2.2 Contents
The Casio EX-M1 comes in a nice sleek black box. Contained within the box are the following items:
- 1 Camera
- 1 Rechargeable Lithium ION Battery (NP-20)
- 1 USB Cradle
- 1 AC Adaptor
- 1 Strap for carrying the camera easily
- 1 CD ROM w/ Software and Drivers
- 1 Proprietary USB cable connecting the camera dock to the computer's USB port
- 1 Dummy SD card which is used to protect the SD/MMC slot
- 1 LCD Remote Control
- 1 Stereo Headphones

Exterior Box	Inside
Packaging	Closeup of Packaging

The camera utilizes what Casio calls an HCLi lens. HCLi stands for Hyper CCD Lens integration. Essentially you have a inverted tessar lens that allows Casio to fit a super small lens into a camera of this size. The camera also specializes in integrating a lot of different components into one chip thereby reducing area usage on the circuit board.

After a quick look at the camera, you'll notice the first major (and luckily really the only) problem with the camera design. The power button is on the upper right corner of the camera (if the back of the camera is facing you) - right next to the shutter release. Thus it's pretty easy to end up turning off the camera when you meant to take a picture. Somewhat minor but it can be a pain if you're shot was only available for a few seconds and you turned off the camera by accident!

Presenting the Casio EX-M1	Back of the EX-M1

Side Angle of the EX-M1	Measure the length

Measure the height	Pretty darn small

All the parts

2.3 Configuration
Hooking up the various parts to the computer was a cinch. Since this camera was primarily going to be used by my wife, I decided to hook the camera to her newly built AMS gBOX P4 machine. I used the front USB ports of the gBOX to connect to the dock. The AC adaptor also connects to the dock. With these two cables installed, all I needed to do was rest the camera into the dock.

Installing the software and drivers were extremely painless and Windows XP immediately recognized the camera. Once connected, the camera's internal storage device acts as a drive on the Windows XP system. This allows for easy picture retrieval as well as audio/video retrieval. You can still use the Casio software to download pictures and create webpages outlining the pictures downloaded from the camera. I won't go into too much detail with the software. It's a web driven interface and some actions seem to take one too many steps to take. For the experienced PC user, it's actually easier to just use the Windows Explorer to grab the files from the camera when it's docked. Data transfer via the USB port was respectable. I did not do any transfer times but it did not take very long to grab your pictures off of the Casio camera.

In the cradle	Closer look

The cradle is a wonderful idea for the common user and reminds me somewhat of the Kodak cradle system. Unfortunately there is no button to press on the cradle to let you do a quick file transfer of the pictures and videos. You can start the Casio software package by turning on the camera when it's docked. That isn't entirely obvious for the average computer user.

2.4 Firmware updates
It should be noted that if you have version 1.0 firmware installed on your camera then you will need to download the newest firmware upgrade from Casio. Check out our forums for the link or click at http://world.casio.com/euro/qv/support/download.html. The new firmware fixes some problems that the Casio EX-M1 was having with some SD memory cards (notably Sandisk).

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