Ceiva digital photo frame anyone?

[imloulou]

Does anyone have the Ceiva digital frame? I have looked at this for the past 3 years but it was always too expensive. What do you like/dislike about it. I just ordered the frame from Amazon for 69.00 (after 50 buck rebate) and will get the one year plan from Ceiva.

My Mom and Dad are out of town and I would love to send them pictures like this!

Please be honest if it stinks! I can always return it!!

here is a link to Ceiva:

Ceiva site (http://www.ceiva.com/home/hp/index.jsp)

Thanks guys!!!!!

[clairea]

FIL got this for DH's grandmother, and she loves it! All of the grandchildren have the password to upload photos, so we can keep it filled with current photos of the great-grands. FIL is able to go in from his computer and delete older photos, change the length of time each photo is displayed for, etc. I think they have it set to download new pictures every night, and the picture changes every 15 minutes or so.

Claire

[RunnerKim]

This looks pretty cool! So basically it's a "screensaver" in it's own monitor/frame. It can connect to the internet and automatically updates photos? Is there a cost other than purchasing the frame? I think my MIL would love this.

Kim

Okay, I actually read a little more of the site and it says it's about $100/year. It's too bad all of DH's siblings are still living at home as it would make a great combined gift.

[imloulou]

Hi Kim,
It is hooked up to a phone line and updates photos when you specify (can be daily). It is 99 bucks a year on top of the frame (for the service) but what is cool is that whoever has the frame (receiver) they can give out the password to other family and friends and they can all send photos to the frame!

They can also get weather and news.

It sounds really neat to me! It would be an easy way to share pictures with my family!

[trish_ks]

FIL got this for DH's grandmother, and she loves it! All of the grandchildren have the password to upload photos, so we can keep it filled with current photos of the great-grands. FIL is able to go in from his computer and delete older photos, change the length of time each photo is displayed for, etc. I think they have it set to download new pictures every night, and the picture changes every 15 minutes or so.

This is what my family does as well. My grandmother has 16 grandkids, and innumerable great grands...and we're all over the country. She loves it, and she never has to try to understand it because the young "techies" in the family take care of it. She just gets to see new pictures all the time :)

[RunnerKim]

imloulou - just had to post and thank you for starting this thread. I think this is really cool and my MIL will love it. So much so that I've decided it's worth the $ - and it's way more than we normally spend on her Christmas gift. I'd love to get one my self but not only couldn't justify the expense but don't have a phone jack in the house that would be in a good viewing place for the frame.

Kim

[imloulou]

imloulou - just had to post and thank you for starting this thread. I think this is really cool and my MIL will love it. So much so that I've decided it's worth the $ - and it's way more than we normally spend on her Christmas gift. I'd love to get one my self but not only couldn't justify the expense but don't have a phone jack in the house that would be in a good viewing place for the frame.

Kim

Your welcome Kim!! Mine is on it's way!! If you did not see the offer at Amazon yet check it out:

Amazon Ceiva offer (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002ZQB7O/103-0294694-0983867?v=glance&n=1055398&n=507846&s=home-garden&v=glance)

It ends up being 69 dollars after a 50 dollar rebate!

Thanks to everyone for your comments...they helped a lot!!!

[oceanjasper]

What a cool idea!

[RunnerKim]

I wanted to post a follow-up since I received mine and have loaded it up and it's ready to be sent off as a gift. I love it. So much so that I broke down and ordered another one for me to keep :o I don't have a great place to put it due to limited phone jacks but figure I can relocate when I want to dial-up and change the picture show since i'll be the one "managing" the photos.

I think it's really cool but do want to mention a couple of things
1) Ceiva's web site could be better. It took me quite a while to figure out exactly where to go to do different things. I had the most frustrating time figuring out about sending photos from an album to the "receiver's inbox" I wanted to set the order of the photos (I ended up with a bunch of the same kid all together) and the only place you can do that is in the inbox. Well if a photo is currently showing on the receiver it will not go to the inbox (despite a confirmation message saying it was sent). Took me awhile to figure that out! In addition it's not really set up to be able to set the order of the photos (a la Power Point slides) - you can only move a photo to the #1 position. So I had to do each one individually. I'll be smarter in the future about sending them to the inbox in a reasonable order.

2) For the initial set up I was sending some of my favorite photos. The image quality is not as good as a print so I was a little disappointed in the quality (DH gave me a hard time about wanting it to be a plasma screen or something). I don't mean to imply that it is bad quality by any means - just wasn't the "wow" I get when looking at photos. MIL won't even notice the difference probably.

Anyway I think it's really neat and will be perfect for my inlaws who are not tech savvy at all and just have to plug it in. I pre-loaded it with photos so that a BIL can simply sneak in and plug it in early Christmas morning w/o worrying about having it dialup to get the first set of photos.

I was also hoping this might be a good way for MIL to get printed pictures since it has that option too. The price is okay (22 cents/photo - I get 17 cents at CostCo) but from what I could tell shipping is over $10 no matter how many photos are ordered. Ouch.

Kim

[RunnerKim]

Okay I'm adding my own update to an update. I sent off the digital receiver and my ILs were *thrilled* but then ran in to tons of problems with it connecting/downloading new photos. They're not the most tech savvy people so the low-tech aspect of this gift was ideal for them and I was frustrated that it was not turning out that way. Turns out that their unit was defective and they had to send it back. I was a little grumpy at Ceiva about this and planned to ask them for a couple of weeks extension on the the annual service to compensate for the time they didn't have a unit.

Well turns out that they sent a new unit without waiting for the old one to be returned (pre-paid return label is coming with the new unit) and they went in and updated the web site information to the new unit's serial number (i.e., "activated" it for them) and they extended the service plan by 3 weeks which should more than cover the time they're actually without one.

I just thought their high quality customer service was worth mentioning. I plan to send them an email once I know for sure the new unit has arrived and everything is going smoothly for my ILs.

Kim