Ceiva Advanced Digital Photo Receiver | List Price: $149.99
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Brand: Ceiva
Binding: Electronics
Release Date: 2003-11-10
Features: - Receives and displays a digital photo slide show without a computer
- Receiver receives 50% more pictures each night than the previous model--up to 30 at a time
- An ideal gift for even the most non-technical parents, grandparents or friends
- Order prints of favorite photos through the mail simply by pressing “Order Print” button on Receiver
- Requires subscription to Ceiva Network--low monthly and yearly rates available
Broke after a year [Posted on 2004-11-08]
It's a great idea, but the device broke after just one year. Also, Ceiva is kind of scummy - they won't refund your yearly subscription fee if you cancel after 180 days - sounds illegal, but who's going to fight over $40.
CEIVA SUCKS! [Posted on 2004-12-17]
I was very excited about buying a CEIVA for my technology-phobic, West Coast parents, who are in their 80s. I thought they would love seeing pictures of the grandkids, and they did... the one time it worked. After MANY attempts to fix it, including over a dozen phone calls to CEIVA to try to get the problem resolved, CEIVA acknowledged defeat and told us to return the unit to them. (I might add in that 1) calls to customer service take FOREVER as they will keep you on hold for a a LOOOOONG time before you actually get to talk to anyone; 2) they weren't particularly nice during the calls, and intimated to my parents that perhaps they weren't smart enough to figure out how the thing worked).
Well, my parents returned the unit to CEIVA as instructed, after pointing out to the company that we hadn't bought it directly from them. CEIVA said this was ok -- they even provided a return authorization number. My parents promptly mailed it off. Thank goodness I told them as a precaution to send it with delivery tracking and insurance. CEIVA never acknowledged having received it; when I contacted them 6 weeks later to say that I hadn't seen a refund on my credit card, they couldn't find the receiver; then, when they finally did find it, they refused to refund our money, stating that their only remedy was to send a new receiver. Well, at this point, as you can imagine, my parents didn't want the friggin' thing. So I am now stuck with a $150 receiver and nobody to use it. CEIVA, and CEIVA customer service, is horrible. I wouldn't recommend their products to ANYONE.
How to Thrill a Mom [Posted on 2005-01-13]
We got one of these for my Mother-in-law for Christmas, because she 1)lives in another state in a retirment community and 2)gets flustered just trying to use the TV remote, so email and web sites are out of the question for sending new pictures to her. Of course there's still good old snail-mail, but we thought she'd get a kick out of the instantaneous gratification of getting pictures the day we take them.
Well! It turned out to give her a bigger kick than we expected. Every time we send a new batch of pictures she calls us all excited about them and keeps asking, "But how on earth do you do it?" The thing is: she doesn't actually need to know! We are able to take care of everything from our end, from uploading pictures to even setting how fast the slide-show goes and what time the receiver turns off at night. She doesn't have to do a thing, and that's a good thing because she really is very intimidated by technology.
On the advice of another review I read here, we set up the receiver and the online account from our own home when we first got the Ceiva, and made sure everything was working properly before we drove to her home and gave it to her. All we had to do was plug it in for her. I did show her how to use the "next" and "previous" buttons but she doesn't even really need to know that - she would have been perfectly content if I'd never even showed her how to open the button bar at all. She doesn't have to do a thing, and that was what we were aiming for.
The coolest thing is that I think, while she likes the gift and the pictures very much, the best part for her is the way all her friends and neighbors gush over how neat it is and how they want one, too.
One bit of advice: I would recommend that before you plug your investment into the wall, buy a surge protector - the kind that you plug both electrical and phone lines in to - and be sure to use that. I am guessing that power surges are behind some of the comments I've seen here from people who say their unit "just stopped working" a few months after getting it. After having our futzy phone lines blow out countless answering machines, cordless phones, and laptop modems, I never plug any electronic device into a phone line anymore without a surge protector. You can get a very good one that plugs directly into the wall (no extra cords) for under $20, and it's well worth it.
The only other thing I'd recommend for future versions of the Ceiva is Bigger Buttons. The buttons themselves are very sleek and tiny, but they and the text labeling them are 'way too small for most Seniors to use, and it seems to me that the folks who get the most benefit from the Ceiva are in fact Seniors.
Another thing: what is all this whinging on and on about the paltry monthly online fee that is charged for maintaining your photos on the Ceiva web site to upload to the receiver? I think it's a pitance and well worth the joy it gives to Mom. We spend much more than that on our regular online access account, not to mention on long-distance calls to her - in the grand scheme of things I think it's a perfectly reasonable fee for the service.
Ceiva can be shared with your desktop! [Posted on 2005-10-20]
Grandma has a Ceiva frame, but I have a laptop and you can download a program to send ceiva pictures to your laptop or computer as wallpaper. You can also send pictures from your computer to the ceiva frame. You can get the software at www.pictureshare.net It makes ceiva so much cooler for us. Very easy to use, beautiful wallpaper changer. The only one that talks to Ceiva frames.
Be careful when buying Ceiva/service plan!!! [Posted on 2008-04-21]
I purchased a Ceiva when they first came out and added Lifetime service. 7 years later I learn that my "lifetime" service is set to expire! Lifetime is defined as the life of the physical frame or 7 years! Seriously? Only 7 years!
In the meantime, TiVo has let me upgrade my first gen TiVo with Lifetime service TWICE and retain my lifetime status. That's what I call LIFETIME.
They're good frames, but that is some lousy customer relations. Needless to say, I refused the monthly service and plan to purchase another frame without a service fee.
Click here for more details and discount information...
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