Worth upgrading from Digital Rebel to Digital Rebel XT?

[gabriel]

I've had the Canon Digital Rebel for a few years now, and I've been very happy with it, except for one thing: reviewing images (and waiting for them to write to the card as I shoot) seems very slow, and often interferes with shooting or makes reviewing such a pain that I avoid doing it until I can download to my computer. I always shoot in RAW mode. It takes about 2 seconds to move to the next image on the card, and it even lags just moving the selection in thumbnail view.

Reviews of the new Digital Rebel XT seem to indicate that it's faster than the original... has anybody here used both? Is there a noticeable improvement in image review and writing speed?

Another thought I had was that the speed could be related to the memory cards I'm using. I've been using Lexar 1GB 40X cards - "High Speed CompactFlash with Write Acceleration." I recently tried a PQI 1GB 100X card, which seems like in theory it should be over twice as fast, but... the difference between the two was barely noticeable. I confirmed this by running a disk benchmark through a Firewire card reader.

So, that leads me to think that either:
1) The Rebel's CompactFlash slot is simply slow - to make it any faster, I would need to upgrade to the Rebel XT.
OR
2) These 100X cards I got are crap, and I need to get something different.

Any opinions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
-Gabriel

[Rhys]

The original rebel is not that great but not that bad either. The XT is a step up but I feel that a step into a 20D/30D would be better since the rebel is annoying you now.

Your next step will be to get a 1D.

[aparmley]

The original rebel is not that great but not that bad either. The XT is a step up but I feel that a step into a 20D/30D would be better since the rebel is annoying you now.


While I own an XT and I loved it and was glad that I got it, I agree with Rhys. The leap to a 20/30D would be a nice step!