Pretec Announces 12 GB CompactFlash Card

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/4906.html' target='_blank'>http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/4906.html</a><br /><br /></div>"Cranking up the heat another notch in the already crowded CompactFlash market, Pretec Electronics has introduced the world's first solid state CompactFlash memory card with a storage capacity of a whopping 12 GB. The card, which will be available by the second half of 2004, will sell for $9,999 USD. In conjunction with the announcement, Pretec also announced that it would reduce the price of its 6 GB CompactFlash from $7,499 USD to $3,499 USD."<br /><br />The march continues - nice to see them dropping that 6 GB card to an affordable $3499 USD. ;-)

[R K]

"Pretec also announced that it would reduce the price of its 6 GB CompactFlash from $7,499 USD to $3,499 USD."

Wow, the price got cut by about 55%. This and the whole Hitachi 4GB Microdrive story, makes me wonder whether manufacturers are overcharging us in the portable storage market.

1. The price of an expensive CompactFlash card gets cut in half, almost literally over night.

2. People buy $300 MP3 players and strip out the Microdrive instead of buying the same Microdrive alone for $500.

Granted, it's their product so I guess they can charge whatever they want, but it makes me wonder how much consumers would be paying if they were only paying for the actual production cost of the item at hand.

C'mon Pretec, how about reducing the price of your 6GB CF to a nice affordable $34.99 instead of your $3,499?

[PPCRules]

Curious (not really in the market) ...

Do our devices support 12 GB, hardware- and OS-wise?

[huangzhinong]

Curious (not really in the market) ...

Do our devices support 12 GB, hardware- and OS-wise?

Yes. somebody tried in H3000 with PC sleeve and PC card hard drive, no problem.

[Mark Johnson]

OK, I'll admit as a techie I agree that you can never have too much bandwidth, too many mhz, or too much storage space.

Now having said that... I'm having a tough time imagining who is using the card. Sure I'd love to get rid of my Archos Jukebox 20GB player (with my ENTIRE music collection on it) with a single card in my PPC, but $200 for the Archos vs. $10,000 for the Pretec card is astronomically out of scale.

I'm not at all saying the card is not a good idea, or that it won't suceed. I'm just genuinely (for the first time in a long time) unable to imagine a user who needs it so badly they would pay that price.

This would make a good poll. What is the maximum card size someone in our community actually uses regularly? (Note that NOT "owns" its "uses regularly.")

Who is Pretec selling this (and/or the 6GB) to?
- Super-high-dollar fashion photographers who simply can't stand to "stop the shoot" to change cards in their cameras?
- Uber-rich techies who refuse to carry an iPod and demand all their music in their PPC?
- CIA operatives using "sneaker-net" to carry top-secret data stolen from foreign goverments back to Langley hidden in their socks? :wink:

[sixsixty]

i'm sorry but $10k for a CF Card? that is crazy. even $3,500 for a cf card. with that much money i can do so much more damage than buy one cf card. where are they getting these prices? i can't see paying more than $1000 for a 12gig cf card. even that seems like pushing.

[Steven Cedrone]

Who is Pretec selling this (and/or the 6GB) to?
- Super-high-dollar fashion photographers who simply can't stand to "stop the shoot" to change cards in their cameras?

That would be my bet!

Steve

[whydidnt]

"I'm sorry honey. We would have had enough money for the down payment on that house you wanted, but I just HAD to carry all my music with me every day!" :rotfl:

Almost $1,000 per gigabyte - you have to be kidding me. :pukeface2:

[Steven Cedrone]

Believe it or not, I don't think we are the targeted consumers here! :wink: I don't think anyone expects Pocket PC fanatics to run out and buy these cards...

O.K., back to your regularly scheduled rants... :twisted:

Steve

[Jonathon Watkins]

In a few years we'll all have one.......... Moore's law - gotta love it! :wink:

[David Prahl]

Anyone want a review? :lol:

I wonder how much a CF-sized hunk of gold would cost. Can't be that much more. :roll:

[c38b2]

Moore's law - gotta love it! :wink:
Technically, Moore's Law refers to processor speed doubling every 18 months for the same market price. There are variants that predict storage capacity, etc. but Moore's Law in its truest sense only refers to processor speeds.

[Kacey Green]

Moore's law - gotta love it! :wink:
Technically, Moore's Law refers to processor speed doubling every 18 months for the same market price. There are variants that predict storage capacity, etc. but Moore's Law in its truest sense only refers to processor speeds.

I thought it reffered to the number of transistors doubling every ~18months, which would directly affect solid state memory and processors, everything that uses transistors

[The PocketTV Team]

For now I'll stick with my 4GB Hitachi Microdrive ($260 on ebay).

