That being said, there is a serious flaw in the firmware that puts you at risk of losing picture and movie files stored on your SD card, particularly if you are a Mac user.

It should be noted that there are also some minor operational issues that myself and others have experienced, most commonly that of the camera locking up on occasion. This has happened to me perhaps 5-7 times over the past few months and is easily remidied by removing and replacing the battery. Another flaw is that now and then, a completed movie is unplayable on the camera, yet is playable on the Kodak HDTV dock or computer software such as VLC.

The BIG DANGER, though, is in utilizing a card reader (as many of us do) in order to transfer your pictures to your computer. On a Mac, the “Finder” (file browser) inserts many hidden files on your SD card, which you can see if you look at the card on a Windows computer or in the Terminal on Mac. These files evidently give the camera MAJOR problems when you insert it back in the camera. However, the problems do not seem to manifest themselves until you shoot a movie. I’ve had the camera corrupt every single picture and movie on the card through this design flaw. Another time, I got lucky and only about 70% of the files were corrupted.

This is a SERIOUS problem that Kodak needs to correct in a firmware update. My Kodak Z740 never had this problem.

As a workaround in the meantime, I highly reccommend using a free little utility called CleanUp smb mess, available at http://www.faqintosh.com/risorse/en/sys/cleansmb/ . It removes all of the hidden files put on the card by your mac. I keep it in my dock and use it all the time! Once you drag your disk over it’s icon and eject it, you won’t have any problems with corrupt files. But, should you forget to do so as I have a few times, kiss those precious “Kodak moments” goodbye!!!
Rating: 4 / 5