I just timed the download of a card from the downloader (CS4) and the rendering of previews. The download was exactly the same speed as using windows explorer with drag and drop and the thumbnail rendering took twice as long (to the second) with the downloader rather than drag and drop and open the folder in Bridge.
Now I know the downloader gives the option of adding a couple of lines of metadata (takes seconds to do for a folder anyway) and the option to convert to DNG (useful if you do), rename, yada yada yada.
For a guy like me who is downloading 20 gig from a shoot, all into the same folder, without conversion and without renaming, am I gaining anything other than slower rendering?
Serious question guys, not trying to be sarcastic, just want to know if there is any benefit for me. I thought that maybe the .xmp files (camera raw defaults) would be written as the files are imported but they obviously are not. It's cute to have the application within Bridge ala LR but am I missing something important? Can anyone tell me why I should be using it rather than just copying files over via explorer?
What I did notice in either case with Bridge CS4 is that if you let bridge render the previews while the files are copying then by the time they are copied over, all the previews are done. Certainly wasn't like that in CS3! Well done Adobe for getting that right, I had been using Bridge CS2 for all the sorting and Bridge CS3 for the newer ACR just because CS3 was so horribly sluggish at rendering thumbnails, previews, etc.