Tell me it ain't so......

[Jim Bryant]

yea.a card reader is better. I never use the canon digital (piece of crap) software where you have to download the images directly from your camera. Mainly because it takes too damn long.

[WVCoalMiner]

My laptop has a built in card reader

[Swisstony10]

I do the USB card reader thing too, to bypass the Canon transfer software because it's a pain, and for some reason won't transfer more than about 20 files at a time before it allegedly "loses connection to the device".

I've been looking at new laptops, and lots of them advertise built-in "5-in-1 multi-card" readers. but none of them seem to take CF - only SD/MMC sized cards. Looks like I'll have to carry on with the USB card dangling around the place..

Russ.

[schambers]

Same here. I don't always shoot RAW, but when I do I just copy them off the card directly and import them into lightroom without any problems. I'm on windows 7 64-bit

[fletch]

You don't need a card reader to import photos manually. Just connect your camera, it will appear as an external drive just like a thumb drive or a card reader. Go find it using explorer and copy and paste the files.

[OK_to_Point]

Originally Posted by WVCoalMiner

I have Win7 64 Bit RTM and have no problems whatsoever with my XS and XSi and RAW files????? I can even see them in windows explorer in WIn7.

Looks like I have the same setup you do. I removed the Canon software, I took some shots set as raw and as large quality with raw. I connect the camera, the window pops up asking what I want to do, I select open folder to view files, Then I can see the photos but they are all jpegs, there's no raw files. This is where I don't know why this happens. When I display the shots on the camera, the image size is larger than the jpeg on my pc screen, meaning the raw image is there somewhere, I assume. Why can't I see it on my pc screen?
Did you add or change anything to your pc to view the raw images? The raw images have the .cr2 file extension,right?

[OK_to_Point]

I figured it out! In the menu, all I had to do was use the arrow key to select the raw setting. The menu is a bit confusing as it looks like you can just move the selection up and down. Use the "Right" arrow to select the raw setting. So thanks alot for everyone who replied. I have another wedding to shoot next weekend, so there will be some new shots to post in a few weeks. Again, thanks for your help...............