Softick Card Export II

By Laura, posted Friday, Dec. 30th, 2005
Reader Comments: 13

I noticed a new icon on the bottom right of my screen…….

I clicked on this icon. I selected Card Export………………….

And now the new icon changed to show the new mode…….

Then I cradled my IPAQ. I heard the USB connection sound and my PC recognized 2 new pieces of hardware and went off to load the drivers. I went to My Computer and saw that I now had 2 new disk drives, D and E.

Disk drive D was labeled ‘IBM FLASH’. This was my CF card. E had a jumbled name. This was my 2GB SD card. When I double-clicked on it, all my folders and files were there just fine. Now it may be jumbled because of the problems I had with it in my PC, when my PC would only format it as if it was just 1GB. I sent a support question off to Softick – I received a reply 3 days later.

I uncradled my IPAQ – the 2 new drives went away. I clicked on the CardExport icon, and now selected ‘Activesync’. I put my IPAQ back in the cradle and now it synced as normal and when I went to My Computer, all was as it normally is.

So now it came to comparing the speed of transferring a file to my storage card.

Previous to installing Softick Card Export II PPC, I had transferred Dave’s IPAQ Podcast #37, which is 25Megabytes, to my SD card via Activesync. This podcast took 3 minutes 30 seconds to transfer to my SD card.

Now with my new software, I selected ‘Card Export’ mode, and transferred the same podcast. This time it took 52 seconds.

I tried it with a larger file – A 500MB movie. So I selected ‘Card Export’ mode. The transfer to my SD card took 18 minutes. I switched to ‘Active Sync’ mode, and this time the transfer took over 3 hours.

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All,
One downside that I see with the software is that you lose automatic conversion to ppc format on transfer

Posted by , Tuesday, Mar. 14th, 2006

magnusBM29 - Thank you so much for your feedback. I hadn't noticed your second point, that you cannot access your storage cards from your IPAQ while the IPAQ is cradled and in 'Card Export' mode. Thank you so much for pointing this out.

Posted by Laura, Monday, Mar. 6th, 2006

I downloaded my copy of Card Export and there are two main things I noticed.

1) you do not need to have active sync installed on the computer you are using. When card export mounts your drive, it doesnt install anything to the computer, so if you are using a computer where you cant install software, this tool is incredibly useful.

2)When you switch to card export mode and you have access to your drive from the computer you are using, you cannot access your storage card from your PDA, just the computer. So if you want to load documents and files to your storage card while listening to music, your pretty much out of luck.

Magnus

Posted by magnusBM29, Wednesday, Mar. 1st, 2006

Yes, if you don't want to sync, and just want to copy files to and from your cards - then I think this would work without Activesync, though I haven't actually tried it without Activesync installed on my PC. You can download a trial to try this out though.

Posted by Laura, Monday, Oct. 24th, 2005

Does this require Active sync to be already installed on the machine? I'd like to use this and a sync cable to just connect to a machine without having to load anything on it or carry a card reader.

Posted by Bai Shen, Monday, Oct. 24th, 2005

A wonderful article Laura! It's so very helpful to those folks who do not have a card reader available to them!

I look forward to your future reviews!

Posted by , Saturday, Oct. 22nd, 2005

Excellent review, Laura. (Maiden voyage? Who'd believe it? Written like a pro.)

I can imagine the software very useful when away from our regular bases. We're set up with ActiveSync and have card readers. But suppose you're dealing with someone who isn't? This could be a lifesaver in such a situation. (At the least a real timesaver in avoiding the workarounds you'd have to do.)

Thanks, Laura, for bringing it to our attention.

Marc

Posted by MarcoMillions, Saturday, Oct. 22nd, 2005

Great article Laura, and usefull software too! I like the fact that now there is a way to speedily transfer files to the SD card without having to take the card out and place it into a reader. Much more convienient to just switch modes using the tray icon.

Posted by Physboy, Friday, Oct. 21st, 2005

I knew I was't imagining it:

Znet:
An upgrade to the OS, Windows Mobile 5.0, was announced in May, but is not expected to appear in devices for a few months. Among the key features of Windows Mobile 5 is the ability to store user data in persistent ROM rather than RAM (which is lost if the battery is drained) and to mount a handheld as a USB Mass Storage Device for quick and easy data transfer to and from a host PC.

As I understand, it's up to the OEM to actually enable it on the device. I wonder if Softick card II works under WM5?

Posted by JNGold, Friday, Oct. 21st, 2005

Laura, great job you are a natural at writing reviews.

Posted by Steve Trotto, Friday, Oct. 21st, 2005

WOW Laura great job and thank you for sharing your thoughts on this software app!!!

Posted by David Ciccone, Friday, Oct. 21st, 2005

Nice review Laura.

Does any one know if this functionality is supported natively in WM5. I could have sworn that I read that somewhere (???)

Posted by JNGold, Friday, Oct. 21st, 2005

This is Laura's maiden voyage folks.....nice job Laura!!

I like the program and enjoyed your review!

Posted by Jack Cook, Friday, Oct. 21st, 2005

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