LAMU Portable Digital Photo Organizer - Digital Picture Manager for Windows - Software to Easily Organize Your Photos and Videos - Digital Photo Storage - 500 GB (Sky Blue)

I realize it sounds like hyperbole, but this is honestly one of the best things I have ever bought. First of all, understand that you're not paying for the 2TB hard drive. You could buy one of those cheaper. You're paying for the Lamu system, and it's worth every penny and much more. I'm a reasonably organized person, but that doesn't apply when it comes to photos. I always just take the picture with my phone or camera, save it to the computer with whatever default name the device gave it, and then forget about it. After a while I have about zero chance of ever finding a photo again. This is especially frustrating when I know I have a picture of one of my friends or family, but when I need it I can't find it. So I bought the Lamu because I thought the facial recognition would help me sort out the mess, and it does - but it does SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT! I have an old computer that I don't use anymore, and I knew there were pictures on it that I had never uploaded to the cloud or transferred to my new computer, so I started there with the Lamu. It found 5,700 photos on that computer, scattered between user accounts and folders, filtered out the countless duplicates, and sorted them all by date, place, people, and even device used to take the pictures! I went through and identified a few pics of each face, and the next thing I knew I had hundreds of pictures of my wife, my kids, myself, and other family members and friends, and I could actually search and find them! As I said, it was a very old computer and it took Lamu about 18 hours to find and import everything, but I just made sure the power settings were set to never go to sleep, and I started it running and went about my business. The next day when it was done, I could not believe how well it had worked. Then I had it import from my phone - another 10,000 disorganized images, now perfectly organized by any means I want to find them! This is not only useful, it's incredibly fun. This could be a serious weekend hobby - tagging photos, building family trees (yes, it does that too!), identifying social networks (also automatic!), creating albums, sharing, and on and on and on. I had no idea how capable this thing was, but it's incredible. I plan to buy a bunch of them as gifts for my mom (who loves going through her old photos), my sisters, my mother-in-law, and others. I strongly recommend this amazing system!

Read all the reviews prior to purchase. Knew others had issues with setting up the drive. Being mildly "tech saavy", decided to make the buy. Receive the attactively-packaged, good looking unit with its clean lines and trim shape. Read the accompanying literature thoroughly and began the set-up process. After several failed attempts, I finally had to resort to contacting customer service via email. Although I did receive a fairly prompt response, I was disappointed to learn that the service agent felt my issue was the result of my computer virus protection program and I was told to shut it down in order to set-up the drive unit. That's where I drew the line and decided to return the unit to Amazon. Not that I still don't want a usable drive to which I can transfer and organize my photos, but I am not about to start making adjustments to existing applications just to accommodate this product. I hope to find another product which will do the job I need to have done. Perhaps this manufacturer should consider re-writing the owner's manual for this unit to include a "trouble-shooting" section to include all the necessary information to get this unit to function as advertised. Better yet, how about designing an installation program which addresses all the known "glitches." Just sayin'...

I have a love-hate relationship with this device--I love the concept, but hate the amount of work that I'm going to have to put into it. I have thousands and thousands of pictures of my family on multiple devices (mac, pc, backup hard drives, phones).First hurdle, get everything on a hard drive the pc can read. Second hurdle, the time it takes to copy files from devices to hard drive to LAMU device. Third hurdle, facial recognition is AWFUL and having to go through EVERY SINGLE PHOTO and assign EVERY SINGLE FACE to a profile (this is the main reason I'm giving it 3 stars). Also, the de-duping function is hit or miss; it de-dupes some multiple images and keeps copies of others.I completed a transfer from start to finish with 2,000 images as a test run. It took me a whole weekend just to do that set-- LITERALLY, 2 straight days from sun up to sun down. It has sat on the corner of my desk, untouched, ever since. I really have to back up and create a management solution for my families images, but I ain't got time for all that!Granted, I may be the exception given the number of images I'm dealing with. If someone is looking for a storage option from the get-go or has a much smaller collection, this would be a super option and I would highly recommend it. If you buy the 2tb option because you have THAT MANY pics, buy it knowing you have a TON of work ahead of you.