All Future Palms to Have SD Slot

Posted By: Ed Thursday, February 8, 2001 5:57:46 AM

According to ChannelNewsAsia, Alan Kessler, Palm's chief operating officer for platforms and products, said Wednesday that all future Palm models would include an SD (secure digital) slot. While Palm announced months ago that they would be offering Palms with the SD slot, this is the first time anyone has said that every Palm model would have one.

Mr Kessler said, "By integrating the SD slot, Palm will be able to offer extremely thin, elegant products that offer tremendous benefits to individual users and enterprise customers. Customers will enjoy the easy customization of their handheld and the plug-and-play interoperability of the SD Cards between various products in their household."

"The SD is an open platform, and with more products available, you will be able to use your Palm to access info on your handphone, and digital camera, etc." said Claudia Romanini, senior manager of Palm's Consumer Markets Group.

The SD format developed was by the Secure Digital Association (SDA), a consortium of well over 100 companies, including Toshiba, Philips, Matsushita (Panasonic), Symbian, Microsoft, and, of course, Palm.

Panasonic already has digital cameras with SD slots on the market while other electronics makers intend to release products in the first half of this year. There are also SD cards available on the market in capacities up to 64 MB, with a transfer rate of 10 megabytes per second. The consortium believes that capacities up over 1 GB are possible.

SD cards are still selling at a premium, with an 8 MB card going for $50 and a 64 MB one for $180, but this isn't surprising considering how small the market for them is now.

Permalink |

Article Comments

(17 comments)

The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. PalmInfocenter is not responsible for them in any way.
Please Login or register here to add your comments.

Comments Closed
This article is no longer accepting new comments.

Transfer rates

I.M. Anonymous @ 2/8/2001 8:41:10 AM #

What is the transfer rate of a Flash memory card? 10 bits a second sounds slow.

RE: Transfer rates

Ed @ 2/8/2001 9:28:53 AM #

Oops, it was a typo. Try 10 megabytes per second.

---
Plenipotentiary
Palm Infocenter

RE: Transfer rates

I.M. Anonymous @ 2/8/2001 10:49:40 AM #

Well, when I backup my Prism with the backup module, it takes a little less than 1 min/MB.

SD sounds like it's faster.

RE: Transfer rates

I.M. Anonymous @ 2/8/2001 11:24:01 AM #

10Mbps is what a standard LAN runs at...when you think about a standard modem at 56Kbps, 10Mbps is a rocket...

Incorrect information, RE:Transfer rates

I.M. Anonymous @ 2/8/2001 11:29:16 AM #

Are you sure you don't mean 10 MegaBits a second? 10 Megabytes a second is really fast. To give you an ideal a 100 mbps LAN only runs at Megabits a second and on a clean line running at full duplex you'll realisticly only get about 5 or 6 megs a second. I think the above information above isn't correct. The Palm doesn't have enough processing power to deliver that kind of speed.

RE: Transfer rates

I.M. Anonymous @ 2/8/2001 11:34:44 AM #

I don't think it's going to be 10 megabytes per second. Try 10 megaBITS per second. 1 byte == 8 bits. Standard LAN's are 10megabits/second.

RE: Transfer rates

Ed @ 2/8/2001 11:51:18 AM #

To quote Palm's press release from the SD Card Association Web site:
"Combined with SD's outstanding data transfer rate of up to 10 megabytes per second, the SD architecture allows quick access to and storage of large amounts of data."
http://www.sdcard.org/news-7.htm

This is a press release so they may be exaggerating a bit but transfer rates seem like they are going to be pretty speedy.

Toshiba is a bit more conservative. They say:
"SD Memory Card packaging includes a new high performance, nine-pin SD interface that enables data transfer rates of up to two megabytes per second and will eventually allow transfer rates of up to 10MB per second."
http://www.toshiba.com/taec/press/to-117.shtml

---
Plenipotentiary
Palm Infocenter

RE: Transfer rates

I.M. Anonymous @ 2/10/2001 4:39:28 PM #

You realize 10MB is about the equivalent of a DS3 connection to the Internet? I'm sorry, its Megabit.

