Transferring from Your Camera
Every image you shoot is stored on your camera's media card as an individual file. The file is a document just like you might create on your computer. Before you can do any editing of your images using your computer, you have to copy those image documents from your camera's media card onto your computer's hard drive.
You can transfer images from your camera in two ways. You can plug the camera directly into your computer, or you can remove its media card and place it in a media reader that is connected to your computer.
The advantage of a card reader is that it doesn't consume any of your camera's battery power. Also, most card readers support lots of different formats, so if you have more than one camera (say, the XS and a small point-and-shoot) that use different formats, then you need to carry only one card reader and a cable.
Depending on the type you get, a card reader might provide faster transfer than the XS. You should be able to find card readers that connect to your computer's USB 2 or FireWire port.
If you have a laptop with a PC Card slot or a CardBus 34 slot, then you can get card readers that will fit in those slots. These are typically the fastest readers of all, but they rarely support multiple formats.

Figure 4-2. On the left is a CardBus card reader that can plug directly into a CardBus slot on a laptop. On the right is a card reader that ...