After having looked at digital frames from numerous manufacturers and coming away unimpressed, I thought to myself that this one made sense. I contacted Aequitas and asked for a review model, which they kindly provided.

The iGala IWP808 is an 8″ digital picture frame with touchscreen capability, which allows the user to perform all necessary functions without connecting the frame to a computer. It offers an 800×600 resolution display in the 4:3 aspect ratio and supports wireless networking, reducing cable clutter. Access to Flickr, Microsoft Live FrameIt and even Gmail are available.

iGala IWP808 Specs

• 8″ LCD (800×600 resolution, 4×3 aspect ratio)
• Touchscreen
• 802.11 b/g wireless networking (supports WEP, WPA-TKIP, and WPA2-TKIP encryption protocols)
• 1GB internal memory
• Support for USB flash drive and SD memory cards
• Built-in speakers and 3.5mm audio out port for attaching external speakers (plays MP3 files)
• Integration with Gmail, Flickr, and Microsoft Live FrameIt

Design

The IWP808 departs from the traditional wood frame and instead uses a black bezel around the LCD and a clear plastic frame that blends in nicely on a desk or table.  The AC adapter is small, but the attached cord is a little short at 4 1/2 feet in length, which might necessitate an extension cord if no power outlet is nearby or the desk is relatively high.  Cable management is easy. The power plug is on the side, tucked into a recess in the body and hides nicely behind the frame.  The audio port, USB and SD slots, however, are on the top and therefore more visible.

The screen does a good job of hiding fingerprints, but since it is a touchscreen, the manufacturer might consider including a lint free wipe cloth, similar to what Apple provides with the iPod Touch.  The frame can be oriented in both landscape and vertical modes, thanks to a clever rotating stand. There are also mounts on the back for hanging the frame on a wall in either orientation, but does anyone really do that?

Display

The IWP808 has a high resolution 800×600 pixel LCD display in the 4×3 aspect ratio. This is the same ratio as most digital cameras, which eliminates the black bars on both sides of the image that wide screen displays experience. Color is vibrant, but not overly saturated. Viewing angles are good with minor color shift and fall off only occurring at the extreme end, in particular when looking up from below the screen.

Operation and Menus

I’m no poker player, but I know a trump card when I see one. The IWP808 has not one, but two; its touch screen and easy wireless setup.  With only minimal guidance, grandma who lives across the country or mom who lives down the block could setup this monitor and start receiving images of her precious (great) grand children.

There are two key menus that support navigation of the device.  The screen on the left is the home page for setting up the frame and the screen on the right is displayed when the frame’s slide show is playing.  Simply touching the screen brings up the menu where one can cycle through the photos, rotate and delete images, stop and start the slide show, control the music, and view the frame’s download status for Flickr, Gmail, and FrameIt.

Editors note: The following screenshots exhibit some odd striations, which are a result of photographing an LCD and then correcting the perspective of the image.  These lines are not visible when looking at the screen under normal conditions.

The setup menu allows control over the wireless connections, Flickr and Gmail. The FrameIt service has it’s own menu.  Selecting the WiFi, which supports WEP, WPA-TKIP, and WPA2-TKIP encryption protocols, brings up a dialog to add a new connection.  Pressing the add button shows an on-screen keyboard where the wireless router’s SSID can be entered, and, if an encryption method is used, another screen for adding the password or key.  The connection to my Linksys router was strong, even when testing two floors away in the attic.

A key selling point of the IWP808 is its ability to autosync with a Gmail account. Aequitas has leveraged the power of Google and their Gmail offering by allowing the frame to access images sent to a Gmail address.  Aequitas suggests creating a new Gmail account that only receives images for this purpose.  Downloading images from Flickr and Gmail was seamless, except for a time or two where the download stopped working.  Turning off the frame and then back on again solved the problem.

The last two options in the settings menu adjust the display and create a power saving scheme, whereby, the frame can be turned off during certain periods of the day.

I’d like to note that one area the IWP808 is lacking is in slide show management and display.  The current firmware only allows for slide intervals ranging between 3 seconds and 15 seconds. Longer intervals are not available.  I can imagine that someone would want to display a new image every hour or perhaps even longer. Image transitions during the slideshow are also a little hocky, with long vertical and horizontal sweeps, but no simple dissolve.

On this note, current or potential owners should take comfort.  The Aequitas engineers seem to be very responsive and have already released at least two firmware updates.  As of this writing, the current version is 1.1.1.771, which was released on January 22, 2009, and they promise to address these concerns and others, including adding support for Picasaweb. This inclusion will make a lot of people happy.

While on the subject of firmware updates, the IWP808 makes this a straightforward process. Download the latest files from the Firmware page, copy them to a USB drive and then insert the drive into the frame. The update begins and takes less than a minute. Although I mentioned this process is simple, I experienced some USB drive compatibility issues that flummoxed me a bit. I could not get the frame to update the firmware with newer 2 GB and 4 GB OCZ Rally2 drives or a 4 year old 512 MB Verbatim drive, even though it could download images from these flash drives. I tried formatting the drives into both FAT and FAT32 partitions, but that didn’t help either. The two successful firmware updates I applied while reviewing the frame used no name 1 GB flash drives.

Hopefully this issue can be resolved, but it’s certainly not a deal breaker, since flash drives are so cheap and plentiful these days. One option the engineers should consider is downloading the update over the wireless connection and then alerting the user that a new update is available.

