100-in-1 Card Readers Coming Soon
on 11.24.06, 07:07am in gadgets • Comments (2)
What is it with manufacturers and flash memory card formats? Back in 2004 I swore off anything but SD, but that failed pretty quickly - my Nikon D70s uses compact flash, and one of the Sony point and shoot cameras I have uses a memory stick (of course).
This morning I was reading a bit about SDHC - "A new SD format, SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity), allows capacities in excess of 2GB (4GB to 32GB). SDHC uses the same form factor as SD, but compatibility is not complete in either direction."
Great - just what consumers needed, a new type of SD card, that looks exactly the same as the old SD cards, but is completely incompatible.
I sometimes think the manufacturers are just on a race to see when we can get enough formats out there to warrant a 100-in-1 card reader.
gdkzen (November 24, 2006 @ 7:51 pm)
One of the issues is that certain products tend to stick with certain formats. DSLR’s overwhelmingly use CompactFlash (with the notable exception of Sony products (see Betamax) and the new Nikon D80).
In the case of the the Nikon D80, people are actually paying the extra cash for a D200 (albeit a much better camera) because they don’t want to re-invest in multiple gigabytes of new storage.
DLF (November 28, 2006 @ 12:32 pm)
I am successfully all SD: Palm OS 5 device w/2 slots, 1 w/SDIO WiFi card and 1 w/memory card for Audible books, GPS maps, etc.; Nikon D50 dSLR w/1 GB Ultra II SD card (newer D80 and D40 are also SD-only); and a Panasonic SV-AV100 SD camcorder for DVD-quality MPEG2 (not 4!) files.
Avoid plasticy Canon cameras (CF) and all Sony products (see camera and battery flaws if you need an excuse), and you’re all set.