Little Big One

[marlof]

Remember when <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1421">I told you</a> I couldn't resist, and ordered a 256 MB SD card? Today, a day behind schedule due to a delay in customs, it arrived. The seller, <a href="http://www.doml.com.sg/product.asp?id=411">Doml</a>, was exceptionally nice. When they found out they sent the item to my billing address instead of my shipping address, they offered their help, and inquired if all went well without me having to contact them. Now that's service!<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/panasonic256.jpg" /><br /><br />The moment of truth was finally here: I pushed the card in the SD slot of my iPAQ, formatted it, and it worked. Now I have 241 MB of storage room to go with me. I've loaded a movie (Fists of Fury), some WMA / MP3 files, and loads of maps, pictures etc. It all worked fine in the last few hours of testing. Speed is good enough for the movie (although that one is pretty jerky even from CF). And what is more important, other than with my previous MMC card, the SD card so far doesn't cause Windows Media Player to stutter on my digital music. It looks promising!

[denivan]

Kewl, nice to see that some companies still think service is important. You say that the movie also played jerky from CF, what codec and which settings did you use ?

[jpzr]

was exceptionally nice.

1. your link to Doml is broken. inside of "a href" tag you have enter which causes "br" tag to be entered.

2. questioN: have you paid customs fee? (Singapore -> EU) how much?

3. Doml unfortunately does not have MMC cards of size 128 MB (or bigger) and my Siemens SL45i is not accepting SD cards... :cry:

[marlof]

I have no enter in the link, and it works for me. I'll write it out here for those who can't get it: http://www.doml.com.sg/product.asp?id=411 .

I don't know the customs bill yet, I do know I'll have to pay VAT (that's why I paid the price excluding VAT at the Doml site). I'll be billed for both VAT and eventual customs by FedEx with a seperate bill.

Re Fists of Fury: I didn't do this one myself. It's an oldie from that site that had old movies ripped for Pocket PC usage, back in 2000 / 2001. Can't remember the name of the site, and they went down. It's in .wmv format, and pretty badly done. But it's the only one I had lying around to compare SD with CF.

[denivan]

When the import tax bill arrives, let us know. I imported some things for my iPAQ from the US to Belgium (Marlof, you're supposed to know where that is ;)) and the import bills were quite high. I can't remember any exact prices, but I certainly remember it made me decide I would stop importing stuff. The imports were a Vaja case (argentinië), Silver Slider 2 (US) and iPowerPak (US). I hope for you that your SD card will slip through customs ;) Btw, it can take a while for the import bill to arrive...

Ivan

[Chad]

Re Fists of Fury: I didn't do this one myself. It's an oldie from that site that had old movies ripped for Pocket PC usage, back in 2000 / 2001. Can't remember the name of the site, and they went down. It's in .wmv format, and pretty badly done. But it's the only one I had lying around to compare SD with CF.

Fists of Fury is a great movie .. it was offered with other movies at Filmspeed.com .. an excellent site, until it went down. Others are coming to take it's place, though ...

[willowpc]

Also ordered one and it got as far as Alaska before it was held up because of "missing regulatory agency documentation" after needing to be cleared by the Fedex broker. Got a call from the fedex agent today who said it needed an FCC form filled in which she then faxed to me. I filled it in but noted the form applied only to Radio Frequency devices, which this is not. Faxed it back, but there's no change in the the tracking status yet. Wonder whether I'll get it any time soon. Sent a email to Singapore but guess there's nothing they can do about it.

[marlof]

Filmspeed! That was the site I couldn't remember! I never used them, as I am on dial up. Downloading around 100 MB is not exactly fun when you max out at 60Kbps, and have to pay per minute. I downloaded Fists of Fury using broadband access in my hotel once.

Stuck in customs.... sigh. I've had many strange things happen there.

One other thing: I spoke to the guys at FedEx about what my bill for customs and VAT might be. They thought the price was US $ 388, as it said $. I told them the package originated in Singapore, the have the $ as their currency, so it should be S $, and that I could show them the link to proof it.

JPZR: the link *was* corrupt originally. But when I checked, Ed had already cleaned it up, so I couldn't find an error. But you were right. :)

[st63z]

Sorry if I'm not getting this (I'm slow), but you're saying the movie you played stuttered on the CF card, but NOT on the SD card?

Also, would you be able to get your hands one one of Panasonic's older, smaller SD cards (&lt;=128MB) and compare speeds; or just compare it to other brand SD cards? :) Just thought I'd ask...

I've been using SanDisk's 64/128MB SD cards in a couple of miniDV camcorders to shoot pics and MPEG-4 clips the last few days, and it's been fine so far. I haven't had a chance to compare the speed to my Viking/Kingston CF cards. I guess it's hard to do that anyways as you'd be comparing the reader devices more than the cards themselves?

Plus I don't even have any fancy newfangled PPC 2002's with both CF and SD slots (I'd bought the original iPAQ 3650 when it came out, then upgraded to the 64MB 3670 immediately when it came out, then ran out of $$$ and am just waiting/saving for X-Scale -- I've left my old 3650 gathering dust in the closet all this time and have completely forgotten to eBay it and it's now next to worthless :( ).

Maybe I can try to test the cards on my desktop or laptop PC. I have an Addonics SD/SM/MS combo PCMCIA adapter and a CF-PCMCIA adapter for the laptop, as well as an Addonics Pocket DigiDrive CF/SD/SM/MS 4-slot USB reader for the desktop. I think I'll try this when I get back...

[helios]

Just wondering if you or anyone else has an EM-500 to test the 256MB card on as well. I've heard there are problems accessing 128MB+ SD cards on the EM-500, and I'm reluctant to get one until I know for sure they will work okay. Also, are access times any faster on the 256MB card as opposed to 64MB or smaller SD cards?

[marlof]

Sorry if I'm not getting this (I'm slow), but you're saying the movie you played stuttered on the CF card, but NOT on the SD card?

Also, would you be able to get your hands one one of Panasonic's older, smaller SD cards (&lt;=128MB) and compare speeds; or just compare it to other brand SD cards? :) Just thought I'd ask...

No, it stuttered on both, but not worse from SD than from CF. And no, I wouldn't be able to get my hands on a smaller card. I've waited to step into the SD arena until these bigger cards came out, and survived on a 64 MB MMC card until now. :)

[disconnected]

Boy, that 512MB is really tempting.

As far as speed goes, I thought I read somewhere that the PocketPC hardware or software couldn't take advantage of cards that had a higher-rated speed. Or maybe that was just about CF cards? I know I've used both Sandisk and Kingston CF cards with my iPAQ without noticing any difference, but when I used them in my new Minolta digital camera, the Kingston card was 3 or 4 times faster than the Sandisk. I bought a new Lexar card for the camera that said it was 12x (not sure what it was 12 times of), and it turned out to be the same speed as the old Kingston card; when I set the camera to the highest quality image, the Kingston and Lexar cards took about 25 or 30 seconds to update the card, and the Sandisk took nearly a minute and a half!

[Snidjik]

How's the new 256Mb card doing? Have you been able to test it pretty thoroughly yet? I'm asking because I hope to order one as soon as the price drops a bit.

Thanks.