Digital Home Thoughts: Alera Digital Photo Copy Cruiser

"Digital cameras certainly have their strengths, but when you've filled up your last memory card halfway through a two-week vacation, you might as well have run out of film. The Alera Digital Photo Copy Cruiser addresses this problem by combining a memory-card reader and a CD writer in a single appliance. The Copy Cruiser can back up nearly 700MB of photos to disc with the touch of a button. It includes a headphone jack that lets you use the device as a portable audio-CD player, and when attached to a PC, it provides all the functionality of an external CD-RW drive and an eight-format card reader."



The device is capable of reading CF I and II, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, Microdrive, MultiMedia Card, SecureDigital, and SmartMedia cards. It can play back CD-Audio and has a headphone out. Plus, the device supports USB 2.0 (unfortunately it is a USB 1.1 interface for the card reader); and at a mere 2lbs but with a whopping 48X/36X/12X CD read/write/rewrite speed I think this would be a great accessory on vacation. An extensive review of the device can be found here.

I have a 1GB CF card in my EOS 10D and even though I take a lot of pictures, I seldom travel without my laptop so I am usually covered. What do you guys currently use to back up your images on vacation if your flash card fills up?