Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

In case you're new here, I love my Asus Eee PC. Of course, what would make it better? More memory of course! If you are not familiar with ADATA, you really should be. They may not be a recognizable name brand like Sandisk, but they produce memory cards that are an outstanding value for the consumer. Their 16 GB SDHC Eee branded card looks to be no exception. Read more...

A couple of months ago, I picked up a 16 GB Patroit SDHC card from Dell - they had them on sale and I think I paid a bit under $80 with tax and free shipping. It's a Class 6 card, meaning it's fast enough to be used in an HD camera recording 1080p video. The only thing about SDHC cards that makes me grumpy is the fact that my Dell 24" monitors have built-in memory card readers, but they're not compatible with SDHC cards. To solve this problem I purchased a couple SanDisk MicroMate readers - they plug into the USB port on the side of the monitor, and give me the ability to read and write to SDHC cards without hassle...until I tried with the Patriot 16 GB SDHC card. For some inexplicable reason, I can't delete files off the card when it's connected to the SanDisk reader. I can write files, but not remove them. I thought at first the SDHC card was in locked mode, but it's not. I can delete files off the SDHC card when it's in the SD card slot on my XPS M1330 laptop, but when the SDHC card is in the SanDisk reader, I can't delete the files - and I've tried in multiple PCs, and multiple USB ports (both monitor and tower ports). I'm baffled and can only theorize that there's something that's slightly incompatible between the Patriot SDHC card and the SanDisk MicroMate reader.

"Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced it is adding a 16GB Class 4 SDHC Flash memory card to give consumers greater storage flexibility and faster speed to optimize use of today's higher resolution imaging equipment. The new 16GB card is the largest capacity in Kingston's line of SDHC cards, which include 4- and 8GB SDHC Class 2/4/6 versions. "Higher resolution digital cameras and increasingly popular HD video camcorders require high capacity memory cards with faster data transfer rates (DTRs) to maximize overall performance of the recording device," said Jaja Lin, Flash memory marketing manager, Kingston®. "Our new 16GB Class 4 memory card answers the performance needs and expands Kingston's product line to provide a memory solution for every application." Even with today's high resolution recording devices, a 16GB memory card can store literally thousands of photos and hours of high definition video. For example, the new 16GB SDHC card can capture more than 7,500* images (with a 6MP camera) and more than four hours* of video (for 6Mbps HD Extended recording)."



The march toward more storage continues with Kingston releasing this 16 GB SDHC memory card. It's not just about storage space any more though - with the increasing number of HD video cameras that record to Flash storage, speed matters as well. This new line of Kingston cards is offered in three different speed classes: a class 2 card is rated for 2 MB/s, class 4 cards are rated for 4 MB/s, and class 6 cards are (wait for it) 6 MB/s. A class 4 card with 16 GB of storage will run you $231 USD MSRP, so it's not exactly cheap...but 16 GB in such a small package is sure tasty!