My wife bought one for her mom as a gift. She's not computer savvy, so was looking for the KISS principle. However, although Kodak is known for user-friendly interfaces it is still fairly complex to load up the pictures and get everything just right. I had to update the firmware on the frame, fiddle around with the software that goes on the computer the pictures are coming from, and generally dick around a lot to get things just right.
The frame is essentially a USB memory device, a display, and some software that displays whatever is in the onboard memory via a slideshow. You can adjust the settings on the slide show to vary time of display, etc. Also it takes memory cards and USB memory devices and will display what is on those too.
When loading up pictures, once I'd updated the firmware, the frame can automatically resize the image files so as to match the resolution (800x500 or so) and not waste a bunch of memory. It displays MPEG and AVI and a couple of other video formats too, which is cool. You can hear the sound of the videos. Also plays MP3s.
Once I had it set up, I loaded about 200 pictures and 5 videos, which soaked up the 128 MB on board memory. With no videos, it could hold 1000 pictures. With slide-in cards that hold GBs of data, the sky is the limit. Memory cards would be a great way for the other kids to send their pix. Gave MIL some basic training on how to turn it on and get slide show going, how to step forward through pictures.
$89.00 on sale. A great way to store, view, and pass on pictures to the folks.
