Matsushita Dropping SD Card Prices
In an attempt to make SD cards more competitive with Sony's Memory Sticks, Matsushita Electric has promised to cut the price of a 64 MB SD card from $180 to $95 this month. An equivalent MemStick is $120. The company is also committed to cutting the costs of all current SD cards by 90% by 2005, though in four years an 8 MB card may seem as pointless as a 20 MB hard drive in a PC does today.
Fumio Ohtsubo, Matsushita's managing director, admitted that SD Card shipments have been dwarfed by Memory Stick's. So far, his company has made only 250 thousand units while over 10 million MemSticks have been sold. Still, he predicted that 160 million SD cards would have been sold by 2006, capturing 50% of the market.
Currently, Matsushita is working to increase the number of companies that make devices with SD card slots.
SD card slots appear in Palm's m500 series and the HandEra 330.
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On the Web: Thanks to Mike Cane for the tip. -EdArticle Comments
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RE: What about your memory sticks now?
RE: Flamebait
He's a troll. Nothing he posts is ever longer than a short sentence and they are all personal attacks, insults, or flamebait. This one here is an example of flamebait. He only posted it to start an argument between Sony and Palm users. I think that topic has been beaten into the ground lately so please don't continue it.
RE: What about your memory sticks now?
Industry Needs to Standardize!!!
Palm and Sony have their pros and cons. Maybe when the next wave of palm devices come out, they will learn from each others successes and failures and come up with an undeniably superior product (I'm thinking a m505 formfactor with a nice, organic LCD screen, a jog dial, 320 * 320 resolution, 16 bit...)
On the topic of memory expansion, I think it was a very bad idea for sony to introduce its memory stick format. It should have used a well established industry standard like palm did with its m505.
RE: What about your memory sticks now?
CompUSA has them for $99 already...
Lesson learned: Always ask for the price in the system, not for the one on the tag.
Have a good one,
Chriz.
Got that beat.
Ecost.com has Sandisk 64MB SD Cards for $64.00 .
Sticks and SD
policy by part of Sony (and Matsushita) to release their
own flashmemory format, when there are already 3 existing
formats (Compactflash, Smartmedia and MMC).
Guess Sony thinks that they're big enough to get away with it,
let's hope that they'll be forced to reduce prices (right now
memory sticks are about twice as expensive as the comparable
Compactflahs or Smartmedia card)
RE: Sticks and SD
RE: Sticks and SD
Peace Out
Alan
For a m505 group for all the supporters
Anybody who flames this message has no life.
RE: For a m505 group for all the supporters
I'm only playin', I love my m505! But isn't it amazing how one post can be so opinionated with little facts? I know it's all off topic, but it certainly makes a good point: we are all too caught up in these handheld wars!
Later all,
*'Lise M.*
SD Format
so, my question. Are their two different formats to this "standard". or is the standard just the way information is stored and not the physical size?
?
RE: SD Format
RE: SD Format
RE: SD Format
Are you confusing SD with Smart Media? Smart media cards are larger but thinner than SD cards and are a rival, unrelated, memory card format.
---
News Editor
Palm Infocenter
MMC is better
Chromosome.
RE: SD Format
A lot of post here shows that people here don't understand the concept of I/O cards (SD, Memory Stick, CF) vs Memory omly cards (SmartMedia, MMC, CF).
In fact, there is already on the market CF cards that can do stuff that the other ones will take 2 years to achieve... Modem, Bluetooth (yes, it exists), GPS, GSM phone, Real hard drive, etc... All the manufaacturers were drived by M$ involvment in CF.
Once we stated that CF is too bulky, what does M$ is gonna do ?? Go with SD, Memory Stick, or they're gonna have their own ???
Solo
Memory Stick Vs Magic Gate Vs SD Cards
Is the Magic Gate an underhand way to prevent you from using MP3's? Isn't that what it's supposed to do. Protect copyright in some way? Sony are bundling the 64Mb Magic Gate with the Clie? Why? They are not offering the same thing with the memory stick.
Thanks for your help everyone.
RE: Memory Stick Vs Magic Gate Vs SD Cards
Given the current state of things, MagicGate is to MemoryStick roughly what SD is to MMC.
SD (Secure Digital) is an extension to MMC (MultiMediaCard) that adds "digital rights management" (memory, encryption, and smarts that attempt to limit one to moving, rather than copying, files), higher speed (but not yet), and support for non-memory IO devices (but not yet). SD and MMC cards are generally clearly labelled either SD or MMC, and SD cards are a bit thicker.
MagicGate is an extension to MemoryStick (rather than a superceding format) that adds "digital rights management". The MemoryStick (aka MS) format already has support for IO devices (I think), though none are available yet. MagicGate MemorySticks are labelled as such and are white, while "plain" MemorySticks are a color variously described as blue or purple. They appear to be precisely the same size. (Sony has also shown around something called "MemoryStick Duo", which is smaller than an SD card, comes with a MemoryStick adapter for use in current devices, and presumably would allow even smaller devices in the future.)
