Info on Memory Stick Licencing Fees Available

Ummm, no. While companies can licence it, that doesn't make it open. The only company that makes any decisions on the Memory Stick specs is Sony. I'm not saying that's always a bad thing. The Palm OS isn't an open standard, though it gets a LOT of input from its licensees. But the SD standard is truly open, with representatives from companies in the SD Association working together to make decisions.

Just trying the keep the facts straight.

Who actually finds this amazing? Sure, sony is offering extremely cheap licensing NOW. If they became the preferred memory media, I'm sure that trend would continue.

Hats off to open-media formats like SD. I think we've all seen Sony's strong-arm media tactics in the past (CDROM) & Music. Let's hope this one falls on its face (Mini-Disc).

"Memory Stick is still essentially Sony only as far as products you can use them in."

My Aiwa stereo player which I got this summer while I was in Japan have a MS slot in it. Acer's S10, a Palm OS based PDA, has a MS slot. - somthing for you to think about before you make another un-educated statment.

"Let's hope this one falls on its face (Mini-Disc)."
????
the US is one of the few countries were the MiniDisc is not popular, in Japan for example (2nd largest market) its literally everywhere..

God, I hate trying to correct people all the time.

SD is not an "open" standard. It's owned by three companies: Panasonic (Matsushita), Toshiba, and Sandisk, exactly the same way the Memory Stick is owned by Sony. They get no "real" input into how it works. Using the SD format costs $1000/yr, which isn't exactly pocket change either -- in the same ballpark as MS.

Here's the list of SD member companies. A member company is defined as someone who pays SD to license their products. http://www.sdcard.org/member.htm

Here's the list of MS member companies. Note the page is nearly identical in wording and such. All they do is pay Sony to develop MS products. http://www.memorystick.org/msinfo/eng/memberlist/index.html

CompactFlash costs no money to license. It's the only "real" open format. SD and MS are for-profit formats. Outside of the PDA industry MS has MUCH higher marketshare. The only company (outside the PDA industry, which for some reason has embraced SD) that has made product lines based around SD is Panasonic, which owns SD just like Sony owns MS.

Pioneer is starting to make CD players that use MS for MP3's. Samsung is making DVD players that can read MS for pictures and audio.

In my opinion, SD is a completely worthless format except for its size. Proprietary security standards, jacked up prices (it is NOT comparable to memory stick, even on Ebay or pricegrabber), very few possibilities for peripherals. Since the Duo is about the same size, I hope SD dies quickly once people realize the "Secure" part of it is worthless. Even Hewlett-Packard, which uses SD on their PDA's, just added Memory Stick to their photo printers but not SD. SD is only used on PDA's because of their size.

Personally, I like Compact Flash the most, but Memory Stick is second best in my book. It even has 2x or better transfer rate compared to SD and others.

But I said all this on Brighthand already. :(

> The only company (outside the PDA industry, which for some reason has
> embraced SD) that has made product lines based around SD is Panasonic

Sure, if you exclude companies like Kodak who are using it in their digital cameras, and completely ignore devices that use MMC cards.

> It even has 2x or better transfer rate compared to SD and others.

As far as I know, the max speed in the spec for SD is way beyond Memory Stick.

Geez, guys, fix the AutoCensor so people can type in the Japanese company name without fear!

Yes - God forbid that a company or person can work hard, invest capital, and invent a product and actually have the gall to expect to do something as loathesome as to want to make a PROFIT!!! I think that the United Nations should FORCE Sony to give away all Memory Sticks and Clie's for FREE and also MSFT should be forced to give away their Windows and Office programs for FREE too!!! These big, bad, evil companies should not be allowed to profit at the little people's expense!!! SHAME, SHAME, SHAME!!!

Uh, go to http://www.sdcard.org/ and click on "How to Join SDA".

Dude, the maxtransfer speed in the SD spec is 10.0 Mbytes/sec.

Research YOUR information!!!

1) K, I read that MS was 5MB/s vs. SD was 2.5MB/s. I still believe I'm right, but who cares, it doesn't matter much anyway.

2) If you "join" the SD card association, that $4k does NOT entitle you to make products, you have to pay the extra licensing fee. ALL LICENSEES of MS get to attend meetings and receive publications, so all you've proven is that it's actually more expensive to license SD if you want actual support. As for "voting," worthless. The SD spec was designed by Panasonic, Toshiba, and SanDisk. It's pretty ridiculous that I could pay $1k and be on a "board of directors."

