My best purchase of the year, heck in many years: a $5 USB cardreader!

I never trusted these 150-in-one cardreaders, they look/feel flimsy,
made in China, etc etc.. actually I never needed one, I always transfered pictures
and videos through USB directly from my camera(s) the old fashioned way. 

But ever since I started shooting with my Canon 450D, 
(in RAW format) the sizes are around 15mb/pic, so it adds up.
when I come home from a walk with say like 70-100 pictures,
uploading them to my PC = time to make coffee. (or Xmen vs SF loading times on PS1 if you will)

It takes minutes, and we all hate waiting right?
I vaguely remembered reading somewhere that uploading through a cardreader
is so much faster, I was skeptical, especially about those cheap ones on Ebay.
Well I am a believer now.

Transfer speeds are around 20mb/sec, its almost as fast as copying from an
internal drive to another! I’m definitely impressed, the difference is night/day! 
even if you have fast Class 4/Class 6 memory cards (SDHC in my case), uploading 
from the camera directly is just too slow, unless you shoot in jpeg..

The only annoying thing is the blue blinking led when it’s in reading mode, 
But hey, for US$5 I can’t really complain can I?

and oh, I’m finally getting ready to paint my GP03, but only because my buddy
Maddog told me was about to prime his Strike. Can’t get too much behind ;p
(no I’m not racing you dude, but it keeps me on schedule somehow)
Bah, so many hobbies and things to do, so little time… 

Here you can see both arms, 38 pieces each.