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12GB CompactFlash Cards Coming Soon

Posted by timothy on from the remember-80-meg-hard-drives? dept.

Anonymous Photographer writes "As Digital Photography Review reports, Pretec will release a 12 Gigabyte CompactFlash card by the end of the year... for just $14,900. Of course, you could save $14,300 by purchasing three Creative Labs Nomad MuVo 4 GB MP3 players and removing the Hitachi 4 GB microdrives to get the same amount of CompactFlash storage. Heck, I'll do the CF removal for you, at the low price of only $10,000. Think of the money you'll save." And for those seeking a different sort of windfall, VL writes "With MuVo 2 shells going on the cheap now, now is as good a time as any to pick one up and installing your own Compact Flash card to get it running again."

5 of 254 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Who's gonna buy em? by xmas2003 · · Score: 5, Informative
    I'd suggest that many (perhaps most) pro's have converted to Digital and the trend is increasing. Digicam's (eespecially pro ones) can generate a LOT of data VERY fast - I "had" to go over to a friend who had a Canon Mark II - this is a $4,000 8MP digicam that will shoot 8 frames/second ... with a frame burst of 40 frames ... in RAW mode. Lets just say it was REALLY cool to hold that shutter button down!

    Check out this interesting article on Sports Illustrated digital workflow to see how the pros do it and how much data was generated ... with the last generation of digicams!

    Having said all that, that is one heck of a price-premium for this 12 GByte card, so I'd take it as just a bleading edge product, but you'll continue to see larger/faster (BTW, faster is REALLY important to the pro's because you want to be able to drain the digicam memory buffer) cards coming down the pipe for cheaper ... and they will be used! ;-)

    --
    Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
  2. Re:Who? by Andy+Smith · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Who needs photos bigger then 3-5 mega-pixles?"

    Me please.

    "Any bigger and they cant be displayed on a monitor at full res. no printer can match the resolution and the files are bloody HUGE."

    Which is why you resample down and sharpen (or unsharp for printing). The current standard resolutions for pro work are 4Mpx, 8Mpx and 11Mpx. It is expected that we'll reach 14Mpx and then 22Mpx within the year. These file sizes are necessary for large, high quality magazine prints, billboards, posters, etc. Obviously they aren't intended for the consumer market.

    "Transfering 1gig pictures from a memeory card at any speed would still take ages."

    I just transferred 2*1Gb cards via a firewire card reader and it took maybe five minutes. I wouldn't mind waiting twice as long for files with twice the resolution.

    "Some times its nice to know the tech is out there, but it has no practicle use."

    For you, quite possibly it doesn't.

    But for me, and for many other people, it has a lot of use.

  3. Not any more )-: by leonbrooks · · Score: 5, Informative
    The newer MuVo comes in a blister pack instead of a tube and includes a sticker warning you that the drive will not work in cameras. The newer MuVo player's drive has had CF capability excised, but it works fine as an IDE hard drive. This means that many of the "unloaders" can use it, but a typical camera can't.

    I wonder which Creative marketing mor^H^H^Hgenius thought up this response? And how long before we see these?
    • camera firmware which can use the drives in IDE mode; and
    • Creative selling "spare" MuVo drives at 90% of the price of a player
    --
    Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
  4. Re:Speaking of Microdrives... by gooru · · Score: 4, Informative

    Don't bother unless you really need it for some sort of specialized application. I used to run Windows on a 1GB Microdrive on a SBC with a CF slot as IDE0. It was slow and failed pretty quickly. Microdrives really can't handle it. I honestly don't know about the newer 4GB ones, but I highly doubt that it'll last very long if you install an OS on it, especially if you have swap space on it.

  5. The latest MuVo2 Hitachi Microdrives DO NOT work. by larryg · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...as CF devices - they are ATA only disks as of this point folks.

    Not a rumor...I received two of the new-spec units on Friday.

    For those that didn't get one of the "tube-packed" models, you are S-O-L (that would include me, unfortunately).

    New-style packaging, with a close up of the Creative disclaimer on the back:

    http://www.digitalfields.com/movo2-cases.jpg
    http://www.digitalfields.com/muvo2-close.jpg