Analysis of an Object

Yes, it's incredibly late, (sorry :( ). But it has arrived! Hazaa!

So here is my object:


It's a 10 in 1 card reader w USB 2.0 (To bad I don't have USB 2.0 ports) The one I have is slightly different, its 21 in 1, and is blue, but is basically the same thing.

Visibility
Although its "21 in 1", there are only 4 slots to put in a card, so one has to assume each slot accomidates more than 1 type of card, the problem is there is nothing indicating which card goes where. Logically, you assume that larger cards like CF (compact flash) would go in the larger slots, of which there are two, and smaller cards like SD cards go in the smaller ones (also 2), the problem is you dont know which card goes in which slot since there is 2 of each. This is potentially dangerous, because these cards have holes for pins in them, if you put it in the wrong slot, and try and jam/force it in, you could potentially ruin your card.

Feedback
There is someonewhat of an indictaion of weather or not its working, there are 2 led lights on it, that flash green or red. The problem is, you have no idea what green or red symbolize. If you were to deduce through common knowledge that red is bad and green is good (related it to street lights) than maybe it makes sense...except even when the red lights are on, it works just fine. Infact I've never seen it with the green light on, except when it is intially plugged into the computer. PC computers make a weird sound when it is plugged in and recognized, and macs just show it as a removable drive on the desktop.

Affordances
Like I said above, its hard to figure out which card goes where, and although its similar to when you plug things into your motherboard from the back of your computer (like monitor cables etc) there is no indicatin of what goes where, and just like monitor cables that have pins, if you attempt to jam it into the wrong slot, you may potentially ruin the reader and the card. An older card reader I had, actually had the lights FLICKER when it was reading/writting data, so you were able to tell something was happening.

Mapping
Mapping? Ha! What mapping, it's non existant in this little doo-dad. Aside from the obvious fact that the power plug goes in the back of the reader (where there is only one slot for something small and box shaped to go into) There is NOTHING on this thing that tells you what kind of card goes in in which of the 4 slots. And nowhere does it indicate what each of the 2 LED lights represnt. Infact I'm a little skeptical it really accepts 21 kinds of cards, and who the hell has 21 devices that use completely different kinds of memory sticks/cards?!

Constraints
Constraints are average on this reader. If its not plugged in properly, the lights dont flicker, and it wont make a sound or show up on the desktop on PC's or Macs, respectivly. The larger cards wont fit in the smaller slots, so you can't mistakingly put a CF card in a SM/SD slot. But you could put it in a CF2 slot, and it wouldn't work. If you should put the card in the wrong slot, it wont fit snugly and the computer wont recognize it.

Habituation and Breakdown
Like alot of new technologies, it's really hard to tell if it's not working with this device. Because you interface with it through a computer, it's not easy to determine weather the computer is malfunctioning or the hardware. I assume the red LED lights are some sort of signal for a malfunction, but since it doesn't say weather its a hardware/software malfunction or even what, if anything is wrong, its hard to tell. Like I mentioned earlier, as long as I've had this thing, its been showing me a red light, but has worked fine. So, if the lights dont turn on when you plug it in, or the computer doesn't recognize it, you can tell there is a breakdown somewhere in the system. The problem is, finding out where?

Card readers like these are essential to my computer life, and I cheaped out and bought this thing, because they stopped making the one I had before. That one however, was much better. It also accepted a variety of cards, but all in the SAME slot. It had 1 light, that flickered if it was working, and was solid when it was ready to work. It was much MUCh better than this hunk of junk.