I had another small computer victory today.
I have a Kodak DX7590 camera. It is a great camera. It has gotten me through 7933 pictures over 21 months, and last April, it survived a 4 foot drop onto asphalt with no damage.
When I connect it to the computer, it shows up as another hard drive:
From there, I cut and paste the pictures to my hard drive. Really convenient, and I don’t have to use the terrible EasyShare software. Kodak makes this software look good, but it’s really garbage that locks up your images in its awful interface.
A couple of weeks ago, the “hard drive” stopped appearing after I connected the camera. I was unable to get any pictures off the camera. I futzed around for quite a while, eventually thinking my system was messed up.
I finally called Kodak’s technical support line in desperation. After 10 minutes convincing the tech support representative I am not an idiot, she finally admitted that Kodak removed the “hard drive” feature in EasyShare 6.0, the latest version. At first, she spun some yarn about how Kodak doesn’t retain the old software and I would have to get by with this new version. After explaining that I don’t want the full EasyShare product, she relented and gave me a link to get the old software: http://www.kodak.com/go/ess5/.
After upgrading to the old version, EasyShare 5, my computer and camera are once again happy campers.