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Kensington – better known for their rugged notebook cases and locks to secure items in place – have brought out a 6 in 1 card reader. This has four slots, an extension lead for those with inaccessible USB slots and it is still small enough to fit in a pocket.

The unit is 10x4.5x1cm and weights less than 50grams. A standard USB plug fits on the end of a 5cm lead that stores in the back of the unit. Should this not be long enough attach the supplied one metre extension lead to that inaccessible USB port and the card reader itself can sit beside or on top of the PC.

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This unit is different to a number of other such units in that the unit has 5 LED’s on the top of the unit to show which of the four card slots are occupied, the fifth light shows when the unit is connected to the PC and receiving power.

The six card types accepted are Compact Flash/Micro Drive, Smart Media, Secure Digital/MMC and Memory Stick. The big name missing here is XD as used by both Fuji and Olympus and should you need support for XD then this unit is not for you.

Providing this unit will support all the card types you require it is very light and small, the 5cm of lead is often enough to take the card reader away from other USB ports and unless all your ports are inaccessible then the extension lead may not be required.

The unit will work with all USB ports on Windows 98 or later and also on USB MAC machines. Installation under Windows is said to require no external drivers. Certainly on the PC’s I tested it on Windows ME and Windows XP you just plug it in, Windows finds new hardware and tells you what it is. It thinks about it for around a minute and then tells you your new hardware is ready to use. No reboot should be required. My Computer now has four new icons marked as Removable Drives and labelled with the next four free drive letters.

With these devices I find it helpful to name the card from the camera or PDA as then that drive will be called that name and save you being told to ‘insert disc in drive ‘x’’ because you are not sure which letter represents your card.

Finding the product 1500095 I looked at on the Kensington site proved impossible at the time of writing. The US site www.kensington.com had product 33056 Portable Memory Card Reader available for $49.95. This seems to be an updated USB2 product (will still work with USB 1.1) and would be a better buy if you need to transfer large files as USB2 is 40 times faster than USB 1.1. The current exchange rate is near to $2 to £1 so if you to do not get stung for impost duty around £26 would be the price. A look at the www.amazon.com site has it for $37.99 with free shipping so that should bring it under £20.

Link http://www.kensington.com/html/1964.html