I am looking at purchasing a digital camera and have decided on one. When I browse sellers, they all bundle something different to try to entice you to buy. One has a card reader included. What is this and is it necesssary?
A card reader is a device that plugs in a USB slot and allows you to take the card out of the camera and plud directly into it The main advantage is that it normaly quick to transfer photos across the the computer and does not use the camera batt power
This is a gizmo that typically plugs into your computers USB slot that allows you to put in the memory card from the computer. Make that you have USB slot. Some of the card readers are for laptop PC Card slots, which fewer and fewer laptops have these days. Almost all digital cameras have a USB jack and USB cable that can be used to transfer pics, however this does use the battery. 2 gb's of images can take 20-30 images to transfer, so the card reader is convenient but not typically required.
A card reader plugs into the USB port of your computer and allows you to pull-out the memory card from the camera and put card into the reader. Look on a radio shack, best buy, or any electronics website and you can see different ones to see if the one they are offering is worth much or a good one. Is it necessary? Well, every camera I've had includes a cord to plug your camera into the USB port on your computer. The only down side is you always run some sort of risk of either damaging the memory card, camera contents, and/or formatting problems with the program your computer runs to view the photos. Whereas the card reader method is more no-brainer, less chance for error, just up-load the pictures onto the computer and do what you wanted with them from there. I always suspect a catch if someone has to offer something additional to try to get you to buy it. To me, a product should be worth it's salt to sell just it to anyone. But that's just my opinion. Card readers are nice. Just don't use one because don't have one, lol. Good luck, hope that helps.
