When we were in Europe last year we managed our digital photos by taking 3 memory cards. Instead of buying one larger memory card I bought 2 smaller ones (64 MB) and we had the small one that came with the camera. That way if a card failed or was cleared accidentally by my gorgeous children we hadn't lost everything. Periodically we transferred the pictures from the memory onto CD Roms. It cost between 7 and 10 euros a time for each card to be transferred. After the first time I worked out the small card that came with the camera wasn't worth transferring to CD but was just kept as a backup as the cost of the transfer was independent of memory.

Not all camera shops could take our XD picture card but we didn'thave much trouble. We were charged the most in Belgium - the rate in France was usually around 7 euros - I thought it quite expensive but we did come home with all our pictures.

During the journey we reviewed our pictures on television sets using a cable that connected our camera to the video port. Many televisions in Europe did not have such a port though.

When we got back, reviewing and labelling the pictures has been a lot of fun. I transferred the files onto our computer from the CDs without any trouble.

Digital photography was excellent with the children (aged 10 & 12 years) as you could immediately review their picture taking with them and make suggestions for having another try. It helped to get them interested in looking at what we had come to see too.

Regards Anne Canberra, Australia