to duel or not to duel

V

valladao65

Well-known member
I was out on a shoot today and my duel adapter decided that today was a good day to die.

I have always hated how the thing is designed, but its always done the job. I especially don't like the way it hangs off your laptop in the field when you get in tight spaces and dont have a desk to sit it on right next to your laptop. I am surprised its lasted as long as it has - so props for that much to the Duel Adapters gang.

So anyway...

Do y'all think buying a new adapter makes sense, or any thoughts on just buying a cheap laptop with a built-in PCMCIA slot?

A slightly older laptop is fairly cheap these days, and I dont need the laptop for anything but transferring footage. I lug around a big ol' Dell E1705 (17incher) as it is now, so maybe it makes sense to just buy a cheap-o smaller one.

The new Panasonic adapter is $350 and I can get a whole new laptop for that.

I'd love to hear the pearls of wisdom this site so often spews forth...

Thanks,
Mike
 
my old powerbook G4 works great for P2 transfer. the only drag is it only has usb1.0 (as opposed to the MUCH faster 2.0) so if a client brings me a usb drive, its painfully slow.

so what i generally do is:
1. just transfer everything to the internal drive then dump it to all firewire drive back at the studio
2. bring my own firewire drive to hand off to clients.
 
Get a Lenovo R500 along with an ExpressCard eSATA or FireWire 800 adapter and then a copy of Mac Drive.

You'll never be the same!
 
I use an older Powerbook and a Duel with equal success. I understand many people have problems with Duel but mine has always worked flawlessly. I must be living right.
 
I just noticed the Addonics adapter is only $60 and works just as well in my PC world...

It seems this would also solve the issues presented by having the Duel adapter hanging off the side of the laptop, I think I'll go the Addonics route this time!

Thanks for your thoughts y'all.

Mike
 
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it's also miserably expensive for a usb reader. throwing in a fw 800 port with the usb would justify the price a little more.
 
valladao65 said:
Do y'all think buying a new adapter makes sense, or any thoughts on just buying a cheap laptop with a built-in PCMCIA slot?
Click to expand...

Just a heads up:

The DuelAdapter and CradleAdapter are being discontinued. There is still limited availability right now, so if anyone's thinking of picking one up, they won't be available for much longer.

David S. said:
There is some conflicting info about pricing over a the NAB2010 feed.

Is it $250 or $350?
Click to expand...

It's 350.00.

Best,

Jasmine Moore
Administrative Assistant
Specialized Communications / Noventri
20940 Twin Springs Dr.
Smithsburg, MD 21783-1510 USA
800-359-1858 (US)
301-790-0103
Fax: 301-790-0173
jasminem@spec-comm.com
www.spec-comm.com
www.noventri.com
 
FWIW...
I got the addonics adapter yesterday and plugged it right in (to my Dell E1705), no driver issues, no problems of any kind. The drive was instantly recognized and I'm good to go.

I think I'll get a second one since they're so cheap and being without in the field sucks miserably. (When my duel adapter died, I had to download via firewire to my laptop - thank God I had some big breaks in shooting to allow for camera down-time.)
 
The Addonics/Rosewill adapter is sweet; it's incredibly cheap, compact, no drivers needed, and I think it's so much better a design than the Duel's cable design.

Only problem is, they won't work on Apple hardware at all... not even if you boot the Apple computer in BootCamp under Windows. So for PC users, the Addonics/Rosewill is an excellent option, but for the Apple users, it looks like the PCD2 is the only real low-cost option.
 
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