Anyone mind a little anecdotal humor? Good. It wasn’t that long ago that I was helping a friend join the wonderful world of PC gaming. He couldn’t get anything amazing, a simple AMD 1090T and an old GTX 560, not bad for a first PC that cost less than 400$. Either way while building it with him, with his wife watching in anticipation, she asked me if I can put the card reader from her old PC in this new gaming rig. I scoffed at the idea of putting some old junk in a new PC, but she insisted. I teased them that it was silly and a waste of time. I was wrong. It wasn’t that much later that I found myself needing to go buy a card reader to accommodate my new camera, of course I called and told him so we could laugh at me together.

Not everyone does need a card reader, but when you do, you will need a good one. I won’t say what I got but I will say the reader I bought was so terrible I could not transfer more than a few minutes of video at a time, and no more than 20 or so images that are hi-res. During transfer files would simply get deleted or corrupted and I would lose my work. I learned to deal with it by making short video clips and only transferring a little bit of info at a time, but it certainly made my task difficult. I have wanted to get a better card reader for a while but you know how it is, even a little money is too much money sometimes. Then at the peak of my frustration, at a time where I was at my wits end, I just happened to luck into a new USB 3.0 multi reader from VANTEC.