TAO 1-Inch Digital Picture Keychain (Square)

Please don't waste your money on this; it's utterly useless and there are far better products out there.The problems are simple:1) The software to transfer pictures from your computer to the keychain is simply awful. It's extremely hard to use.But I could have dealt wih that; I have other software to edit photos.2) The screen size is incredibly small. Yes, it is 1 inch....if you count 1 inch long and 1/2 inch high as a "1 inch screen." I don't. The pictures it displayed were unbelievably tiny.3) Worst of all, and what made the viewer useless, is the screen resolution. No matter what I did to the pictures, or how much of a "head shot" I made them, they still appeared very poorly. I knew it wasn't me when I realized that the keychain came with a number of pictures already loaded in order to show you what it would look like. They were awful too!! You'd think that they would have chosen their best pictures in order to highlight their product; sadly, I think they did. The screen resolution is simply awful and that's all there is to it. Facial highlights looked like a bad skin condition.And with Amazon's lousy return policy on opened electronics, you're largely stuck with a (vaguely) cheap electronic item that's no good. Which, of course, I didn't know wasn't any good until I opened it and tried it.You're much better off with Kodak's "Easyshare Picture Viewer." It's a little more expensive, but you actually get something which you can view pictures with! The screen is significantly larger (about twice the size!), the resolution is excellent, it has a zoom feature, it has a leather carrying case so the screen (or anything else) won't get scratched, and it's still smaller and thinner than a man's wallet. It easily fits into a pocket and would certainly fit into a pocketbook. On top of all of that, it holds at least twice as many pictures as this lousy keychain (their ads say it will hold up to about 250 pics, but I found that if I dropped the resolution low enough for that many to fit, they looked pretty poor. Still....100 photos is a lot better than 56.)I bought one for my father and loaded it with pictures for him before giving it to him. I liked it so much, I then bought a 2nd one as a Mother's Day gift for my wife.I see that Amazon says that the Kodak "Easyshare Picture Viewer" will "be in stock soon." I would strongly suggest that they hurry that up before their customers go elsewhere.

This product is cheap and basically does what it promises. It may deserve more stars because of that, but it just isn't very high quality. Photos are hard to see given size and resolution of screen. You need good head shots and not much else. There are larger more expensive products of this type out there. I'd go that route rather than purchase this again.

This keychain is so much better than carrying around a brag book. I could never carry 56 pictures around but I can now, without the bulk! I love this keychain! The pictures are clear and easy to view. Yes, it is small, but the pictures are viewable. My parents and grandmother were able to see them. Everyone that has seen it has to have one! A great gift for proud parents, grandparents or a baby shower gift!

Fell apart, Wouldn't charge. Just junk.

This is a nice novelty item, but don't expect too much from it. Steer clear unless Amazon lowers the price. I purchased a similar model from another online merchant for less than one quarter of Amazon's current price (the only difference appears to be the capacity -- 28 vs. 56 photos) and was happy enough that I ordered more as gifts. Unfortunately you do need to install the driver software on your computer. I don't know why they couldn't make the computer recognize it as an external storage device; perhaps it's because the device has so little memory that it uses a proprietary storage format (as well as, I assume, a proprietary image file format). The images are only 64 x 96 pixels, so you can easily resize images to that size on your computer to get an idea of the resolution that you can expect. (On my device -- I assume it's the same on this one -- the bottom few pixels are shaded darker to display the caption, so realistically it's only about 56 x 96 resolution.) I don't know about the color depth, but I suppose at that resolution it may not matter much. The contrast is reasonably good; the device is light and feels kind of cheaply made. I certainly wouldn't put it in a pocket or purse with keys jangling around. But it is a fun way to carry snapshots around, and it makes a nice novelty gift (though I'd suggest preloading it with photos in case the recipient doesn't want to bother installing the software).

I don't know why the other reviewers acknowledged this product's many faults and then gave it high marks anyway. The software crashed my computer on install (Windows XP). When it worked, it's extremely clunky to use -- and you go through all that trouble to look at a *very* low resolution 1" screen that's pretty dim.This would be fine as a blister packed 9.95 novelty item for kids, but it's packaged like an executive gift and is pretty pricey -- getting close to dedicated viewers like one from Kodak. Steer clear.

I have a one year old daughter and can never seem to keep photos of her handy to show people. Bought this on a whim ( not from Amazon but paid more so i should have researched first), i'm a fan of gadgety things and this is a lot of fun.Pro's :-the software is really easy to use, you can crop, adjust brightness and contrast which is important as you have a tiny screen so you want the pics to be as vibrant as possible.-saves you carrying photo's around.-you can easily update your pics and keep them current.-comes with USB cable and a/c adaptor to charge, you can do either.Con's :-the screen is pretty small-the quality of the photos is a little crummy, you really must only have headshots, anything else just doesn't look like more than a blob.Overall don't expect too much, it's a fun toy and neat to grab and show friends, i think i'm going to get one for my Mother and load it up with pictures of all her children and grandchildren, a fun brag for her to carry and only one button to push to show her friends, couldn't get much simpler.Enjoy as a cute toy.