There are already a number of solutions on the market for amateur photographers looking to offload SD- and MemoryStick-confined photos to an
ExpressCard-equipped laptop (
Buffalo and
Y-E Data both offer such card readers), but for pros looking to transfer pics from more capacious CF cards or MicroDrives, USB readers and camera tethering have so far been the only options. Well that long nightmare is about to come to an end, thanks to Delkin's upcoming ExpressCard 34 CompactFlash Adapter, which works with both PC and Mac laptops sporting either 34- or 54-millimeter slots. Coming October 16th for $60, the Delkin adapter promises 20MBps file transfers, keeping downtime at those weddings and Bar Mitzvahs to a minimum. Okay, so soon you'll be able to get your SD / MS / CF transfers on without much hassle, but won't someone please, please think of the humble xD card?
posted Oct 2nd 2006 9:55AM
My Belkin ExpressCard reader does SD/MMC/Memory Stick, and, you guessed it, xD.
"won't someone please, please think of the humble xD card?" -- Sure, but you can't publish what we think of it.
20MBps isn't that great. Sandisks new Extreme IV card and adaptor can get over 38MBps over good old Firewire!
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-7896-8475
xD's licensing (and small market) is so heinous that the cards actually cost more than memory sticks. I wish Fuji and Olympus had just gone SD like most of the rest of the world, but they wanted to keep raking in said licensing fees and didn't really learn from DumbMedia much.
As for this reader - it's probably being translated into USB and not the PCI Express x1 side, so it'll be capped at 20-30MB/sec. The latest CF tech now supports UDMA-66 (remember CF can be PCMCIA or IDE), so it would be nice to get a true PCI-E reader... sigh.
Personally (and I'm sure I'm not alone in this) I wouldn't have a device which used XD cards even as a gift. It's a shame, as some of the Fuji and Olympus cameras look quite good - but for me they're disqualified at birth because of the dumb decision of their parents. With the possible exception of Sony, which has its own infrastructure of Memory Stick supporting devices, it seems to me that the only formats which have any validity, and the only ones that I will consider, are SD/MMC and CF.
hmm... xD card is already supported in some exprescard reader/writer... mine is from this brand apiotek.
in fact it's the most supported card reader for expresscard now, 12-in-1. SD-HC supported too.