CF speeds?

[Kati Compton]

I can get a 2GB Lexar 80x CF card for ~$170, or a SanDisk 4GB CF card for ~ $270.

$270 is about the upper limit of what I'm willing to pay. But... I can't find info on SanDisk's web site about the card speed. They say the tech specs for all products are on the product literature page, but the "normal" CF cards don't have a data sheet, only the Ultra II and Extreme. There's generic marketing flyers, but those don't provide any real info. The fancy Sandisks are ~60x speed, which means the "normal" would be far less.

Does anyone know if the speed of CF cards in PDAs is still limited by the PDA side of the interface? In other words, does the card speed matter for this purchase? I wouldn't want to spend $270 just to find out the card was slooow.

[Jason Dunn]

I haven't tested a high-capacity Sandisk card, but their bigger cards test to be fairly fast - my 1 GB normal CF card was quite a bit faster than an older 256 MB CF card. If you were putting this card in a prosumer-grade digital camera, I'd suggest the Lexar card, but in a PDA? The Sandisk card will be more than fast enough.

[Kati Compton]

Great - thanks! More tunez for my 15 hour flight to Australia later this month...