Hi Stu, Many people with these portable devices have flash card readers and they work very well. However, there is one problem they can't solve. When you're working with a file it is being held in the memory of the device itself, not on the card. Some devices have problems with large files, and the only way to deal with that would be to split the file. For example, my Braille Note can't open Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy, so if I want to read that on the BN I'll have to split up the fiel. But for issues of transferring files the flashcard reader is a very good solution. Kellie