Memory-Card Reviews

I bought this (Sandisk 512 MB Secure Digital) in February and gave it to my mom as a gift in May. She used it in her digital camera and took pictures with it for her college reunion. Afterwards, the card displayed "Corrupt Data" and the pictures were lost! Do NOT buy this card, if you do not believe me, do a search for this card and you will see similar testimonials!
The grief and sadness this card has caused me is not worth its cheaper price!
user be warned!

by the way, the one i have is made in china, i have read these ones are the WORST

I purchased the SanDisk 512MB Secure Digital Card for use in my MP3 player (Rio Cali-256). I had never before seen a Secure Digital card and was surprised at how small the card is.

I opened the package, inserted the card into my MP3 player, and presto. Instant recognition. No need to format the card.
I started downloading my music files onto it, and noticed the speed was equivalent to the memory onboard my player. As a result, I now have an additional 120 mp3 files on my player!

I'd give the product five stars, but the memory size did not appear to my MP3 player as 512MB. It was slightly less than this - not too much less, but when I buy 512 MB, I certainly want all 512.

I bought this Sandisk 512MB SD card to play music in my Palm Tungsten E. I have had excellent results transferring music and playing music on this card. I haven't had one problem and would highly recommend it. It looks like I can store about 120 songs with an average encoding of 128kbps. So it's a bit expensive when compared to the capacity of an ipod, but I didn't want to carry around 2 devices, charge them, etc.

The downsides are not really about this card at all. They are:

1. The Palm MP3 kit that comes with the fast transfer USB device doesn't work with the RealOne 10 sync function. It uses the slow USB cable that's used for HotSync.

2. The RealOne 10 doesn't transfer playlists from the desktop to the Palm. I downloaded the new Real Player 1.1 to my Palm but it doesn't have many new features.

3. The in-your-ear headphones that come with the Palm MP3 kit suck. They don't fit in my ear (I'm an average size 5'11" male), they fall out so the music doesn't sound great. I went to the Metreon and got the Sony foldable MDR-G72 headphones and I'm enjoying the music much, much more.

This review is about more than just the Sandisk SD card, but I'll reiterate, the Sandisk card has worked flawlessly for me.

I ordered this before tax day in April and I am now told that I won't see it until August. Amazon has blown past expected delivery dates several time so far, so I have no reason think that they will meet the August date. Order this product only if you never want to receive it.

This is the card you want if your getting a Digital Rebel! The 512 will get you about 142 pictures.It downloads fast ,and gives you great pictures,what more do you want.If you are spending at least 1000 dollars on a camera don't go cheap on the compact flash cards! Get a good one! This card I got online for about 150 dollars.Make sure you are getting the Ultra 2 not just the Ultra there is a difference the Ultra is good but not as fast as the Ultra 2 ,you will be thankful you spent a few a

extra bucks and got the best card for the Canon Digital Rebel

I pre-ordered this item from Amazon. Apparently, there was an initial delay with Amazon's supply, but I just got mine. With a price like this and free shipping (which, despite being "Super Saver," was speedy as usual), I have no complaints.

Works fine so far, and the capacity boost over my old 64MB card has me almost giddy: The "pictures remaining" counter on my 3MP camera jumped from about 40 to over 300.

Helpful info: The manufacturer's "X" speed rating equivalent, which isn't easy to find online, is 60X write and 66X read.

unfortunately there were no reports on incompatibility when I was buying this piece of equipment (read "junk"), now they are starting to appear. This cardreader worked only with SanDisk compactflash and did not work properly with my SimpleTech 256MB. I contacted SanDisk tech support via email and it was less than helpful, the only thing they suggested is to return/replace the card. But why would I do this if the card works perfectly with my Canon camera as well as with my new cardreader TravelFlash M280 (http://www.pqi.com.tw). SanDisk made a deffective product and they refuse to even look into the problem.
Update: SanDisk recognized the problem: "There is a known compatibility issue with the SDDR-75 and the newer CF cards. We can provide an exchange for an SDDR-91 (USB 2.0 CompactFlash reader)."

