Most users know how to upload photos, but don’t want to hassle with USB cords and slow upload speeds when transferring images onto a computer or photo-sharing site. Camera docks and memory-card readers built into PCs have attempted to alleviate these transferring problems, but these so-called shortcuts still require a certain amount of dedication to the process.

In the past couple of years, a handful of companies have gone a step farther by introducing Wi-Fi enabled digital cameras, notably Nikon Inc. and Eastman Kodak Co. But this capability works only in certain cameras and even then requires users to walk through a number of steps to send the photos through a service created by the company instead of sending them to a computer or Web site.

Little Effort Needed

This week, I tested a refreshingly simple gadget that solves this problem and does what most technology products don’t: It works in existing devices and requires next to no effort. The $100 Eye-Fi Card by Eye-Fi Inc. (www.eye.fi) is a two-gigabyte SecureDigital memory card with a built-in wireless chip. It slips into any camera with an SD-card slot, and whenever the camera is turned on, looks for a familiar Wi-Fi network and uploads your photos to your Mac or PC and one of 17 photo-sharing sites. After a quick, one-time setup, the user does nothing more than turning on the digital camera.

I thought this thing was too good to be true and set out to find its flaws. But after using it with two digital cameras (one brand new and the other over three years old), three different computers (each with different operating systems) and five photo-sharing sites, I’m convinced that the Eye-Fi is a terrific little tool. It works quickly and is a no-brainer to get going. The only people who won’t like it are those who enjoy razzing their lazy friends for forgetting to share digital photos.

Minor Inconveniences

The Eye-Fi’s flaws are minor enough to dismiss. For one thing, it doesn’t work on Wi-Fi networks that use log-in pages like those in Starbucks; instead, it’s meant to work on home networks or other “open” networks. Secondly, there’s no way to know when Eye-Fi finishes transferring photos unless you check your computer. Finally, your digital camera must stay on for the duration of the wireless transfer, which slightly taxes battery power, and slower networks and/or transferring numerous higher-resolution photos will require a bit more juice. Likewise, Eye-Fi looks for Wi-Fi networks whenever the camera is on, though the company says this only uses a minimal amount of the camera’s battery power.

The Eye-Fi Card comes in a small, colorful box that reminded me of a pop-up book: Pull one side and a quick-start guide appears on the right while the left swings out a piece holding the Eye-Fi card reader and SD card. This reader is only needed for the initial setup on each computer, which only took a few minutes per system.

I tried my Eye-Fi first on a Windows XP machine, plugging the card reader and card into a USB port. The software setup walks users through clear, quick steps like testing the computer’s firewall to be sure it can work through it and asking which folder should be designated to receive wirelessly transferred images. Here, I also typed in my account information for sharing images on Kodak Gallery; later I added Shutterfly, Snapfish, Picasa and Flickr. Other online destinations included blogs like Vox and TypePad, along with social-networking giant Facebook. The last step instructed me to insert the Eye-Fi SD card into my camera to snap the first test photo of myself, making sure it was working properly.

Managing Your Photos

Transferred photos are all reflected in the Eye-Fi Manager, a Web-based, password-protected site that tells which images were uploaded to photo-sharing sites and the computer. Users can opt to only upload from the Eye-Fi to one or the other or both, but only one photo-sharing site and one Mac or PC can be selected at a time. Account information for any of the 17 sharing sites can be saved within Eye-Fi, making it a cinch to switch where you want to send photos.

Around the office, within my registered Wi-Fi network, I took photos that showed up seconds later on my computer screen. At home, I entered my password-protected network’s information one time and watched as captured photos transferred wirelessly from my camera to either my Mac or Windows Vista laptop.

Quick Transfers

On average, it took about 40 seconds to upload each image to a Web site and about 40 seconds more after that for a photo to transfer onto my hard drive. I got home from a friend’s cocktail party and set my camera on a table with its power on. Ten minutes later, I turned on my computer to check the transfer and 12 photos from the party were uploaded to my Kodak Gallery account and my iMac’s hard drive.

Images upload in JPEG formats using their original, full resolutions. Some sharing sites change the formats for photos, but this varies between sites and isn’t related to Eye-Fi.

Eye-Fi won’t do absolutely everything for you, so for certain photo-sharing sites, you’ll still need to log on to send out emails for sharing albums with friends. But double clicking on any of the images in the Eye-Fi Manager takes you directly to wherever that image lives — whether on Picasa, Flickr, or your own hard drive.

I swapped the Eye-Fi SD card from one camera, an older Konica-Minolta Dimage X50 that still works well, to a new Kodak EasyShare V1253, which ironically has built-in photo emailing capability that isn’t nearly as easy to use as Eye-Fi. The Eye-Fi didn’t miss a beat and operated the same way in both cameras.

The Eye-Fi Card is as simple as it sounds and works with most cameras that use SD cards (for a complete list of compatible cameras, see http://support.eye.fi/compatibility/). If someone you know is constantly taking pictures that are never seen again by anyone else and they use a Wi-Fi network, Eye-Fi will serve as a carefree solution that takes the aggravation out of transferring photos to share with others.

