MemoryStickPro
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SanDisk and Sony to expand Memory Stick PRO / Micro to 2TB
Monkey see, monkey do, eh? No sooner do we learn that SDHC will eventually morph into SDXC with a capacity limit of 2TB than Sony and SanDisk announce that the Memory Stick PRO / Memory Stick Micro will soon reach that same ceiling. In fact, the announcement is so new that the format doesn't even have a name (something along the lines of Extended High Capacity, probably), giving both of the formats the ability to reach 2TB on a single card. If all goes to plan, production should get going on the new formats sometime this year, so it's safe to say the race to a new top is officially on.
Sony reveals MS PRO-HG Duo HX, pushes the limit on flash card naming schemes
Hey Sony, since you're so in love with tacking on random letters and such to your flash memory line, how's about we toss three capital consonants in your direction capped off with a lovely question mark? In a move that is depressingly not at all surprising, Sony has introduced the Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo HX, that latest in a long, long line of proprietary Memory Stick products that it insists on producing. These are supposedly "ideal for high performance digital cameras and HD camcorders," and they rely on an 8-bit parallel interface to achieve whatever level of performance they're capable of. Weirdly, Sony only quotes transfer speeds (a maximum of 20MB/sec read and 15MB/sec write) when the card is used in conjunction with the bundled MSAC-UAH1 USB adapter, but anywho, they'll be available in 4GB / 8GB flavors this October for those who care.[Thanks, Rob]
Maxell announces SDHC-compliant card reader
Accessory manufacturers like Hitachi-owned Maxell must love new memory card formats almost as much as we hate them, because each tiny new card that hits the market requires a corresponding round of high-profit-margin peripherals to support it. We already knew that the new high-capacity SD version 2.0 (or SDHC) cards would not work in readers that don't support the FAT32 file format, so Maxell has leveraged this incompatibility to come up with a new 5-in-1 reader that will support the 4+GB cards when they hit the market, along with MMC, MemoryStick/MS Pro, and our old favorite, xD. Better known as the UA20-SDMSXD, the new reader will be available sometime this summer -- about the same time we're expecting the first SDHC cards from Panasonic.