3) Kodak does NOT use SD cards on its cameras. It uses CompactFlash on nearly all of them. I believe they experimented with SD cards on one of their cameras.. maybe more, I don't know. Definitely not their standard though. Go to kodak.com and see.

4) SD is still far more expensive than MS, and always will be. SD is based around "Secure" formatting which is a joke, since consumers clearly don't want "secure" formats right now. Just like nobody smart is buying Sony's MagicGate sticks. More expensive, no real benefit.

5) MMC and SD are not the same thing; older flash MP3 players sometimes used MMC, but not many. It's even relatively hard to find MMC cards now. Flash based players are dying; all of the top selling MP3 Players on zdnet.com, except one (strangely enough the iPaq), are CD- or hard drive-based players.

> As for "voting," worthless. The SD spec was designed by Panasonic, Toshiba, and SanDisk.

Completely WRONG. Companies like Palm actively participate in the SDA to develop things like the SDIO sepcs.

> Kodak does NOT use SD cards on its cameras.

Absolutlely WRONG. Even though you try to back out of it in the statements that follow.

Look, smart guy. I said that NOBODY IN NON-PDA WORLD USES SD AS A STANDARD EXCEPT PANASONIC. THIS IS 100% TRUE. GO TO WWW.KODAK.COM, LOOK AT THEIR CAMERAS. ALL OF THEM EXCEPT ONE USE COMPACT FLASH, EVEN THEIR NEW ONES.

All of the SD specs were created BEFORE palm made their first expansion slot. Since you're so vague I can't tell if you mean that member companies decide how the SD format is made (which is 100% false) or whether they are an active participant in making IO devices. If so, the same is true with memory sticks.

Ridiculous. If Sony called the memory stick the "Open Flash-Based Stick Association of Cooperatives" and never marketed it as the "Sony Memory Stick," tards like yourself would love memory stick because of its "openness."

Defending SD because of its size: Great, I agree with you. Defending SD because it's an "open format": Retarded.

Sorry for the flame innocent readers; it's just that when you go to lengths to try to show people that their assumptions are wrong and somebody replies and says "nuh uh, you're wrong," it's very annoying.

>"No, SD cards currently out support the 10.0MB/s transfer rate. Go to Sandisk's website and read their card specs."

Are you a complete idiot or do you aspire to be one every waking moment of your life? Those numbers are for transfer rates between the chip controller and the memory on the card, NOT from device to card. Line 1, Line 2, Line 3, Line 4 are for developers and have no impact on how the end-user experiences data transfer from card to device. You have completely and emphatically underscored my request: DO YOUR F***ING RESEARCH. Are you an enginner? If not, then shut the hell up!!! If you are, then you're a pathetic representative.

To use your words against you:

"Quit posting crap you don't know anything about, and especially quit accusing people of lying when info you are posting is flat out wrong."

For what it's worth, I got a 128 MB Lexar Memory Stick from buy.com a couple weeks ago for $60.95, with a $15.00 rebate, for a total of $45.95. Prices are getting extremely reasonable if you look around a bit...

Ecost is selling the Sony 128 MB at $68.00 + S&H!

http://www.ecost.com/ecost/shop/detail.asp?DPNo=977156

Sony is competative in the UK. I picked up a Clie n770c for £300 and a 64Mb Ms for £45.

Price for an m505 from the same source £300, and a 64Mb SD card at £75, or £47 for a MMC.

I also grabbed a 16Mb MS for software, at £25, a SD is also £25, and a 16Mb MMC £20.

I love the m505 form factor, and everything Palm has done for this business, but Sony are better value IMHO.

Interestingly the PalmOS 5 presentation at PalmSource is a joint Sony and Palm event, according to a recent webcast.

Take a look at http://makeashorterlink.com/?G1D55165
and you will see how seriously Sony is taking this business.

I like this quote from the "Sony: Delivering on a promise seminar"

'Finally, new advances in the CLIÉ™ Handheld platform and expansion technology will be shown.'

My fingers are already itching.

The only thing holding back the Clie from really being killer is the OS. Think what Sony could do if they got rid of the Palm OS handcuffs! We may just see a Clie PPC someday.

I agree. As much as I want to see a Sony PPC, I think Sony is going big on PalmOS. Incedentally did you guys notice that Palm and Sony are the only Global Platinum Sponsors? So Sony must have more information than us to stay within the PalmOS. I am sure if they go to PPC, they will make the coolest PPC too. Hopefully with OS 5.0, Sony can gives us more in multimedia and wireless (built-in bluetooth/Wi-Fi)