Preview: "At its core, it's a photo storage device aimed at working photographers who need to store or backup pictures in the field, separate from their Mac or Windows computer. The Giga Vu PRO evolution itself is a computer, with both a 400MHz AMD Alchemy Au1200 main processor and dedicated co-processors to handle the transfer of data from the CompactFlash card to the device and the transfer of data from the device to host computer over a USB 2.0 link. It's loaded with 128MB DDR SDRAM and runs Linux. Over 6 million lines of program code lurks under the hood, including 75,000 lines written specifically for the Giga Vu PRO evolution's photo features.
Speed of transfer from the memory card is the weak link in almost all photo storage devices we've tested. For example, a SanDisk Extreme III CompactFlash card is capable of passing data through a fast card reader to a computer at about 15MB/second. Take the same card, insert it into the Epson P-4000, and photos limp in at about 2.2MB/sec.
Enter the Giga Vu PRO evolution. Philips' Emmers says the raw throughput rate in card-to-device transfers is about 13.3MB/second with a capable card. Operations that take place just prior to and just after the transfer, including a prefetch step in which photo, movie, sound and other file types are recognized so that they can be sorted into their respective folders on the device at the end of the transfer, means the real-world throughput rate is about 8.3MB/second when calculated from the total transfer time, including the prefetch and post-sort."
Joby Gorillapod Focus