Other menus available include a photo manager to select which albums and images are displayed, a clock and alarm setting and MP3 music manager (not shown).

Last, I’d briefly like to discuss Microsoft’s FrameIt service. Following Google’s lead of perpetual beta status, the FrameIt service is likewise in a beta phase. Part of the Microsoft Live suite of applications, FrameIt provides access to photo collections, RSS feeds and traffic, news, entertainment and weather information on your digital frame.

Create an account on the FrameIt website and then setup the various feeds. To access the FrameIt service on the IWP808, just enter the Collection ID. A secret access code can also be used to prevent any unauthorized access to your collection. Seeing the weather forecast in the morning or a traffic update in the evening was very nice.

The Good

• Beautiful, bright, high resolution touch screen
• Easy wireless setup
• Online photo integration (Flickr, FrameIt, Gmail)
• Future firmware updates promised

The Bad

• Minimal photo display options (no control over transitions, short slide interval durations, no randomization of Gmail images in the slide show), although the manufacturer promises future updates that will address these issues
• USB flash drive incompatibility when upgrading firmware
• $239 – there are larger frames available for less, but they may not have all the features of the IWP808

Conclusion

This digital frame was a lot of fun to review.  I really liked using the touch screen to navigate the menus and manage the photo galleries.  Despite some of the short comings mentioned above, which the manufacturer is working to remedy via future firmware updates, the iGala IWP808 has some killer features that make this one of the hotter frames around.  Bcause I have confidence that the guys at Aequitas are really working to make this a great frame, even incorporating some features suggested by customers on their support forums, I recommend anyone looking for a digital photo frame seriously consider the iGala IWP808.

It’s available for $239 through the Aequitas website.

The other day I was handed a non-booting 2006 model MacBook running OS X 10.4 and asked to see if it could be fixed.  Right off the bat I knew this thing was going to be trouble.  Upon boot, the classic Apple chime would sound, but the screen would only display a folder icon with a flashing question mark.  A quick Google search revealed an Apple Support article that suggested the computer couldn’t find the software on the hard drive and just needed to be reminded where the operating system is located.  There were several methods provided to fix this, such as booting with the system restore disc, using the start-up manager to select the hard drive and resetting the PRAM.

I tried using the restore disc, but the combo drive would attempt to read it and then eject the disc.  Also, resetting the PRAM didn’t work and the Macbook doesn’t have a start-up manager, which is only available on some older models.  Another trick up my sleeve was to attempt to access the MacBook’s hard disk using Firewire target mode, but that also proved futile.  I came to the conclusion that both the HDD and combo drive were broken.  How they managed to die simultaneously, I’ll never know.

With this information in hand, I visited Newegg, my favorite computer component store and ordered up a new 160GB Western Digital hard drive as well as two 1 GB Kingston memory sticks.  Fortunately, I ordered soon enough in the day and they were able to ship overnight, with my order arriving at 11:27 a.m. the very next day.  Way to go Newegg and FedEx!!!

Accessing the MacBook’s hard drive and memory slots are very simple and Apple even provides instructions online.  Inserting the new components was straightforward enough, but how to install the operating system without a functioning combo drive and no access to an external DVD drive?  Firewire Target mode of course and that’s why so many people are disappointed to see Apple has eliminated the Firewire ports from the latest MacBook.

The computer I was using as the host is an older G5 running OS X 10.5.  Using the G5’s DVD drive with the MacBook’s original restore discs failed, due I think, to the fact the MacBook uses an Intel processor and the G5 uses the older PowerPC chip.  Next I used a retail version of OS X 10.5 and selected the MacBook’s new hard drive as the target.  The install process worked like a charm…albeit a little long at around 2 hours.

My next step was to reinstall the iLife suite from the restore discs, but at first that didn’t work, because Apple has a small software program that checks whether the restore discs are for same model computer.  Since I was using the G5 DVD drive to attempt the install on the MacBook, the program recognized the incompatibility and wouldn’t let me complete the install.

After a little brainstorming, I realized that I could create an ISO of the disc and copy that over Firewire to the MacBook.  There is a handy little tool in OS X called Disk Utility App that does just that. To create an ISO from a CD/DVD run Disk Utility and select “CD/DVD Master” as the image format. The resulting file will have a .cdr extension. Just rename .cdr to .iso and you have a functioning ISO of the CD or DVD.

Next, I copied over the file to the MacBook’s hard drive and then used the following command in terminal to mount the disc:

hdiutil mount filename.iso

Filename.iso should be replaced with the name of the actual file. But it worked and I was able to reinstall the old iLife suite on the fresh OS X 10.5 install, thereby giving the MacBook and new lease on life. As for the old hard drive, well, it’s dead and gave the dreaded clicking noise when I attempted to read it using an external USB to HDD adapter. Let’s hope the user was faithful at running backups.

So many manufacturers these days are producing the generic, bland device with just enough functionality. The iGala, on the other hand, has a sweet combination of technologies, including:

• high resolution 8″ 800×600 LCD
• touch screen user interface
• built in 802.11 b/g wireless
• 1 GB internal memory
• integration with major online services such as Flickr, Gmail, and Microsoft’s Live FrameIt
• support for USB flash drives and SD memory cards
• MP3 music support through built-in speaker and audio out plug

This digital frame piqued my interest enough that I’ve contacted Aequitas and requested a unit for review. I look forward to getting my hands on this device and, as all photographers know, the next best thing to taking photos is seeing them displayed.

The iGala is available now for $239.