I hinted at a fix for the flash drive...

1. if you plug the flashdrive into a powered USB (Belkin makes a really small one for Macbooks)...and then plug the hub into the USB connector
it works fine.. so your old Flash drives are not totally worthless... just more complicated to use for this purpose *

2. Of course you can plug your camera (which is battery powered or AC adaptor powered) into the iPad USB connector you're good to go. Afterall Apple meant it to be for cameras only in the first place.

But the inconvenience and of not being able to connect a cheap flash drive directly into iPad USB connector is a shame. Apple stated they were concerned about battery length on the iPad.... but connecting a flash drive to upload a movie took mere seconds. So you can bet DRM restrictions (copyright) played heavily into their decision on this one. They really want everyone to buy movies through iTunes.

Trouble is once the movies get on the iPad through syncing through iTunes (Apple's preferred way), you need a computer and iTunes to delete them. So it's really nice to be able to place 10-20 movies, documents you want to either read or share, 100's of photos... on a SD card and take it on vacation.. without the need of a computer. And best is you can delete them after watching and gain more free space on your iPad.

(iPad iOS prompts you to delete or save the movie/picture from the SD card or leave them alone from both the SD card and the iPad). My iPad 16GB is loaded with apps! but that only takes 5GB... leaving 10GB free.

Negative stuff: (and something to figure out). Somehow iTunes manages to get titles on movies and pictures, whereas using the SD card method you only see how long the movie (no title appears) and with pictures you see just a thumbnail of a picture... again no title. Somehow iTunes gets by that restriction. The only work-around I've found (so far) is to make sure the very first frame of a movie is not blank... if the first frame contains an image, that image will show up in the Photos app ... and if it's the title or recognizable you're in business.

Mike

* now if we could just find a powered flash drive... like one that runs on 3 hearing aid batteries ;-)