[davea0511]

Originally Posted by ctmagnus

Too bad you didn't get a Lexar to test; that may have been interesting. I just recieved a Lexar 256MB (warranty work) and it copied over in six minutes what took over 20 minutes to a Sandisk of the same capacity last night.

What does "copied over" mean? You were reading from or writing to the card? Also, which Sandisk card was it? Note the older flash cards were a lot slower than the newer ones. Tons slower.

[davea0511]

Originally Posted by ctmagnus

Too bad you didn't get a Lexar to test; that may have been interesting. I just recieved a Lexar 256MB (warranty work) and it copied over in six minutes what took over 20 minutes to a Sandisk of the same capacity last night.

What does "copied over" mean? You were reading from or writing to the card? Also, which Sandisk card was it? Note the older flash cards were a lot slower than the newer ones. Tons slower.

[ctmagnus]

From the desktop to the card.

The Sandisk is a AR0306LR and iirc it's ~ nine months old.

[davea0511]

Originally Posted by ctmagnus

From the desktop to the card.

The Sandisk is a AR0306LR and iirc it's ~ nine months old.

Was this with their proprietary "jump-shot" cable? If so, then from what I've read you won't get the same performance advantage if using a normal CF card reader, or when it is in a device.

If however you are simply writing tons of data to the card on a regular basis seperately from the PPC or your camcorder, a Lexar with the Jump-shot cable sounds like the fastest combo.

[Jason Dunn]

Originally Posted by davea0511

So I have to hold to my position that read speeds should not even remotely be a consideration for PDA use. Its all in the math.

Ok, ok! If I agree with you will you stop arguing your point? :lol: (you're right though, the % difference between read rates is very small - writing is the real difference between the cards)

[Jonthepom]

Thanks for the excellent article Jason. Lots of good feedback. A couple of suggestions for the next version:

http://www.dane-elec.fr/us/
http://www.pretec.com/

I am a late commer to PPC so would like to know the difference between CF and SD - any one.

[Jonathon Watkins]

Originally Posted by Jonthepom

I am a late commer to PPC so would like to know the difference between CF and SD - any one.

Welcome to the party Jonthepom. 8)

CompactFlash cards are the older of the two technologies, offer larger capacities (you can buy a 6Gb CF card today, while SD cards are at 1Gb) and are generally cheaper per Mb than SD cards. They are often used by professional digital cameras and currently offer more I/O options than SD cards (GPS receivers etc.).

SD cards are a newer, smaller format that most of the tiny PPCs and cameras use. They tend to draw less power than CF cards. MMC cards are generally interchangeable with SD cards as they are the same size and use the same card slot, and are often much cheaper than SD cards, because they're an 'open' standard (SD card manufacturers have to pay royalties, and MMC card manufacturers don't.

There are of course other formats available, thought CF and SD/MMC are the most common and the best to stick to. For more info on the different formats have a look here.

Personally I like a PPC that can take both formats, as my camera takes CF cards and SD cards are readable by many other kind of devices and are 'the future'.

[Len M.]

Perhaps Jason might run SPB Benchmark on all four cards with them installed in a PDA, perhaps an iPAQ h2215 or h5555, or a Toshiba e755 or e805.

Our PDAudio-CF card records high resolution 24/96 digital audio to mass storage, and therefore requires a very fast memory card. We've run many benchmarks using SPB Benchmark and found that the fastest PDA can only support roughly 1.8 MB/sec maximum read and write rates (that's roughly 12x). Most can support 1.2 MB/sec at most, and many much less.

You can see our benchmark results at:

http://<br /> <a href="http://www.c...html</a><br />


So even if an SD card can support higher data rates on a PC when installed in a fast USB 2.0 or Firewire card reader, it won't help PDA owners.


Len Moskowitz
Core Sound
www.core-sound.com