We just bought one of these for mother in law. husband could tell you more about the hassles we had. Not terrible bad hassles, but things you need to be aware of.
We are Mac people. mother in law has an old Mac, not online. She can't use it much because it hurts her neck, plus she can't sit in the chair for too long anyway. Getting old and frail. So we have all chipped in for this.
Now, mother in law is going to Perth for Christmas, to stay with her daughter (who has also chipped in for this). Our plan was, we would load on SOME photos from this side of the country and she would get photos from the west coast, so she could have ALL her grandchildren scrolling across her photo frame.
husband wanted her to open her gift and have it all ready to work (mother in law is a very immediate sort of person!). So after we bought the thing (right under her nose; she didn't suspect a thing) we got home and he opened it up. He'd even asked the sales bloke, "This is compatible with Mac, isn't it?"
The sales rep assured him it is.
Once we got all the packaging off we finally had dug our way down to the (very thick) manual. In many languages. And apparently in all of those languages, it says it will only work with two specific easy child operating systems. We tried everything (because husband has been known to achieve the impossible, with software packages). First we tried using a flash drive. No go. Would read nothing from the Mac. We figured, what the hey? Surely they're just JPEGS? We get emailed them all the time, Mac can read just about anything, we NEVER have this trouble...
We tried loading onto the SD card, we tried the flash drive, we tried with every computer we had in the house, including BF2's easy child. We even networked computers and photo frame together.
easy child 2/difficult child 2's VERY new Mac laptop (she bought it only three months ago) was able to say hello to the photo frame, but not register anything. BF2's easy child (philistine) was able to be 'seen' and his JPEGS could also be seen, but we can't count on him always being around for us to use his computer to transfer all our old photo files via his computer,onto the photo frame. We were able to load photos freshly taken by the camera from the camera's SD card, but no old stuff, even when we processed it back onto the camera's SD card from the computer.
So we took it back, politely explaining the problem. We also took with us our cameras, the SD cards and husband's flash drive loaded with photos from BF2's computer as well as from easy child 2/difficult child 2's computer.
The outcome - in the store, NO photo frame could read all the pictures on the flash drive (which was formatted for easy child). They could see the current photos from the camera SD card and any old ones loaded from the easy child, but none loaded from the Mac. They were helpful in the store but had to admit defeat. They suggested another store, which we went to eventually (trying more on the way - same results).
Finally, husband was in a technical gadget/CD/DVD/games store and together they all worked on the problem. They used the new Macs in store to play around with. We finally found a way to do the job, but we will need to use easy child 2/difficult child 2's new Mac until we eventually upgrade to the newer operating systems. The trouble with Macs, they don't break down very often so we don't feel the need to go get a new computer, ours can still do stuff that PCs are only just getting excited about. That's one reason our kids are so good at computers - we could let them play with the Macs, even when the kids were babies, with no fear for the computer. We got our first Mac when easy child 2/difficult child 2 was a baby, difficult child 1 was a toddler and easy child was not yet school-aged. So the younger two were using computers in infancy, learning to use the mouse as well as arrow keys to guide a cursor round a maze. Then they learnt to read, do maths etc using a game designed specifically for babies.
But could we get these photos loaded?
Well, eventually. And it's not that satisfactory, but it will work for us. We've got a 1 Gb SD card thrown in on the deal, we'll load up a lot of our photos onto it via easy child 2/difficult child 2's computer, before mother in law leaves next week. Then we'll load them onto the frame, ensure there is enough power in it, prime sister in law to be ready with her photos, and ask her to take a snapshot of mother in law's face when she opens her present.
If husband finds this thread he might add his own more technical expertise to the problem, defining the terms more carefully and explaining exactly how to get around this problem, for those with Macs.
Oh, and because of the mucking around and having to return stuff etc - we ended up with a more expensive and better photo frame, but it cost us less. And we AGAIN did it under mother in law's nose, and she didn't suspect a thing! We had the photo frame in its packaging and then in a thick plastic bag, in our shopping trolley while we bought our groceries. mother in law dumped her cloth shopping bag right on top of the photo frame box.
Good luck with your purchases, I hope you find things work OK for you.
Marg
