Panasonic's 4GB SDHC card set to drop July 25

We kind of hoped they'd just go away, but after Maxell announced their SDHC card reader yesterday, well, those SDHC memory cards were bound to get real soon enough. Now right on cue, Panasonic just went public with a July 26 global release date for their new 4GB SDHC (SD 2.0) cards. The cards feature a 5MB/s maximum transfer rate and are expected to pull about  ¥30,000 (or around $265) once on the shelves. No doubt, Panny will drop a few devices soon enough that take advantage of the cards (besides the DMC-L1) since they'll only work in SDHC-compliant slots.

[Via Impress]

[aparaty cyfrowe @ Jun 8th 2006 9:06AM]

wow it is real big but 265$ .... :(

[quahogian @ Jun 8th 2006 9:12AM]

Am I missing something here? A-Data and handfull of others have SD cards out with 4GB capacities and speeds in about (22.5MB/sec read, 15MB/sec write) range costing less than $100. Seriously can somebody shine the light on this one.

[PJK @ Jun 8th 2006 9:22AM]

How many more proprietary flash formats do we need exactly? What the hell is wrong with these guys, how about formats that work in more devices not less.

[Isaac Levy @ Jun 8th 2006 9:55AM]

Perhaps SDHC offers some fundemental advantege over regular SD. Like your data is harder to corrupt (though flash memory is pretty much immune anyway). Maybe they just want to try out their own format. :)

[TimS @ Jun 8th 2006 10:08AM]

Unless you're making some pun I'm missing, or unless this card is waiting in the line that isn't on the left, it's "right on cue" not "queue."

[Dave @ Jun 8th 2006 10:34AM]

From what I understand the SDHC will be replacing SD as a memory format. The previous specification only alloted for cards up to 2GB. A few companies have made 4GB cards but they only work in a small percentage of devices. The problem is the need to go to a FAT32 file system for that much space. What angers me is that the new specs are for cards up to 32GB. Which means the roadblock will become a problem again in another 3-5 years.

As for the speed specification. They classify speeds of 2,4, and 6MB/sec. I must be missing something because that seems like a big step backward.

I hate it when companies don't think ahead. If they are forced to change and have to have a limitation why don't they go to something rediculous like 500GB.

The same thing happened with happened with hard drives. I remember when I got one that was one of the first that was more that 1000 megs and I had a hard time with it. Now everytime someone gets a new hard drive they ask me why it only reads 131 GB. There are simple updates for that I know but still.

All I know is Vista better support 1TB hard drives and preferrably they can build in support for drives up to 8TB+ because if not we will go through the same problem.

[shirizaki @ Jun 8th 2006 10:43AM]

I agree with PJK.

3. Maybe 4 is pushing it, but there's already more removable flash emmory formats than I have fingers. Yeah, one or 2 might have 5-10 MB/s fater read/write whatever, but when it's a proprietory format or no one else uses it, the cost gets deffered to us. I know I'm only buying products that are SD or Mem stick (maybe xD).

Work on 1 format, and make it awesome. Your avarage consumer doesn't care about formats and gets pissed when they have to reinvest in more cards! And we can't forget about readers!

[Craig @ Jun 8th 2006 11:04AM]

If you're planning to use this in a say a camera you're probably better to buy four 1GB cards rather than one 4GB card. If you lose it you lose all your pictures or if it corrupted you'd lose everything.

[Luis @ Jun 8th 2006 2:09PM]

Well this looks like it will be compatible with the Wii. I would expect in September that Nintendo will announce compatibility. Panasonic and Nintendo are pretty close.

[badbob @ Jun 9th 2006 10:10AM]

My 4GB Transcend SD card supports FAT32. Did we really need a new non-compatible format to formalize the use of FAT32? I'm sure FAT32 was used and supported on less spacious SD cards by many devices before so FAT32-support not something new.

I highly doubt these new cards are anymore durable than the best of current SD cards. My ATP SD card is waterproof and uses SLC chips, which are better than the cheaper MLC chips.

The FAT32 spec can support up to at least 8TB. The only mention of a 32GB limit is that Windows 2000 and XP can only create FAT32 volumes up to 32GB, but otherwise support FAT32 volumes of any size. Solution is to use another utility to create large FAT32 volumes.