Olympus digicam download to Sony Vaio laptop

[SBD]

Hi all not sure if this topic is computers or cameras so apologies for posting in both. As follows: purchased the missus a Olympus Mju 300 digi-cam in sales, lovely little thing! Installed software onto my Vaio laptop and came to download card-full of her first attempts. Then proceded to get increasingly more frustrated as I got a series of "device not ready" or "no pictures saved on camera" etc. Rang Olympus help line and got a load of half arsed dribble (in german half the time - lucky I can speak it) until finaly the useless, but polite, young man cottoned on to the fact that I have a Vaio laptop and proceded to mutter something about AMD chips and not being compatible at which point I was completely lost! The upshot is that I installed software on mates Dell desktop and Bob's your uncle perfect picture transfer etc. So as per my new German friends advice it's the laptop at "fault".
Has anyone who isn't a techno-idiot like me got any understanding of this and what I can do, if anything, to rectify? I'm not going round my chum's house everytime as some images may be of a personal nature shall we say
Thanks in advance.

[TT Tim]

What media does the Mju use?

I have a three digital cameras and download all the images to the laptop via a PCMCIA card adapter, it's a quicker and neater solution IMHO that playing around with plugging the camera into the USB/Firewire port.

The PCMCIA cards can be vought very cheaply on eBay.

HTH

Tim

[simpo two]

SBD said:

purchased the missus a Olympus Mju 300... Installed software onto my Vaio laptop and came to download card-full of her first attempts. Then proceded to get increasingly more frustrated as I got a series of "device not ready" or "no pictures saved on camera" etc.

I have a Mju300 too! You don't need the Camedia software to transfer pix to your PC. I connect my camera to the PC (AMD Athlon) uising the USB lead and the PC sees it as a removeable hard drive. I have a shortcut G:DCIM100OLYMP which, when the camera's connected, gives a window with all the pic files in it. Then I just cut and paste them to wherever I want on the HD.
Owzat?

[stevieb]

I dont have the camera but i do have a Vaio Laptop what OS are you using as i have had no probs downloading from Digicam and Mini DV Camcorder

steve

[simpo two]

TT Tim said:

What media does the Mju use?

It uses xD, which might spoil your plans!

[SBD]

Running Windows XP at the moment, card reader was mentioned on other board as well so this may be the way to go. Other way may be to sell Olympus to v kind chum at paid price and buy Sony Cybershot which I assume will not have problems.
What is the general consensus as to the comparable merits of these 2 brands?

[TT Tim]

Here's a quiick and dirty solution to your problem, all for the princely sum of £4.50!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2985077743&category=48546

I have also seen an xD to Smart Media adapter for a couple of quid, add that to a SM PCMCIA card reader for, again, a couple of quid and hey presto, Robert's your Mother's brother.

Oh btw, you're not missing a lot with the Olympus software, once the images are on your HDD everything works as normal.

HTH

Tim

[SBD]

Thanks Tim, your help much appreciated.

Andy