Stupid Evil Bastard: Kodak’s EasyShare software ain’t so easy.

Kodak’s EasyShare software ain’t so easy.

Posted by Les on Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 08:47 PM. Read 953 times. Tags: crappy software, digital cameras, kodak easyshare, rants

My mother-in-law recently purchased a Kodak C613 digital camera and finally got around to trying to pull pictures off of it tonight. Like any dutiful consumer she installed the included software which forgoes the simple act of transferring pictures from the camera to your PC in lieu of the unnecessarily complicated goal of being an everything-in-one digital photo album/printing/art project thingy. Kodak calls their software “EasyShare” because it’s supposedly so easy to use. It is, as they say, to laugh.

The software recognizes the camera when you plug it in, but it steadfastly refuses to actually transfer any of the pictures. Instead it lists off all the pictures which it didn’t transfer and doesn’t tell you why. So I told the software to check for upgrades and lo there was one. A lengthy—even by broadband speeds—download and install later the software asked to reboot the PC. Upon starting back up the software announced that it would have to upgrade all the photo albums on the PC to work with the new software. That is, all one of the photo albums which contained a grand total of zero pictures. Clicking the upgrade button presented us with a Fatal Error requester that suggested we run the “repair” function of the install script. So we did and, after another mandatory reboot, the software once again announced it would need to upgrade the photo albums whereupon it once again crashed and suggested we repair the software.

During this entire period the camera itself, despite being detected by the software, never showed up in the Device Manager for Windows. Fed up with the shitty software Kodak provided I proceeded to yank it out by its teeth. Immediately afterward I plugged in the camera, Windows detected it and added it to its device listing, and the built-in Scanner and Camera wizard kicked in and we were able to successfully download and remove the pictures from her camera. All this after an hour and a half of fighting with Kodak’s “easy” software solution.

Say what you will about Windows XP, but that built-in scanner and camera wizard is just this side of perfect.

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QueenMillefiori

Posted on 06/10/2008 at 09:05 PM

Google’s Picasa at http://picasa.google.com/

Free, has nice editing tools and works excellently with my Kodak camera at work or my personal camera.

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decrepitoldfool

Posted on 06/10/2008 at 09:23 PM

I tell people never install the software that comes with your camera. Windows and Mac have built-in software for that that works great. I have not tried the utility in Ubuntu yet.

I’ve seen “EasyShare” reduce a computer to unusability requiring a rebuild.

Ragman

Posted on 06/10/2008 at 10:21 PM

I didn’t like the change Kodak made to their software a couple of years ago. I still use the software I got with our first digital in 2002 for handling/naming pics. I don’t know if Windows will handle the docking cradle. Something I’ll have to look into when I either get a new rig or rebuild.

Bog Brother

Posted on 06/10/2008 at 10:41 PM

I don’t know about EasyShare (I’d never buy a Kodak camera myself. It’s not that I live within spitting distance of their corporate headquarters, but since they went to digital, I’ve heard nothing but bad stuff about their cameras), but I bought an HP scanner/printer/copier a few years back, and GAAAHH!!!! I hate that damn software that comes with it for using the scanner!!!!! I hate HP MEMORIES DISC THAT YOU HAVE TO INSTALL AGAINST YOUR WILL AND HALF THE TIME IT FREEZES MID WAY THROUGH INSTALLATION!!!!!!

I also hate buying a new computer of any sort out of the box and having to deal with that frickin’ “VALUE ADD” software shit they PUT ON THE FUCKING COMPUTER AND ALL IT DOES IS EAT UP SYSTEM RESOURCES AND ADDS NO VALUE TO THE OS AT ALLL!!!

Oh yeah, and WINDOWS VISTA CAN KISS MY ASS!!!!

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decrepitoldfool

Posted on 06/10/2008 at 10:47 PM

I dunno, Bog Brother, most of what I’ve seen of Kodak digital has been good-to-excellent. Especially the higher models with Schneider lenses. It’s just the crappy software, and you can use the camera very happily without it.

