Pretec Announces an 8GB SDHC Card

[Darius Wey]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pretec.com/epages/Store.storefront/?ObjectPath=/Shops/Store.Pretec/Products/%22News-Aug.%2031%2C%202006%22' target='_blank'>http://www.pretec.com/epages/Store....31%2C%202006%22</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Pretec, the world record keeper of highest capacity flash memory cards of CF card (12GB, March 2004), USB Flash Drive (8GB, January 2005), SD card (4GB, July 2005) and MMC (4GB, September 2005), has now released 8GB SD card, the highest capacity SD card in the world. Pretec 8GB SD card is fully compliant with SD 2.0 (SDHC) specification with access speed up to 20MB/sec. The maximum capacity of SD card is 2GB under SD 1.1 of Secure Digital Alliance (SDA) specification; however, by using file format of FAT32, many SD 1.1 host devices can use 4GB SD card which Pretec pioneered since 2005. SD 1.0/1.1 uses traditional "Byte Addressing" scheme which limits the maximum capacity to 4GB while SD 2.0 adopts "Sector Addressing" scheme which is the same with the technique applied by Mu-Card Alliance in 2004 to reach the maximum capacity of 2TB (2048GB)."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/wey-20060902-pretec8gbsdhc.jpg" /><br /><br />Under the SDHC specification, this card offers a comfortably-sized 8GB of storage. None of our Pocket PCs support this specification, yet Pretec goes on to state that the card is backward compatible with SD 1.1 devices, and that up to 4GB can be used in such cases. If true, this wouldn't make a bad investment. Buy one now (assuming the price is right), use it with your Pocket PC, and use it with any future device that supports SDHC. Kill two birds with the one stone.

[Marcel_Proust]

I'm drooling very badly. All the mp3s and movies I could fit...
But I'm afraid, the cost wasn't mentioned....

[Tierran]

That's cool...but a good investment? Why in the world would it be a good investment to spend a premium price to buy an 8GB card that you can only access half of it on your current pda?

Are you afraid of it being cheaper in a year? ;) Not to mention microSD &amp; miniSD are becoming more popular

[Frankie1]

(On my device whiile ducking my boss.)
I think this item is absolutely astounding, however, is it practical? My reason with asking this question is because there almost all of the new devices are adopting mini-SD or even worse micro-SD cards. So is it worth the investment given that factor?
Personally, I am clenching on to my PPC 6600 due to reasons like this and I refuse to switch to its bulkier predecessor the PPC 6600.
What do you guys think?

[Marcel_Proust]

oops. i didnt notice the 4gb limit, likely dt wishful thinking.
i cant see then how this would be a good investments...does anything have a faster depreciation?
i wonder if my 32 mb cf card is now worth a fortune.
what about the promised samsung 8gb sd? same story?

[Gerard]

Anybody know if partitioning this into 2 x 4GB chunks would make it usable? It used to be with older devices that a 2GB limit applied (PPC2000 I think, or CE2.11 maybe), so the workaround was partitions. My Accurite 6GB external hard drive (now retired in favour of a 40GB USB Comstar) came stock in 3 partitions

[Faenad]

Even if the 8Go Sd card is not selled at a premium, investing in more capacity than you need today is a bad idea. Price drops so quickly.

4Go SD card are about 70€ nowadays, in september 2005 it was more than 250€.

Buying the 8Go SD only make sense if you need all the capacity today, and can affort a probably higher price per Go. And if its works in your device.

[daS]

...If true, this wouldn't make a bad investment. Buy one now (assuming the price is right), use it with your Pocket PC, and use it with any future device that supports SDHC. Kill two birds with the one stone.
Sorry, but unless the price was almost the same as a 4GB card, this would be a terrible investment. Memory prices drop so fast that by the time that "future" device appears, you would most likely be able to buy a 16GB card for the same price or less.

Besides, any 4GB card you buy now would still have some value to you when the higher capacity cards are usable. Each time I buy a new SD card, I cycle my older - lower capacity cards into my digital camera and MP3 player. With the new higher capacity cards going to my Pocket PCs.

[Darius Wey]

Sorry, but unless the price was almost the same as a 4GB card, this would be a terrible investment. Memory prices drop so fast that by the time that "future" device appears, you would most likely be able to buy a 16GB card for the same price or less.

Fair point. You would have to factor in the additional cost of the purchase of the initial 4GB card, though.

Besides, any 4GB card you buy now would still have some value to you when the higher capacity cards are usable. Each time I buy a new SD card, I cycle my older - lower capacity cards into my digital camera and MP3 player. With the new higher capacity cards going to my Pocket PCs.

Very true. That's something I actually do myself, but always forget about. 8)

[daS]

Very true. That's something I actually do myself, but always forget about. 8)
:lol:
Actually, something else I forgot to note:

A friend of mine had a high capacity (well for it's time) CF card for his digital camera. After taking a lot of photos on a trip, the card had a failure before he got home to upload the photos and he lost everything. Since then, both he and I have adopted the policy of using a few lower capacity cards for the camera rather than one large one.

The cards are tiny enough that it's not a big deal to carry a few extra. And what we call "low capacity" today are not so low. They are large enough that you don't have to worry about running out of space in the middle of a photo shot. Instead, you just put in a new card when it's convenient for you.

The final advantage to this strategy is that 512MB or 1GB cards today are dirt cheap! 8)

[JKingGrim]

Not to mention microSD &amp; miniSD are becoming more popularBecoming more popular? More like being shoved down our throats! Seriously, I go and buy a 1gb miniSD for my 6700, and the next year the lattest devices are being released with microSD? Ok, mini sd is ok, but micro is just rediculous. Is a miniSD really too big? Its so small that I can barely get the thing in and out of the slot. Meanwhile SD is moving to 4 and 8gb capacities. How long till we see a reasonably priced 8gb micro sd? Its rediculous. I would love to fit my entire music library on my device. Unfortunately im stuck with minisd. And with the current trend (hermes, treo 750, ect) things will only get worse.

[/rant]

[Gerard]

The multiple small cards things has applications for PPC users as well. For instance, I noted on BestBuy.ca this week that PNY (a brand I've enjoyed for a while now, with several cards) 512MB SD cards are on sale for about $8 each after rebate. Fill out the web form and get enough room for a very nicely encoded feature film for the price of a couple of beers. At that price it kind of makes sense to get a bunch of them, load a movie onto each, felt pen label them with the movie title ,and you've got a film can or other small container as a respectable movie library. Handy for trips, bored kids, whenever you like, and easy to keep in a shoulder bag and forget about until wanted. Sure beats trying to find a power source for an external hard drive, or watching the battery die too quickly using a microdrive. Seems likely that 16 of these would still be cheaper than one 8GB SD for a while.

And yes, micro SD is silly. SD is almost too small, but still possible to keep track of without accidentally vacuuming them up. Wouldn't it be fun trying to swap out micro SD cards while on a lawn or thicker carpet, then spending the next hour frantically searching for the puny thing? For me at least the nano-ization of memory cards stops at SD. That's plenty compact for us humans.

[joderias]

I guess Dell's Axim 51V won't be able to read the 8 GB right?

This is one of the reasons I bought this Pocket PC
I can buy a 4 GB Secure Digital later and use it, for a total of 8 GB, more than the lifeDrive, and spread in two memories

And without the lag of a hard drive

[Darius Wey]

I guess Dell's Axim 51V won't be able to read the 8 GB right?

Nope, it's not SDHC-compatible.

[joderias]

I bought a Trascend 8GB Secure Digital card, hope it's reliable

[ADBrown]

I guess Dell's Axim 51V won't be able to read the 8 GB right?

This is one of the reasons I bought this Pocket PC
I can buy a 4 GB Secure Digital later and use it, for a total of 8 GB, more than the lifeDrive, and spread in two memories

You can still use an 8 GB CompactFlash card (available for under $140) and have 12 GB.

On edit: where did you get an 8 GB SD card?

[daS]

For me at least the nano-ization of memory cards stops at SD. That's plenty compact for us humans.
The intension when the MicroSD standard was created was not to be a replacement for SD (or MiniSD) but rather as a way of adding internal memory to small devices. It hasn't worked out that way, but that was the idea. :wink:

[Gerard]

Yup, I'm aware of the history. PPCThoughts foks posted an article to that effect a couple of years ago, talking about tiny cards (yet another bloody format!) being slipped under SIMs or somesuch in phones. But you know how marketing goes; they're never happy with their initial market, always want to advertise and expand to absurd extent in any random direction which might show a profit. It's embarrassing, this capitalism thing. Soon it'll have people using jeweller's loupes and fine tweezers to swap out memory cards in their handy 'Home or Office Portable Clean Room®.' sigh.

[joderias]

"Besides, any 4GB card you buy now would still have some value to you when the higher capacity cards are usable. Each time I buy a new SD card, I cycle my older - lower capacity cards into my digital camera and MP3 player. With the new higher capacity cards going to my Pocket PCs"

I forgot that my digital camera uses Compact Flash. I think it's nice to swap compact flash capacities

Problem is that I don't know if my Canon PowerShot A40 will support the 4GB or the 8GB cards

[Darius Wey]

It's embarrassing, this capitalism thing. Soon it'll have people using jeweller's loupes and fine tweezers to swap out memory cards in their handy 'Home or Office Portable Clean Room®.' sigh.

I'm hoping microSD is "it". For the sake of consumer attitudes and finger sizes, they can't go smaller - or can they? :worried:

[Marcel_Proust]

It's embarrassing, this capitalism thing. Soon it'll have people using jeweller's loupes and fine tweezers to swap out memory cards in their handy 'Home or Office Portable Clean Room®.' sigh.

I'm hoping microSD is "it". For the sake of consumer attitudes and finger sizes, they can't go smaller - or can they? :worried:

it'll never stop. it's not in their interest for people to recycle their old cards. but the speed at which they're doing it is too greedy.

[jlp]

It's embarrassing, this capitalism thing. Soon it'll have people using jeweller's loupes and fine tweezers to swap out memory cards in their handy 'Home or Office Portable Clean Room®.' sigh.

I'm hoping microSD is "it". For the sake of consumer attitudes and finger sizes, they can't go smaller - or can they? :worried:

it'll never stop. it's not in their interest for people to recycle their old cards. but the speed at which they're doing it is too greedy.

Unfortunately they're too stupid to understand that all in all they are shooting themselves in the foot (http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10533&amp;start=0&amp;postdays=0&amp;postorder=asc&amp;highlight=)