Tons of Pics of SD Prototypes

Ed @ 2/8/2001 4:23:18 PM #

The Thai Palm Users Group (TPUG) has a vast collection of good, close up pictures of SD device prototypes. Mostly these are the same devices from PalmSource but the pictures are far better than any I've seen. They have close ups of a couple of digital cameras, an MP3 player, modem, and plenty more.

http://www.tpug.org/news/M505/M505.html

---
Plenipotentiary
Palm Infocenter

Mockups, not prototypes.

I.M. Anonymous @ 2/8/2001 5:00:41 PM #

Isen't a prototype something that works, but was hand produced?

These look more like case mockups - and the pictures are all the same ones that were in the SD related posts earlier, folks. Nothing to see here... Move Along. :)

RE: Tons of Pics of SD Prototypes

Ed @ 2/22/2001 9:55:30 AM #

At the Internet World Wireless conference yesterday, Michael Mace gave a presentation during which he showed a slide of these and referred to them as "prototypes". If anyone knows, he does.

---
Plenipotentiary
Palm Infocenter

SD vs CF

Bert @ 2/9/2001 5:11:37 PM #

What is the advantage of SD over CF (compact flash) cards? My TRGpro can do a backup to or restore from a CF card in 40 sec. (for 7 MB of data.) I run 7 MB of apps off the same 16 MB CF card, which cost $50 -- a quarter the per-MB cost quoted in the article for the SD. So now we have the Sony machine using Memory Sticks, Palms using SD & Visors with their proprietary technology. Talk about fragmented markets!

RE: SD vs CF

Ed @ 2/10/2001 8:34:28 AM #

When Palm announced support for the SD standard, they put out a press release explaining why. Here are a few advantages that they listed:

A very compact internal expansion option approximately one-fourth the size of a compact flash card, the SD Card measures 32 mm long by 24 mm wide by 2.1 mm thick.

The SD Card's unique security functions are incorporated in the card, facilitating the secure exchange of content between devices and the card. This security technology has been designed to comply with current and future Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) portable device requirements, making it an excellent medium for the distribution of digital content, including digital music.

The full release is available here:
http://www.sdcard.org/news-7.htm

---
Plenipotentiary
Palm Infocenter

m100

hej @ 2/10/2001 5:44:17 AM #

Will the new M100 have a SD slot also?

RE: m100

Ed @ 2/10/2001 8:21:00 AM #

That's a really good question. Until I read this, I would have said no. But but unless ChannelNewsAsia completely misquoted Alan Kessler, it looks like it will.

I'm wondering if Palm is going to have totally redesign the m100. In addition to promising that future versions would have the SD/MMC slot, at PalmSource they also promised that all future models would share a common HotSync port shape so they could use many of the same peripherals. Those two promises seem to necessitate a fairly serious redesign to the littlest Palm.

---
Plenipotentiary
Palm Infocenter

RE: m100

I.M. Anonymous @ 2/11/2001 12:08:37 PM #

yes, the new m100 might bee more of a mini m300.
Is it so that the m300 might be the palm of the future , more so than the m505 ?

i hope it´s true that the "new m100" have sd

Will SD Beat out the Springboard?

Ed @ 2/12/2001 12:40:36 PM #

One analyst thinks so:
"SD will have much more acceptance than Springboard," predicts Kevin Burden, an analyst at International Data Corp. based in Framingham, Massachusetts. "There is a limit to how small you can make the Handspring Visor if it has to support Springboard. Right now, Springboard is the reason you buy Handspring. But longer range, you've got to look where the market is heading. I think we'll see a lot more vendors supporting SD than Springboard because SD is smaller."

But there are always other analysts with different opinions:
"You'll probably be able to use the SD devices on a Handspring before you will be able to use them on a Palm," says Thomas Sepenzis, an analyst at CIBC World Markets Corp., based in San Francisco. "It's a brilliant strategy."

---
Plenipotentiary
Palm Infocenter