Should I continue to invest in SD accessories?
March 24, 2004 8:15 AM   Subscribe

As I've mentioned here before, I have a Pocket PC that uses SD cards. I've had the device for about 18 months and it is in good shape. I'm at a crossroads now where I'm not sure if I should continue to invest in SD accessories, or simply wait for the compact memory arena to settle down. Anyone with some insight into the future of Pocket PC's, SD, and its competition?

By the way, not to sound too gooey, but I really appreciate all the help ya'll have given me thus far. It's been extremely useful.
posted by BlueTrain to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)
 
As I recall, it was just a couple of months ago that SD cards started outselling Compact Flash cards. In that time, prices have already started to fall significantly, but there's a lot more room left to grow. SanDisk has been increasing the density of their SD cards in leaps and bounds.

A hell of a lot of new gadgets that have been announced lately come with SD slots, including a lot of new phones. Every new handheld has an SD slot.

The competition right now is xD and miniSD. Both of those are damned expensive, if also so small they're cute. But recently, T-Flash was announced. It's even smaller, and probably going to replace the SIM cards in modern phones. But that's still months away from being available.

Let me put it this way. I have a handheld with a compact flash and an sd slot. Right now I have a 256 meg compact flash card. Instead of taking advantage of current prices (you can get a Viking 1 gig CF card for like $140), I'm waiting til I can get an SD card that big, because CF is on its way out, and SD is the new king. CF is on its way to only being useful for power-hogging MicroDrives.

The only caveat is that SD's ascendancy might be impeded by its closed-source nature. Without paying licensing fees, I believe it's impossible for manufacturers to implement SDIO technology, the stuff that lets you use SD slots for wifi/bluetooth, not just memory. On the other hand, xD, SD's closest competitor, is also proprietary.

I've been spending waaaay too much time reading gadgets weblogs this year.
posted by jbrjake at 10:00 AM on March 24, 2004


I don't see that there is any necessity for constraining your device choices to the storage hardware used by one of them. I've got CF, SD, and of all things, SmartMedia devices, and they each have their own little flotilla of appropriate cards. Interchangability is completely not a concern -- why would I want to put my (CF) camera's storage into my (SmartMedia) MP3 player, or stick the map data from my (MMC) GPS unit into my (CF) camera? I don't.

Invest in whichever devices best suit your needs, and worry very little about the storage form factor. How often are you going to need to exchange files between devices without the aid of a PC and some cables?
posted by majick at 7:01 PM on March 24, 2004


« Older Can anyone suggest a way to remove extra...   |   Region Encoding Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.