I'm running Windows XP so there was no need to install software or drivers for this device. I simply plugged the USB cable in, restarted the computer and used the card reader as I would any other floppy drive. Very simple. Works great!

I was looking for a SmartMedia reader, and this turned out to be an excellent choice! It is not the smallest reader you'll find, though it is pretty good size for a dual reader, the USB cord can be hidden around it, and it also comes with an extension cord if needed.

The main reason I wanted this reader is to transfer pictures faster than the slow serial cable of my digital camera, and this was definitely a major improvement. It works like charm in Windows XP without the need of installing additional drivers, I haven't tried on Windows 2000 but it is supposed to work with that as well.

I haven't tried it with CompactFlash cards. It is about the same price for a single card reader, so I figured someday the CompactFlash reader may become handy. It is a shame they do not make this dual reader for SmartMedia and Multimedia/SD cards.

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I know you know what it can do so here are some downsides of the product:

1. Battery Life - LCD takes up lots of it, probably get 4-6 hours unless you keep it off the whole time and let ur MP3's play. I recommend that you set the screen to go blank as soon as it will let you set it to save battery energy. This is the only real reason why I gave this product 4 stars instead of 5.
2. Manufacturing Defects - Paint eventually chips in back (no biggie for me-yet) And the black rubbers on the corner aren't properly fastened to the device (of course you can just push them in a bit, but sometimes it bugs you).

Thats all that really bugs me.

Customer service is great if you have a little patience - I've already had to send my device in for a backlight repair (my fault) and it wasn't too much of a hassle.

The screen looks AMAZING for its size - don't worry about it.
Of course dust gets in there sometimes - just get a pressurized aircan and blow it out.

So overall you CANNOT take this thing to the beach (cuz of manufacturing) but its very nice for walking/siting around with.
How else can you get your daily Matrix?

Image viewer, MPEG-4 movie player, tv output, MP3 recording and playing, still/video camera optional module, storage of any file type, the Archos Jukebox Multimedia is the ultimate portable storage chameleon.

As revolutionary as the original Archos Jukebox was when it first came out, the AJM is up to high quality standards of Archos. The output is rich and clear, there are many EQ settings (which you will want to adjust if you use the included headphones) and battery life is more than acceptable at around 7 hours.

I found the 1.5 inch color LCD screen too small for extended viewing such as an entire movie, even though the image quality is surprisingly good. If you want to watch movies on the go, a laptop is a better choice. The AJM's best use of the LCD screen would be for short video clips, previewing camera snapshots or other still images. Better still is sending the video signal to a TV.

Navigation takes some getting used to simply because there are so many features, and USB 2.0 is only available as an upgrade. The only thing the AJM can't do is record video from a TV signal, and even that that will be available as an optional module.

Taking the Arhos Jukebox Multimedia around will certainly get you noticed (I had fun displaying some recently downloaded DivX flicks ;-) and once the headphones are on you're in for a completely new experience.

I brought this product from bestbuy outlet with everything include the camera, for lke 100 less then amazon sell, don't buy from amazon, it cost too much here, I do respect most amazon product are cheap compare to most but not this one, product overall is great !, music and pictureis good and ez just drag in, but video boy, take a wonder to convert those to the play to work, the free software is useless for convert go get avs video conerter, that work best and remaind much its origial size. camera is horrible i admit, only picture quality is very basic 1.1 mega, but video just horrible, with no light, had many problem with color, sound is hard to record it. head phones is pretty good, has volume control which is pretty rare, kinda comfort, look cool, is not that bad as other revieer said. Overall it is worth for the price, if u rich u might wanna get the new version of this.

