There was a period where Honeywell imported Asahi Pentax cameras with their brand on it. Guys serving Vietnam were buying the Asahi branded cameras through the PX, and then when they returned to the states, Customs required all Asahi markings to be obliterated before being allowed to import the cameras, even for personal use.

Interesting, every Windows desktop computer I have purchased in recent years included an SD slot in the front panel that accepts all versions of cards, while laptops just never seem to have the real estate for them.

To get to the command windows in Win1o, Win+R brings up the Run dialog box. Type cmd, and OK, and a command window will open.

Picture Taker - you miss what was said. Quick format does not perform any prophylactic actions at all. It only rewrites partition tables necessary to actually use the card. If you have bad sectors, you still have bad sectors. Only a full format will do anything about that. In all of personal computing history, the only occasion where a quick format was useful was in the days of floppy drives when people were bringing viruses into the business place on their floppies. When a floppy was identified as containing a virus, a quick format would rewrite the partition tables and the virus then was unlocatable. There is no more merit between quick format and simply deleting photos either through the camera or your PC/Mac. If you rely on your camera to provide you with income, you should have a periodic practice of fully formatting your cards. Maybe saying during the last week of the month, spend some time checking cards.

There is another option, that I did not mention, because it implies you are comfortable as your own sys admin. Again this is a windows process. The chkdsk command can be run from the command windows on SD cards and takes 3-4 minutes per card

chkdsk mount-point: /F /R

this will scan the card, checking for integrity of the partition tables and condition of all sectors.

With all this discussion about deleting or reformatting, from an IT security perspective or privacy perspective, what is it you are actually intending to accomplish? Here are some things to ponder.

If you are deleting pictures, in reality, the digital image remains on the card. All that happens is the file table that the operating system uses to define where files are physically located is changed to indicate the file is not there. Even that leaves a digital image of itself. All that happens is the first character of the file name is change to a $ in the file allocation table.

If you are formatting the card, are you doing a quick format? If so, and you are paranoid about a remaining digital image, you should know all quick format does is delete and recreate the necessary tables the operating system uses to indicate existing files and where they are stored. All the digital images are also still there.

So where does that leave you if you are deleting or formatting? Again, if you are doing so for privacy, there is potential should you lose the card for whatever reason, someone could retrieve images. But they would require some sophisticated software to collect and reassemble those images. Is it worth it for someone to do that?

So the remaining option should be a complete format. This rewrites all the necessary partition tables, and then scans the entire card, clearing any data and checking for bad sectors. Bad sectors are cataloged, and never used again. For that reason alone, you should consider doing a complete format, not a quick format. I would also suggest that you take the time to do a complete format on every card before you ever put it in your camera. This should give you some peace of mind that you won't lose an image in a bad sector or have some unexplained artifact in an image. And don't be concerned about overwriting cards too many times. The industry standards for cards is 100,000 cycles. In perspective, you can write data to every sector every day for decades before expecting an error.

Back to privacy for a minute, if you are a windows user, from the command line you can run this command after you have performed a complete format.

cipher /W:directory (for your card, directory would be the mount point of the card)
This performs what is generally known as a DOD hard drive wipe. This runs 3 passes through all unused sectors writing one pass of all zeros, one pass of all ones, and one pass of random data.

I don't know the mac equivalent for this.

While we are discussing formatting, let's also talk about new hard drives and particularly SSD drives. Again, it is a very good idea to do a complete format before using it. One thing I have run into with SSD drives is the manufacturer sets the file allocation unit to an enormous size. When you are writing a file to the card or disk, it is allocated a number of sectors of that size. The problem is this results in large chucks of space being assigned at the end of an image file that is mostly empty. This can manifest in seeing a disk supposedly written to capacity but holding file totals of maybe 2/3 or 3/4 of capacity. Reset that to a reasonable size such as 4096 bytes to adequately use your card.

All of this does not come from experience as a photography, but over 30 years IT experience. Hope this helps.

A more important factor is the processor, specifically its speed and the number of cores. Look for a speed greater than 2.5GHz, and at least 4 cores. This with 16Gbyte of ram should give you plenty of processing power.

When you get the PC, also get an 8Gbyte USB 3.0 flash drive. Plug it in and set it up for ReadyBoost. 4GBytes will be set up to work with disk cacheing to also help with performance.

Another way around this in Windows is to use symbolic links. You know where LR is expecting to find your files. You can use a command line to tell LR where the photo folder now lives using the mklink command

mklink /D \users\userid\Documents\(folder where the photos were) drive:\new folder

Now, whenever LR goes to where it wants to go, windows serves up your photos from your external drive. Any subfolders you create in the new location will subsequently be seen by LR as if they were in the original location.

If you want to see moose, you need to go north of RMNP to Walden, and Colorado State Forest State Park.

Chiracahua National Monument, south of Wilcox off I-10. Southwest history, Cochise, Geronimo

Here is a possibility - this is a USB 3 hub that has a switch on each port. This would allow you to isolate which ever camera you want to be idle. All of the ports usb USB Type A male inputs so you are covered regardless of the connector on each camera.

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JX1ZS5O/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

BTW the cost is $10.

All hard drives are manufactured with internal firmware to be self-checking. S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) is embedded. All you need is something to read that off the drive and tell you the status. For windows, speccy or cystaldiskinfo will grab that info for you. If you have WDC drives, WD Drive Utilities will tell you the current status, but won't show the details. It also includes quick test and deep testing tools.

I have used Roxio easy VHS to DVD which can burn a new DVD or import to an ISO file. It includes a video component to USB adapter to connect to your PC. Just remember, regardless of what software you use, the process will take the runtime of the VHS tape.

https://smile.amazon.com/Roxio-Easy-VHS-DVD-Plus/dp/B07TWN55VV/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=3OW7Z3TLECWFK&dchild=1&keywords=roxio+easy+vhs+to+dvd+3+plus&qid=1585755362&sprefix=Roxio+%2Caps%2C302&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEzTjVVVDdNUFVBTVpMJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNjM1Mzc1MlU3OFdYSDRDMzdMSCZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwMDU5MjUyMUhRWlJPVkdQV1RNQiZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2F0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=

Check out EOS Magazine if you are a Canon user. It is independent of Canon and is in the UK. Lots of pdfs on cameras and photography. It also has a very good magazine.

www.eos-magazine.com

One of their authors, Nina Bailey, also has a website of books she has written, downloadable
www.ninabailey.co.uk

The the drive from Santa Fe through Los Alamos National Laboratory toward Valle Caldera National Preserve is mostly pristine tall pines. Really nice. Valle Caldera is exactly what the name sounds like it might be; an ancient caldera valley.

Here is a link to get it from cnet.

https://download.cnet.com/Windows-Live-Photo-Gallery/3000-2193_4-10920662.html