and McDonald's in its ever-expanding grasp. The pricing tiers are pure Eye-Fi, of course, with the $50 Connect X2 offering JPEG uploads to sharing sites like Flickr, Facebook, and YouTube, along with 4GB of storage; the $100 Explore X2, which chews 8GB of capacity, and includes geotagging, uploading to the user's own computer over a WiFi network, and a year of free hotspot service; and finally the Eye-Fi Pro X2, with 8GB of storage, JPEG and RAW uploads, and support for creating ad hoc WiFi connections with a computer, all for the low, low price of $150. All the cards are available today at major retailers, PR is after the break. %Gallery-82032%
Eye-Fi Pro wireless SD card hands-on
We're all pretty spoiled in these digital days; not that long ago taking a look at a vacation's worth of photos required a trip to the store, a couple of hours (or days) wait, and then the better part of an afternoon getting fingerprints all over a stack of poorly composed shots that you daren't throw out because you just paid good money to have them printed. Now you pop a memory card into your computer, wait a few seconds for them to fly into an appropriately labeled folder, and then... probably forget you took them. It's so much easier it's hard to fathom the process getting even more simple, but that's what Eye-Fi has done with its line of wireless flash memory cards, which beam pictures directly from your camera. The company has just announced the $149, 4GB Eye-Fi Pro to make the process even more direct, letting you send pictures straight to a computer while also adding some additional features that pros and semi-pros will appreciate. We put it through its paces after the break.
