Aluratek 10.5-Inch Digital Photo Frame 256MB Internal Memory (Black) - ADMPF210

Broke after four weeks of use

1/22/2009

I received this for Christmas and loaded it up with photos to use in my office while I work. It has a beautiful display and the slideshow function works well, but only if you use the remote control. There is no way to have it do a slideshow without using the remote control. Don't lose the remote control. After having it for only four weeks, it broke today. I turned it on and the screen was full of static and it wouldn't respond with any button or the remote control. I tried to reset it, but there was no reset button. Don't buy it. It's garbage.

Horrible do not buy.

8/20/2008

Well I was really excited to get a digital frame. Really looked into which one would be best for a Mac and this one looked good. The first one worked for ONE day. Amazon is the best, and replaced it right away, with another which worked for about an hour. Oh, and when I called the company's support line the first time, they told me it could be a faulty electric adapter, so if we had another one at home to try it. Well that didn't work. So I didn't even bother to call them the second time. I wish the real world would get with it and join the Mac world.

It's a good photo frame, with a catch

6/10/2008

After a lot of searching, and knowing that NONE of the frames in the market is really "clean", here's what happened here:
We got it, liked the display quality (bright, very good resolution, nice frame) when we plugged in a flash memory card directly from a camera.
However, when we tried to load (using its own USB interface and built in software) more photos and music, we ran into problems with "not enough space" messages, corrupted files that were uploaded, etc.
But there's a solution, albeit not from the non-responding company support line and the empty (!) knowledge base on their web site.
It turns out you need to erase and reformat your flash drive as a FAT32 directory format (not FAT16, not old FAT). You can do that if you have one of those cheap general purpose multi-style flash card USB gadgets. I have 2 or 3 of those, I know I got some of them as a free gift so they must be cheap. On a Windows system, right-click the flash drive and select Format, with a FAT32 directory. On a MAC OS X use the disk utility to erase the drive, and it will format with the desired FAT32.
Then, what we did is collect all the files we wanted in a folder, and when we had all of them we copied and pasted all the files at once to the drive. Worked beautifully on Compact flash and SD drives that we tried.
I have a feeling that to add anything more, we'll have to re-erase and copy-paste, so we are keeping the content directory on the computer for now.... It was a nice challenge, but the frame works well now.

Nice frame, with reservations....

4/29/2008

Never having owned a digital frame before, I researched quite a bit before settling on the Aluratek. I like the big picture format. I download directly to the frame via a USB port and that's easy. I just have to be sure the pictures are cropped, color corrected, and in the proper orientation beforehand, since the frame will not perform these functions. And why should it? The reason for the 4 stars instead of 5...the remote. It is very touchy, often taking several tries before the frame responds. And if the remote is more than about a foot away from the frame, it won't work at all. So...is it worth it? The large display is great, the pictures look great, and it's fairly easy to use. Perhaps a little pricey, but I like it. (I never have used the mp3 function, so cannot comment on that.)

Aluratek service and quality problems

4/28/2008

I normally don't take the time to comment on products but the technical support of Aluratek is the worst I have ever seen. I purchased the model ADMPF110 and it was dead out of the box. I go round and round with their technical support via email and finally they give me an RMA to send it in for repair. I wanted to put this in the wall of a new house we are building so I needed it back pretty quickly. So I sent it to them over-night with all of the necessary paper work. 90 days later I get it back. By this time I had bought another brand unit to put in our new house. We were really busy getting the house completed so I didn't get around to looking at the Aluratek unit I got repaired under warranty unit about 3.5 months later. It was dead out of the box again! This time it made a faint clicking noise when turned off and on which was an improvement over last time, however, still nothing on the screen. Absolutely dead in all modes. Aluratek said that I had it over 90 days and that it was out of warranty and if I wanted to send it back in they would repair it for a fee. I explained that I never got to use it even once. The said it was out of warranty. I explained it was just barely out of warranty and they said it didn't matter, I should have checked it out when I first got it back. I told them that I am not their quality control department. Unless you want to get stuck with junk that doesn't work or unless you want to do the quality control for this company I suggest you don't buy any of their products.