I'm off to Prague in a few weeks time, and I'm taking the digital camera. All those shots of fascinating bridges, churches and historic buildings and I am paranoid that I'm going to run out of memory cards. So I've just invested in the Apacer Steno CP100. It looks a bit like one of those old fashioned CD players, and it is certainly bulky, but in reality it is a 'one button push' direct to CD recorder. It accepts CF cards (including MicroDrive), and SD, MMC, MS, SM types. In order to perform the backup, the unit doesn't need to be attached to a computer at all, although it has a USB 2 interface and cable. It comes very well supplied, with a nice carry case, a lithium ion 1800mAH rechargeable battery, a mains/charger unit which works on 100-240v, a car charger unit, and a copy of Nero, with a few blank discs for good measure. Oh, and there's a small manual as well.

It is very simple to operate - the battery will give you about two hours life and takes 3 hours to recharge. I copied files from a 512Mb 40 x CF card in just under 5 minutes. There are two buttons provided for this operation - a straight copy or copy with verify. The latter takes longer. Unfortunately, you won't be able to backup full 1Gb cards, as the equipment doesn't permit disk spanning. There is no LCD status panel, but rather a series of LEDs showing 'busy' or 'error', as well as battery status. On my computer with Windows XP Pro, no drivers were required, although a CD is provided with drivers for Windows 98. If you run a Mac with OS X 10.2 and above, you don't need a driver. The write speed is 24 x maximum (CDR) or 10 x for CDRW.

In short, the unit cost me about the price of 3 or 4 decent 512Mb CF cards (bought at £149 inc VAT and shipping from www.davoom.com with 'credit points' for future purchases). But with good quality blank CDs at around 30p, this is a cheap and reliable way to free up memory cards, but also to start a well-disciplined archiving system.

Postscript (after the trip to Prague 23/12/04): The drive worked well with a Viking half-gig CF card (slow speed) and as long as I didn't fill a 1 gig IBM microdrive, it did what it should do. However, there were problems and errors using the faster CF cards (40 x PQI). A quick visit to their website, and download the latest firmware, and everything is OK. Obviously, you need both a computer and an internet connection to re-flash the firmware and this is something you should check before doing critical work. My verdict is that it is 100% reliable (what more do you need?) and a cheap method of releasing memory cards.