I use a 512MB Sandisk CF card in my Canon S45 camera. I put several pictures on the card, of varying sizes and qualities. None of them displayed onscreen, and even the Preview option showed a sort of colored fuzzed-out picture instead of a thumbnail view. This is the biggest piece of junk I have ever used, thank goodness it was free. I wonder why, they're probably unloading them, or the free ones are all secretly 'refurbished' or something. Shame on Amazon.

Got this "free" from Amazon recently, when I bought a Sandisk CompactFlash card. As some of the other reviews said, it was easy to hook up and worked great right out of the box. However, after using it a bit more, I have come up with a couple small issues. (NOTE: I have a Canon Digital Rebel 6.3MP camera and usually shoot large JPEGs.)

- The memory card reader is relatively slow at reading the large files generated by the camera. The JPEG files from the Digital Rebel are typically between 4 and 6 MB and they can take 10-15 seconds to display. This isn't much a problem during a slide show, but when you want to jump ahead it makes it difficult because the device seems like it isn't responding. You'd think with Sandisk being the current king of fast flash, that the reader would be quicker.

- The card reader cannot (or will not) read files larger than 5.3MB. You get an error on the screen saying as much, if you try. My pictures aren't typically this big, but depending the picture they can be, which is even more irritating because some pictures from a given card will show up while others won't.

- Another warning for those that use high quality digital SLRs etc, is that this camera reads ONLY JPEG files. It does not display RAW files, nor can it extract the embedded JPEGs. Of course, I didn't expect it to do so, but this may not be clear to other potential buyers.

Obviously, I could shoot lower quality (but if I spend that much on a camera, why would I?) or I could convert the images to smaller files on the PC (but this eliminates the ease of use factor). I think if I had paid for this product rather than receiving it free, the above issues might give enough reason for me to return it.

I just love this nifty little gizmo! The set-up is extremely easy-just plug it in and all necessary cables are provided. Then you just plug in your flash card (or flash stick or other-it takes several kinds) and you are now viewing your digital images on your own television! Instead of everyone standing around your small computer screen, you can see your images on your large TV screen.

You can either let the images run via the slide show, or take control and move through your images at your own pace. The remote lets you rotate pictures, and even niftier--it lets you zoom in. The zoom in feature keep the image clear.

The best feature is that you can pack this gizmo up and take it with you. We just returned from an Alaskan cruise (with a ton of digital pictures). So I took this viewer over to my parents, plugged it into their TV and they were able to see all our pictures while sitting back in their easy chairs. No photo's to pass around and around--just sit back in comfort and enjoy!

I would highly recommend this product--it's great!

The unit worked very well with Win9X but when I changed to XP I found that the driver would not work and so far I haven't been able to locate one.

An old film reader... bulky but works well otherwise. However, I had to reinstall it on Win2000 and the install failed. I have the old installation files and they failed too. I looked for a new driver and read that the company went out of business. Found a driver (which was the same set of files that I already had). Install may work for you, but as it is a really old device, and there are many better ones on the market, I suggest you use the latter.

The biggest selling point of New Media Technology Corporation's USB Film Reader, aside from it's price, is the ease at which the software loads on the computer and the short amount of time in which it is up and reading pictures. I've been really stood off about some of the software and hardware on the market for computers, but this is one of the easiest to use. Students, teachers, professionals, and computer geeks alike will be impressed by this little units performance. Once the software is installed, all I had to do was reboot my system, plug the unit into my USB port, and my operating system (Windows 98) did the rest. It automatically added two drives to my system, one for each of the film slots. I also liked the feature of not being restricted to just one type of storage media. I have two cameras, one that takes the ATA type film card, the other is Smart Media. It will also read the Compact Flash cards also. That's like having three readers in one. It's REALLY A GREAT PRODUCT!

Although a little expensive for its size, it is very fast when deleting, viewing, and taking photos. The 64MB card is a good size, taking about 101 photos on a 2 megapixel camera with the highest quality, which is plenty for a home use digital camera. I have experienced other cards, such as SmartMedia and CompactFlash and they are bulky and are considerably slower. Although it could be my previous cameras, I believe the cards have a greater impact. Also, about the price, the price for the cards are going down. Don't listen to bad reviewers...they are just bitter that their cameras are out of date and do not feature the XD picture cards.

