Manuals and Software

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Manuals

Epson ships the PhotoPC 750Z with two manuals: "Getting Started" and "User's Guide." The first manual is a slim volume of some 37 pages, with these major topics:

Getting Ready to Use the Camera
Unpacking, identifying parts, using NiMH batteries, attaching wrist strap and lens cover
Setting up Software
Installing the PhotoPC 750Z Software, making diskettes
Taking Pictures
Setting clock, using compactFlash cards, using the viewfinder and LCD, checking the picture counter
Using Basic Camera Features
Setting Image Quality and Color Mode, flash, and timer
Playing Back and Saving Pictures
Playing back photos, erasing pictures, connecting camera to computer and transferring photos

The manual is written clearly and plainly, but the index is so minimal as to be useless. I could not find many of the main topics in the index. "Setting image quality" was not under either image or quality; "viewfinder" was absent, and "saving pictures" was nowhere to be found!

The second manual has these chapters:
  1. Using Advanced Camera Features
  2. Playing Back Photos
  3. Getting Photos Into Applications and Documents
  4. Working With Photos and Albums
  5. Editing Images
  1. Using Custom and Advanced Features
  2. Using Your Camera for Presentations
  3. Using CompactFlash Memory Cards
  4. Printing Directly From the Camera
  5. Maintenance and Troubleshooting

Chapters 1, 2 and 8 are concerned with the camera; the other chapters describe the software that comes with the camera. Chapter 6 starts with a description of adjusting settings with your computer and ends with a description of settings that you adjust from the camera.

I found this to be a very uncomfortable “division of labor”; I would much rather have had all the hardware features in one book and all the software features in another. In fact, the "Getting Started" book lists the menus that are available in playback mode, and each one says to refer to the User's Guide for instructions. I'd rather the "Getting Started" book were a bit thicker, rather than having to switch back and forth between books to find the information I wanted.

By the way, there's no corresponding page that lists all the menus that are available in view mode.

Software

The Image Expert software, from Sierra Imaging, is outstanding. It worked equally well on both the PC and Macintosh computers. I simply hooked up the serial cable, set "automatic detect," and voilà -- it worked.

Macintosh users take note: the installation process puts a lot of Microsoft ®©TM libraries into your system folder. This is typical of any application written with Microsoft tools; it tends to spray many fairly large files all over your file system. Make sure you have room on both your system volume and on the volume where your application goes before you install. I was very impressed to find that uninstalling the software also got rid of those extra libraries; many uninstallers just leave them to clutter your hard drive.

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