Edited By Walter S. Mossberg

• Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

SanDisk’s Sansa TakeTV plugs into a PC to load videos, then into your TV to watch the videos.

Imagine a special device that not only plugged into your PC so you could drag and drop video files onto it, but also then hooked up to your TV to play back those videos. Rather than watching TV shows or movies on your laptop, you’d be doing so while comfortably relaxing on the couch, no high-tech networking required.

SanDisk Corp.’s Sansa TakeTV (www.take.tv) attempts to do just that, but is more complicated than it should be. This device, essentially a 4½-inch USB thumb drive with attachable accessories, costs $100 or $150 for four or eight gigabytes, respectively. By itself, it moves videos from a Mac or Windows PC to a TV, but only certain types of files are transferable.

Since TakeTV won’t work with videos downloaded from other online services, such as Apple Inc.’s iTunes Store, SanDisk created its own service, called Fanfare (www.fanfare.com), to work with TakeTV. Users plug TakeTV into a PC, download a movie or TV episode from Fanfare, unplug the device and attach it to a TV to watch the videos. Fanfare is still in its beta, or testing, stage and doesn’t currently offer much content. Its big-name networks include Showtime and CBS, but only certain episodes of some shows, like “Dexter,” “Survivor” and “CSI Miami,” are available.

SanDisk’s TakeTV and Fanfare are just getting started, and because of that have plenty of restrictions. On the upside, Fanfare is a visually attractive program — a real change for a company best known for selling flash storage. And the quality of the video playback was impressive. But for now, this device-and-service combination is frustratingly green.

Fanfare works only on Windows right now, and downloaded videos can’t be played back on the PC. Because of its current beta status, fees for movies and episodes of TV shows are being waived for a limited time. Content providers will eventually charge $1.99 per episode or nothing if they choose to use an ad-supported model.

SanDisk plans to keep improving Fanfare’s content, now limited to a total of 90 episodes from shows on six networks. But playing videos on a TV can be frustrating, lacking simple features like a visible progress bar when you’re rewinding or fast-forwarding. And if you need to stop a video halfway through watching it and happen to power off the TakeTV, your place is lost.

TakeTV gets points for its clever design. Its USB part tucks into a sleek holder that disguises the whole thing as a slender rectangle for porting around. On its own, the holder operates as a remote for controlling TakeTV when it’s connected to your TV. A separate television connector plugs into the TV using red, yellow, and white composite cables or just an S-video cable. This TV connector must also plug into a power outlet.

Not everyone will like the way TakeTV looks hooked up to a television, as its connector uses long, unsightly composite cables.

I started off slow, first just dragging and dropping video files from my computer into TakeTV. At first, I accidentally moved MP4 files, which aren’t compatible with TakeTV. Some types of video files that would transfer: DivX, XviD and MPEG-4 (AVI, MPG and MPEG files fall under this last category). Here’s the problem: Most people don’t know what format their videos are in, so finding the correct formats could be a real hassle.

One file I transferred was a short video of a trip to California. Its footage looked startlingly crisp and clear when played back on a standard definition television. SanDisk says videos will play in DVD quality, and I thought this was an accurate assessment.

Using the Fanfare service was rather straightforward. Upon plugging your TakeTV in for the first time, you’ll be prompted to download the Fanfare client, and to use the client you’ll need to register, creating a user name and password.

The Fanfare program is colorful and animated. It shows the available networks (CBS, Showtime, Smithsonian, The Weather Channel, Jaman and TV Guide) in a vertical list. Network names and titles of show episodes glow as you move your mouse over them; still shots from each movie or show illustrate just what you’ll be getting, including previews of certain videos.

With my TakeTV plugged into a PC at work, I selected a plus icon to download the pilot episode of Showtime’s twisted series, “Dexter.” This 53-minute episode took 30 minutes to download. I downloaded a 17-minute film called “Countdown,” which took just short of 20 minutes to download. But I couldn’t watch these videos until I was in front of my TV at home due to Fanfare’s no-PC-playback policy.

Once TakeTV was plugged into my TV, I chose videos from a list; a pre-created folder called “Fanfare Downloads” automatically holds everything you download from the service.

I was using the $100 four-gigabyte TakeTV, which SanDisk estimates will hold about five hours of video; the $150 eight-gigabyte should hold up to 10 hours. A useful illustration of my device’s capacity showed in Fanfare to indicate how much space was taken (mine was 46% full when I wrote this).

SanDisk knows it has a lot of improving to do, especially if it wants to challenge successful services like Apple’s iTunes. As is, TakeTV has the right idea, but forces users to jump through too many hoops. It plans to make Fanfare usable on Macs sometime in the future, and hopes to enable video playback on PCs before the end of the year. For now, it’s best to hold off on getting excited about this device or its service.

-Edited By Walter S. Mossberg

• Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com