I bought two 64MB XD picture cards, thinking I'd have one for backup if anything went wrong with one of them. I have yet to use the second one, and could probably have just gotten away with using the 16MB card that came with the camera as backup. Then again, if I did more travelling, it's like having two would be a smart move. I have no complaints about these XD cards.

I think these are great, I get a lot more battery life and they allow the camera to be much smaller...they may not be industry standard, but they were created by Olympus and Fuji, so even if they just become the standard in those two companies they'll stay around for quite some time.

Although this device will work on a Palm, it will perform
very, very slowly compared to other brands, e.g. SimpleTech.

Search the internet for "write performance" and SanDisk and you
will find objective evidence of this. Buy one of each brand and
you will experience it for yourself.

Example: Kinoma movies with sound in highest quality will not
play properly on SanDisk but will on SimpleTech. A collection
of 20 files totalling 15MBytes will at times take over one
hour to load on SanDisk.

If you're putting this in a Palm PDA, don't, buy a competing
brand.

I have an audiovox MP3 player, which is built-in 32MB memroy, expandable to 64 MB. The optional, expandable storage uses a memory device called MMC (MultiMedia Crad),a relatively new kind of flash card that's been out since last fall. Sandisk was the original patent holder. Have been using the MP3 player for a while, I found out the built-in 32MB is really too small, it's not even enough for one hour of workout time. so I look around and bought the SDMB 32MB MultiMedia Card. After plug-in the MMC card to my player, I got a whopping 64MB storage. It's fully compatiable. and Now I can store double MP3 music on it. and have one hour of pleasure.

It was inevitable...just like home PC's when they started to become so popular, we figured that 64MB was more than we could POSSIBLY need...but little did we know just how convenient technology would make the storage of memory...and now it's not unusual to find computers that can hold TERA-Bytes of memory, and PDA users are discovering that the standard 8MB's of memory just isn't enough anymore.

I cannot tell you how happy I am that I chose to spend a little more to get a Palm device that could upgrade with the expansion slot. At first I didn't think I was EVER going to fill up all
7.7MB's of available memory my Palm m125 came standard with... but I took the gamble on the off chance that one day in the distant future I just MIGHT reach the end to the memory on my trusted, and well-used PDA. Well, I reached the end...rather quickly as a matter of fact. So now we have several choices to make to fix the situation...you can choose from quite a few different expansion cards available on the market today, but in my opinion, going with the SanDisk 32MB Multi Media Card (MMC) is THE way to go. Sure, you can buy the 16MB card distributed by the Palm Company...but the SanDisk cards are MUCH cheaper... make that WAY big time less expensive. For example, I got a SanDisk 32MB card for LESS than what the Palm 16MB card costs.
Now I originally wanted the smaller 16MB card, but I figured since I went through the original memory much faster than I had anticipated, why not get an ADDITIONAL 16MB's for LESS money?

A couple of important things to think about when making this purchase: be FOREWARNED...it will take your Palm a few extra seconds to access programs on your expansion card than it would if the program was directly in the existing internal memory... but in all honesty, this is NOT the HUGE inconvenience that some reviewers would have you believe -- unless of course waiting an extra 1.5 seconds IS a big deal to you. One more thing, and what ultimately made me give this 4 stars instead of 5, is that I planned on moving practically everything on my Palm that I don't use multiple times a day over to my card...but all of the copyright protected programs will NOT allow you to copy over to the expansion card. Programs like your Address files, Date Book, Memo Pad, my QuickWord, the To Do List...which means that you can only free up just SO MUCH space on your Palm. I understand copyright situations and how many people take advantage of this, so ultimately I am not upset about it, but I must admit it frustrated me for a day or so. Other than that, this was money well spent for a great product that has given me the chance to do so much more with my PDA than I expected it to when I first bought it. How many products do you pay good money for end up doing a LOT more for you than you expected? Not many that I'm aware of. All in all, a VERY worthwhile expense -- especially if you plan on getting the most out of your hand held.