QueenMillefiori

Posted on 06/10/2008 at 10:54 PM

I’ve used VueScan http://www.hamrick.com/ on a variety of computers with a variety of scanners over the years and love it. I have an older HP scanner at work that came with nice simple software and I don’t plan on upgrading anytime soon.

My little Kodak camera for the library is pretty good for a little P&S but their software is junk.

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“Space isn’t remote at all. It’s only an hour’s drive away if your car could go straight upwards.”
Fred Hoyle, English astronomer, mathematician, & popularizer of science (1915 - 2001)

jim

Posted on 06/11/2008 at 12:44 AM

Get a card reader and download the pics with that.

ingolfson

Posted on 06/11/2008 at 03:21 AM

Same here with my phonecam (which is a REALLY fancy piece of SonyEriccson - don’t you KNOW what these things can DO these days, its amazing). I never installed any software, and even my Win2000 can detect the drive just fine (though I have to click away three error messages first).

Bog Brother

Posted on 06/11/2008 at 06:09 AM

I dunno, Bog Brother, most of what I’ve seen of Kodak digital has been good-to-excellent. Especially the higher models with Schneider lenses. It’s just the crappy software, and you can use the camera very happily without it.

So you agree with me on Windows Vista though, right ?

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decrepitoldfool

Posted on 06/11/2008 at 07:50 AM

So you agree with me on Windows Vista though, right ?

Oh hell yeah, Vista is a giant sucking pile of suckage that sucks, from what I’ve seen. And alas early rumors are that Windows 7 will be just a gussied-up version of Vista rather than the complete break that Microsoft needs.

Les

Posted on 06/11/2008 at 09:44 AM

Jim, once we trashed the Kodak software the included USB cable worked just fine. Though if she amasses enough SD cards I may recommend a reader to her eventually.

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Ragman

Posted on 06/11/2008 at 11:44 AM

Bog Brother: I’ve had really good experiences with our first Kodak - it’s why we got a second one. The software does suck, as mentioned.

I never installed the HP crap that came with my printer, but they are on my do-not-buy list now. We have an HP Deskjet 722C, circa 1997. We bought our first Kodak digital in 2001*. When we tried out photo printing with Kodak paper, they had the explicit settings to use with our HP through their older Picture Software. The photos printed nicely - not as good as buying off Ofoto, but still looked good. Then, HP upgraded their drivers (I don’t remember if it was the XP driver upgrade or not) and HP changed the damn quality settings in the printer driver. Now I can’t print photos as good as before. Not that it really matters, since we prefer to buy prints from Ofoto anyway, but it’s a point against HP in my book. Not to mention HP ink and toner is expensive, and the Office Despot coupons I constantly get exclude HP ink & toner. If we get a color laser, it’ll likely be a Brother since they’ve got the cheapest toner (We don’t use refills/store brands, had nothing but trouble with them).

I haven’t touched Vista yet, but I keep hearing a vacuum-like sound whenever I get near it. I guess if you build a wind tunnel out of Vista boxes, it’ll suck somebody in.

My next desk rig will be totally from scratch. I’ve had it with the value-add, no source disk crap from the vendors. The only rig in my house that’s still OEM is my tablet pc, since I only have the Gateway source cds for it. The last Dell laptop I bought got wiped and reloaded before getting used. I’ll gladly pay a little extra to get the exact equipment I want w/o branding or quasi-proprietary construction.

For my Samsung P2 and my Sony Ericcson cell phone, I just go into Windows Explorer and copy old school. I get paranoid about Samsung Media Studio(or any other) monitoring my playlist with the seemingly “guilty until proved innocent” attitude RIAA/MPAA has.

*Bought the camera in late 2001, but I associate getting it with my daughter being born in 2002, so I mix the years up.

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