[Len M.]

Our customers use that size storage with our PDAudio system. It takes 2 GB per hour of 24/96 high resolution audio recording.

We've been using the Toshiba 5 GB PCMCIA cards, the new Hitachi 4 GB microdrive, the external Addonics Pocket ExDrive (up to around 80 GB) and are looking forward to the Pretec 6 GB drive dropping to under $500.

12 GB would be very nice.


Len Moskowitz
Core Sound
www.core-sound.com

[kosmos]

Well I am one of those that refuses to buy an iPOD. Regarding the high price of this CF cartridge, it's always been a pattern in the IT industry, new technology like this comes at a very high premium but once volumes are reached (if they do), prices drop... As was said above, we can never have enough storage space so now doubt there is a market.

For the mean time, I have resorted to keeping a few 1GB CF modules with my tunes, does the job fine. But what is the story with those 4GB CF drives? Why have they not come to the market as standalone modules (besides the ebay hacks), perhaps there is some exlcusive OEM agreements going on, I can understand Apple not wanting them on the market, afterall the iPOD seems to be their golden goose right now.

[The PocketTV Team]

> But what is the story with those 4GB CF drives? Why have they not come to the market as standalone modules (besides the ebay hacks),

They have (reg. price $500):

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?A=ShowProduct&kw=HI4GB&Q=&O=&sku=302870

[Kacey Green]

yeah, the reason the hacks are out is that they are half price of the retail model

[Pat Logsdon]

Anyone want a review? :lol:

I wonder how much a CF-sized hunk of gold would cost. Can't be that much more. :roll:
Interesting question! I checked it out, and found the following:

As of May 7th, the price of 1 troy ounce of gold (http://money.cnn.com/markets/commodities.html) was $379.10.

One troy ounce (http://www.platinum.matthey.com/info/1053436512.html) = 31.1035 grams.

Pretec's all-metal body 6GB CF card weighs 23 grams (http://www.dpreview.com/news/0310/03102102biggestcfs.asp). The 12GB card can't weigh much more, but I rounded up to 25 grams just in case (a 12GB microdrive only weighs 15 grams).

25 grams of gold is worth $304.71, which makes the $9,999.99 Pretec 12GB CF card approximately 33 times more expensive than its weight in gold. 8O

[Kati Compton]

I thought it reffered to the number of transistors doubling every ~18months, which would directly affect solid state memory and processors, everything that uses transistors
Yes, AFAIK. I mean, I don't think the latest processor now is actually 2x faster than the latest processor 18 months ago.

[DragonMan]

Hi,
Someone commented that the price was too high and we were getting ripped off, because they dropped their price of the 6Gb card by 55%... Well, that makes sense to me, because they have covered their R&D costs for that card (or market pressures have caused it to not be worth what it was.. In this case, why pay $7499 for 6 Gb when you can get double that for $10K?)

Are they ripping us off? No, but they do have a right to recover their development expenses, which, although it may cost the $100 to make the card, how many people did they have to pay for how long to learn how to make the card for that price?

As for the $260 price for a hacked MP3 Player's CF vs. a $360 for a new 4GB card (if you look around.. A lot..) - well, the MP3 manufacturers are buying what 100,000 of them? So, if it only costs them $80 to make the card (one estimate), then they are likley selling them for $100 - Quantity 100K (making $2 Million in profit), vs selling 100 of them to ecost.com - at a price of $300 each, making $22,000 - but their cost per unit is higher, because they have to pay people to handle the orders...

I know that for our company, a single support call costs us $86 - that means that if we sell a product for $30 and the guy calls in about it (for any reason), on the average, we lose $56 on the sale. Now, if he bought 100,000 of them at $30, but called in 10 times.. We would be way ahead..

Business 101... Simple marketing...

-Enjoy

PS: I have two of those 4Gb cards, and I hate to stop a shoot because I'm waiting for the card, or it's full... Waiting to transfer stuff off the cards is a pain.... And, I'm only shooting at 8 MegaPixels, pitty the guy shooting at 13 Mp! I get a 12MB file per image... Thank goodness my camera has a built in 64MB buffer between the camera and the CF... :D

[Janak Parekh]

25 grams of gold is worth $304.71, which makes the $9,999.99 Pretec 12GB CF card approximately 33 times more expensive than its weight in gold. 8O
That's because flash silicon is more valuable than gold. In a lot of ways, gold is "pretty", but less useful in today's electronics world, unless you're using it as a raw material for connectors. ;)

--janak