Forget about cameras with 16 MB smartmedia, they gonna bug you, cause they store less pictures than conventional cameras. I donīt know why, but the Hitachi M2 seems to be the only real multimedia workhorse with up to 1 GB of memory through itīs standard PCMCIA Type III adapter. What I needed, when I bought the M2 one year ago, was a digital recorder for any kind of input: sound, video, photos. To quickly record an idea whilst driving to a client, taking over 3,000 photos during a two-day journey in northern Siberia with -30 degrees celsius, recording my favourite italian rock group during a live concert. It is just incredible, how you can get used to always have recording capacity around, concentrated on a small multi-device like the Hitachi M2. In the meantime I have 2 harddrives with 1024 MB each for my M2. If one media is full (80 minutes of mpeg video or over 10,000 jpeg shots), I exchange drives and continue. Then, I plug the full drive into the PCMCIA Slot of my Laptop and copy the contents onto the internal drive. Ok, I had the situation, that the laptop ran short of disk space. Thats why I now look for a mobile CD burner...
Two disadvantages though: The M2 looks somehow bad, not as smart as the Sony devices. And, more important, the optical resolution is not as good as it should be for a 100% perfect product. It is _not_ usable for journalistic purposes or any kind of action which needs hardcopy.



Recommended: Yes