This device causes my computer to display the dreaded azure tableau morte when I try to use it. I'm taking it back tomorrow.

I recently received a wonderful gift of a Kodak DX3500 digital camera, with the Loading Dock that connects it to a PC. My initial elation evaporated as I discovered that the Dock-to-PC connection requires a USB connection. The Toshiba Tecra 8100 laptop I'm using has a USB port, but it's taped over because NT 4.0 doesn't support USB (Win2000 and 98 do). I turned to look for a device that would read the camera's CompactFlash card, but didn't need USB to connect. After some scouring of the web (including a comical dead end involving "tech" reps who couldn't provide answers to compatibility questions beyond reading from the company same web page I was already looking at, and a more technical rep who informed me that the item was no longer available from the mfr. and agreed that it probably should be removed from that e-tailer's web page), I found the SanDisk ImageMate External Parallel CF Card Reader. This device provided what I needed: a CompactFlash card reader with a non-USB connection to a machine running NT 4.0.

The setup was painless. The ImageMate plugs into the parallel port, with a passthrough connection for the printer. Power is drawn from a passthrough connection to the PS/2, into which the mouse cable connector fits.

The ImageMate software makes the device appear as a mapped drive. You can read, write, and delete picture files on this drive. A provided software utility swaps out the ImageMate (to let you safely removed the picture card).

We installed the Kodak Loading Dock on a Win98 USB machine, and it works just great. But transfer on the ImageMate is almost as fast and easy.

I've been verbose in this review for the sake of others running the web search I did. You've probably come to the only right place. (I didn't find any other easily acceptable connection devices.)

As you may have learned the hard way, Windows NT does not support USB regardless of whether your computer has it or not. Not one single store in my local area (Orange County, CA) carries a parallel port compact flash card reader (they've all joined the 21st century with USB). I bought the Scan Disc model and love it. In fact, I just purchased two more for my coworkers that are constantly bugging me to use the compact flash card reader to retrieve their photos. From other reviews I can see that the Scan Disc is superior to the Kodak model. I have no complaints; it's easy to hook-up and it works just fine. If you're aware of what a compact flash card reader is then there's probably no need to tell you how much easier it is to use vs. the archaic software that comes with most cameras. Although, the software does give you thumbnail image views making digging up old photos much easier.

This unit set up easily in WindowsXP and in Windows 2000 for me. I mostly use Compact Flash cards and have had no problem with that media. No issues with the one time I used it with MMC media either. Using Lexar Memory Sticks, however, was problematic at first - but installing the firmware upgrade from the Dazzle site did the trick.

There are no guides on the device (or much of an manual either) to tell you how to slide in the card so if you don't get a read from the drive at first, try inserting the card another way. Also, by default, the 2 drive letters assigned are not descriptive - i.e., you can't tell which one is for which card type. But after you figure it out, you can change the drive name in Windows.

Quirks aside, this device does the job.

If you are using WinXP, you don't have to intall its driver..
WinXp automatically detects it and assign two drive letters.

If you have your hard disk on C: and cd drive on D:,
then the your reader will be E: and F:.
One is for compact flash and micro dirve,
and the other is for smart media, memory stick, mm and sd card..

I have no problem with reading and deleting files.
However, my experience is limited to CompactFlash and SmartMedia card.
Thus, can't comment on the other media..

i haven't had a problem with this on ME or XP, performs flawlessly. Better than hooking your camera up to your computer using USB - whatever you insert becomes just another device.

it's *cheap* in my opinion, worth every penny. i'm about to buy a new digital camera, and i know this thing will be able to read the cards.