New Players in the DSLR Market

[dougjgreen]

Originally Posted by Mr. Pickles

What is really wrong with the SONY Memory Stick Pro

It's proprietary, and it's expensive compared to any open standard memory architecture. There's no excuse, IMHO, for using anything other than CF or SD fllash memory formats, other than to force the customer to pay more and boost the profitability of the product at the expense of the customer. xD is just as bad.

[Mr. Pickles]

Isn't SD kind of expensive too? The cost more per GB or MB than a CF does. xD I think is more than SD. I might be off now since I haven't bought anything in awhile. But Microdrvies are still cheap and they move. Yeah everybody thinks they will break and what not, but how can moving stuff be more than solid stuff?

And how come all of them cost more per GB than a 30GB iPod. What the heck is in the iPod?

[Nikonfreak]

Originally Posted by Mr. Pickles

And how come all of them cost more per GB than a 30GB iPod. What the heck is in the iPod?

I thought the Ipods had microdrives.

The Nano's don't.. I know that.

Julio

[dougjgreen]

Originally Posted by Mr. Pickles

Isn't SD kind of expensive too? The cost more per GB or MB than a CF does. xD I think is more than SD. I might be off now since I haven't bought anything in awhile. But Microdrvies are still cheap and they move. Yeah everybody thinks they will break and what not, but how can moving stuff be more than solid stuff?

SD has come down to the point where it's similar to Compact flash in sizes up to 2 GB (which can be gotten for $100 now). Many folks pay a premium for "faster" cards, when their cameras do nothing to take advantage of the block read and block write acceleration functions that supposedly makes the cards faster

I just got a generic (PNY brand) 1 GB card on the 'bay for $33 plus $6 shipping. The least I've ever seen a 1 GB CF card (PQI brand) was $39.99 on sale at Frys. The cheapest I could find a 1 GB xD card was $69.99 plus tax on sale at Fry's. xD is similar to Memory stick in terms of cost and the number of suppliers. Fuji and Olympus get a royalty on every xD card, which is similar to Sony on Memory stick and which keeps these formats from being as cheap as CF and SD.

Alas, I own cameras that use 3 of these different formats. I would not have bought the Olympus that forced me into the xD card, except I got such a great deal on the camera (an Oly C-7000 for $225) that it was still a deal after spending another $70 on a 1 GB xD card. The comparable Canons are the Powershot S70 (CF cards) and the Powershot A620 (SD Cards) which I couldn't find anywhere for under $320. So saving $20-50 on a memory card isn't a real savings if the camera costs nearly $100 more.