Freecom Traveller II

Advantages: Portable, cheap
Disadvantages: uses a lot of CPU

...I bought the Freecom portable DVD-ROM drive for my laptop, which only had an internal CD ROM drive. I wanted to play DVD's and was able to do so. The drive is external, and connects to any computer via a parallell port, firexire, USB or PC card, through the PCMCIA slot of a laptop. If the PCMCIA port also has ZV (Zoomed Video) capability, it is a huge bonus. It came with an excellent driver, and software, and was easy enough to install on Windows ME (it is also supported by NT, 95, 98, XP etc). However, I did find that the picture and sound were quite jerky, and sometimes almost unwatchable. I got around this by buying a hardware MPEG II decoder card ("Dvd-to-go", from Margi systems), which sorted out the problem. But I was lucky that I happened to have 2 PCMCIA slots, as it turned out i needed both: one for the Freecom card and one... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

Advantages: Lightweight, Slim, Auto-sync
Disadvantages: Shame there isn't a higher capacity

...This Freecom External Hard Drive is a 2.5" Hard Drive that has a USB interface and uses your computer's bus power to power itself. This means that an AC adapter is not required. With so few of these truly bus powered drives around, this is one of the best, followed closely by the Lacie bus powered drive. Thsi drive is ideal for laptop users who travel with a lot of data, or for those going on holiday with laptops who want to take their mp3's, movies and software with them. It is also great for transferring files to your laptop from another desktop computer. The drive is small enough to fit in a side pocket or to be held in yur hand without difficulty. The box comes with a good instruction manual, although really one is not needed. The drive is a plug and play device, and windows picks it up as any ordeinary drive. I recommend you... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Extremely durable, vast capacity, simple to use, reasonable price
Disadvantages: Not always plug & pay ; needs software installation on a few PC's

...One thing about joining Ciao it encourages you to look objectively at the products you own or use regularly particularly if someone else may benefit. A product I like very much, use regularly and have had no problems with whatsoever is the Freecom ToughDrive Pro Hard drive 120 GB. This was given to me as a present by the man in my life (who in truth could be described as an IT geek) I have had several memory sticks in the past as I frequently carry projects to and from home, work, meetings and conferences and they have become a real part of my life and one that I couldn’t manage without ( sad but true) I’ve had problems in the past from loosing memory sticks ( not too bad if I can find them again !) because they are small or because the fiddly little clips break away (I used to keep them clipped to my car keys for safety (ha), and I... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful