Apples and Oranges and Applish Oranges
March 18, 2003
When compact flash came out, it set the standard for portable, micro storage devices. The number of devices that used CF was prolific. Everyone was happy as companies pushed the limit of the number megabytes from 2 to 4 to 8 to a whopping 16. 16Mb was a lot of 640×480 pictures.
Somewhere along the road, Smartmedia and Sony’s proprietary Memory Stick were introduced. Now device makers were confused as to which standard to follow (except for Sony, they didn’t have a choice).
A few years later MMC and then its faster cousin SD came along. Now, XD, Memory Stick Duo, and the next generation CF are slowly taking form. Boasting 4Gb of space, you’ll need that one card only, for life.
I am utterly perplexed on why so many formats were introduced and why one can’t be adopted by everyone. There are printers that have 2 or 3 slots for different cards- where do we draw the line?
I’m sympathetic right now to the SD format because my handy palm uses it (this update is being written on a doc file on an SD card in my palm as we speak). All the cool cameras here are with SD and it’s small enough to conceal in many unsightly places. Not that I’ve had to shove an SD card into my ear (or worse), it’s nice to know if I had some sensitive information, I could shove it in my ear.
Soon, wireless access will have just as many standards: Bluetooth, WiFi, and 820.015 or something like that.
