Picturegear 4.1 lite!!

[arl...@igc.org]

Howdy, I just bought a used Sony Handycam and could really use a copy
of Sony PictureGear to get the pictures off of the memory card. Can
anyone give me a lead on where to get the software?

Thanks.
Arlette

[Martin Heffels]

Are the pictures on a memory-card? Why don't you get a seperate reader for
it? Offers much more flexibility (you could get the pix off your friend's
cams for instance).

cheers

-martin-
--

[Ray S]

I'd be surprised if you actually had to have PictureGear to get the
pictures off. If that were the case I'd consider Sony to be major jerks
for locking the pictures up that way.

[sandy...@msn.com]

I have owned 4 Sony VAIO computers, all of which came with PictureGear,
and three
Sony Camcorders. Initially, I tried to use PictureGear to download the
still photos from my TRV900 just once. It worked, but took FOREVER to
complete the download! I then purchased a Lexar USB card reader for
the TRV900 compact flash photo cards, which were carried in the TRV900
in their own PCMCIA CF adapter. A full 32 or 64 MB card would copy
onto the various VAIO computers in a few seconds. The same Lexar card
reader works fine on everything from an old Pentuim Pro to a Dual Xeon
which I use for video editing now.

I did, however, discover that Picture Gear had several other features
which were very valuable, the most useful of which was the Panorama
Maker option. I decided to purchase a version from Sony which would
work on any PC, VAIO or not. The cost was only $50, as I recall, and I
have used it on every computer I have owned with great success. The
card reader will show up as a removeable hard drive in Windows
Explorer, so just open it up and select all the photos and copy them to
one of your hard drives. When you are sure you have successfully
copied all the photos, you can delete the photos on the card and you
are again ready to go.

Note: Do not "wipe" the card and reformat it in the computer, as the
camcorder may not use the same format. If you re-insert it into the
camcorder and get an error message, just go into the menu of your
camcorder and find the format command. The camcorder will re-format to
the correct format, and you are good to go.

Now the downside.......Sony no longer sells the sofware ;-(

The version I bought was 3.2, and I don't think Sony ever offered a
version later than that except for the VAIO-only ones.

I would suggest you forget about Picture gear and just get a USB
multi-card reader and you will be much happier.

Mike

[arl...@igc.org]

Thanks for all the great input. A separate reader is the way I will
go!

Arlette