With my mum's new camera we got a photodock in an attempt to make it dead easy for her to copy photos to her computer.
Bullet point review:
- photodock conforms to 'pictbridge' standard which appears to support multiple camera and dock makers.
- the camera drops onto the top of the dock. It plugs in but with zero resistance.
- the photodock includes a printer that can print 6x4 inch pictures of good quality. When you put the camera in the dock it's screen comes on and you just pick a picture to print using the left and right arrow buttons and then press another button to print it.
- the paper and ink cartridges cost about £28 for 80 prints (I think it was) which is expensive: 35p a print. I can get them printed online for 7p each.
- the dock makes it very easy to copy pictures to a pc. Install the kodak software, plug in usb and it is a simple matter of putting the camera in the dock, the Kodak software fires up and copys the pictures. The kodak software is ok in a dumbed-down kind of way.
- the dock comes with rechargable batteries for the camera and will charge it. They were Ni-mh, which are not as good as lithium ion (memory effects and rapid ageing).
Conclusion: the dock is ok, it makes things easy if you find plugging USB cable too fiddly but the printer is an expensive way to print.
Peter's Moblog
I can't comment on the speed of ageing of Ni-MH batteries, but if you get memory effects that's a problem with your re-charging process, not with the battery technology.