I recently bought a Olympus Stylus 500 and I read online that it's USB 2.0. I've also got a Dell 1703FP monitor with 4 usb 2.0 ports. But, when I plug in the camera into the monitor, or the tower for that matter (Dell 4600, USB 2.0 as well), I get transfers as slower transfers than if I had the pics on my usb 2.0 memory key, which seems to go much much faster. Could this be because cameras transfer slower, or could they have given me a cable that's not usb 2.0? Thanks in advance!

No time for love, Dr. Jones!

There is no difference in the cables, a USB cable is a USB cable.

Files are transfered at the speed of the slowest component. It could be that the camera itself is not capable of using the full USB2 transfer. Then again, you might be comparing different file sizes.

Everything is the same file size, about 1MB per pic. Maybe cameras just function at a slower level than USB sticks since cameras have a lot more components.

No time for love, Dr. Jones!

The camera needs to read the memory card and then transfer the file via the USB. This in itself will cause some slowdown.

If it is a problem, you might be able to remove the memory card from the camera and read it with a memory card reader. These are pretty cheap. Though the time it takes to physically transfer the card may be self defeating.