Olympus: losing the plot

You know, I hate it when technology doesn't work, especially when it comes from big-name companies that really should know better. It was my girlfriend's first proper day at work yesterday as a nurse; something she has trained hard for. She naturally wanted to record the occaision with a picture or two, so in the absence of my usual camera at work, I lent her a 7.1 Megapixel Olympus model we had at work. She duly took some pictures. I came to copy them off at home last night but of course I couldn't. That's because not only does Olympus use the rediculous xD format unbeknown to most card readers, but it also insists on using stupid proprietary cabling. JUST USE A STANDARD CONNECTION. And here's the real punch; I attempted to download the pics today to find the card had corrupted and won't even re-format. This is the kind of thing that makes me very annoyed...