I would have much preferred to see Sony put an SD slot in the Clie instead of the MS slot, but it just wasn't gonna happen -- people who are just becoming aware of the Clie with the release of the N710C are likely thinking "why did Sony do that when there's already a standard with SD?", but the earlier mono Clie had MS before SD existed, and Sony's been busy using MS in their entire line of digital cameras, walkmans, laptops, etc., for, what, a couple years now?
Is the MagicGate an underhand way to prevent you from using MP3's? Isn't that what it's supposed to do. Protect copyright in some way?
The technical point of the MagicGate extension, yes, is copyright protection. It doesn't do that itself, it just provides the framework that software can use to keep one from copying things around. The AudioPlayer app that Sony provides with the Clie can play MP3-format music files (with no protection or hinderance) off of either plain or MagicGate Memory Sticks, and it can also play their ATRAC3 format music files off of (only) the MagicGate Memory Sticks.
Using their ATRAC3 format involves some hassle of "checking out" files to the Clie, and then "checking in" the files later (apparently even with music you've ripped from your own CDs, though I haven't bothered to try), to ensure that you don't accidentally give out the file to that guy with the eye patch, parrot, and wooden leg.
I see only two possible reasons why anyone would use ATRAC3: 1) supposedly it encodes somewhat smaller files for a given sound quality, and 2) it may give big record labels enough warm fuzzy feelings that they'll be willing to release "special" things, e.g. an unreleased track from a major artist given away as a promo, but you have to download it from their website, rather than grabbing it off Napster.
Personally, I haven't touched the ATRAC3 stuff, and I don't intend to; my Clie plays MP3's off plain Memory Sticks just fine, including using Sony-supplied software (RealJukebox) to rip MP3s from my CD collection, and that's good enough for me.
Note that the N700C (the Japanese version of the N710C) originally came with only ATRAC3 support, and at least some of Sony's MemoryStick-based walkmans only support ATRAC3 (with PC software supplied to convert your MP3's into ATRAC3 format). I think they made a fairly wise and pragmatic choice in adding built-in MP3 support for the US market.
Sony are bundling the 64Mb Magic Gate with the Clie?
Sony is packaging an 8mb "plain" MemoryStick in with the Clie, so you have something to play with when you open the box (Palm doesn't give you any SD/MMC card -- not picking on Palm, just an observation).
Are you talking about some some value-added bundle on their website or some such? If there's a way to get a 64mb MagicGate MS for free to go along with my new Clie, I'd love to hear about it :-)
RE: Memory Stick Vs Magic Gate Vs SD Cards
This is the kind of stuff that I come to this site seeking. I posted a question on another site a week or so ago asking for any practical difference between the SD format and the MMC format on the current palm 5xx devices as sold. No one really addressed that as the thread took a different turn talking about where to find readers, etc. It seems to me that MMC is the format of choice for now.... A bit less expensive, more receptive to moving files about, better availability of readers.
Additional questions:
Do the MMC cards fit securely in the m5xx slots?
What, exactly, are readers and what are they for? Will I want one if I am only transfering files such as eBooks, databases, and applications to the card?
Thanks for the info...
Jim
RE: Memory Stick Vs Magic Gate Vs SD Cards
http://davespda.netfirms.com/hardware/expansion/cfmmcsd.htm
RE: Memory Stick Vs Magic Gate Vs SD Cards
Chromosome
RE: Memory Stick Vs Magic Gate Vs SD Cards
RE: Memory Stick Vs Magic Gate Vs SD Cards
RE: Memory Stick Vs Magic Gate Vs SD Cards
Maybe. In my experience handling a few different m5xx's, I found that some hold them better than others. The one I purchased could hold one very nicely at the beginning, but then decided not to hold any cards at all, and they would just pop out at me.
Eric Garrido
RE: Memory Stick Vs Magic Gate Vs SD Cards
Eric Garrido
RE: Memory Stick Vs Magic Gate Vs SD Cards
> but then decided not to hold any cards at all, and they would just pop out at me.
I haven't had any problems with my m505 SD slot. Eric, are removing the cards correctly? You need to push them in so they will pop out and can be safely removed. Just pulling them out breaks the m505.
-Rob Zombie
[ No Subject ]
Gimmee a break Sony
10 million MemSticks ??
WIN2000 DRIVER FOR PANASONIC BN-SCAAE SD CARD READER
Can someone help me please.
Thanks.
Pieter Kriel
omnicom@mweb.oo.za
Tel. +27 83 232 9488
South Africa
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What about your memory sticks now?