Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"SanDisk has been pumping out press releases all day thanks to Computex-mania, so we shuffled past its stall to see what all the fuss is about. The biggest news is the U100 range of tiny SSDs for ultraportables, which crank data in and out at twice the speed of SanDisk's previous generation P4 drives. We're talking 450MB/s reads and 340MB/s writes thanks to the latest SATA III interface, plus a max capacity of 256GB -- specs which have already enticed ASUS to use the U100 in its lightweight UX-series notebooks."

Technology marches oh so quickly on. Amazing, the size, capacity and performance (6Gbit/sec) of these newest SATA-III SSDs. The U100 is destined for ultraportable laptops, with 256GB (max), and the smaller footprint i100 appears to be headed for tablets, and will max out at 128GB. The devices offer similar read speeds, but the i100 offers "only" 160MB/sec write speeds, or slightly less than half the speed of the U100. Still, 128GB in a tablet would be great, especially when we start to see this storage capacity and performance coupled with upcoming quad-core (or more) processors. Volume production is scheduled for Q3 2011. Prices were not even hinted-at.

"Today SanDisk, Sony and Nikon 'announced the joint development of a set of specifications that address the future requirements of professional photography and video markets.'"

CompactFlash still has plenty of life left in it as a professional medium for photographers; its durability and physical size (SD is a bit fiddly to work with in the field) are great plus points. What Nikon, Sandisk and Sony should do next after making them go faster (500 MB/s is the target), larger (2TB cards anyone?) and tougher, is to make a portable and fast CF card reader solution. I have had enough of dangling card readers and fiddly cables I keep on losing.

The evolution of storage usually goes something like this: the medium gets a lot of attention when it's young, then as it grows older, it typically becomes a commodity that we care less about. Think of the early years of hard drives: moving from 40 MB to 80 MB was a massive improvement, and it was a big day when the first 1 GB drives hit the market. But now? We hardly bother to yawn when a 3 TB drive is announced. Sure, there are some stand-out drives (Western Digital's Raptor line for instance), but for the most part, hard drives are the forgotten technology inside your computer. SSDs, however, are still a young technology: performance improvements, capacity enhancements, and cost drops are still exciting enough to get a geek's heart going.

Flash memory falls somewhere in between those two; from a digital photography perspective, Flash memory storage has become so cavernous that the average person never needs to think twice about running out of space, unless they're shooting 1080p video alongside their still photos. There's still a bit of excitement left in the performance realm though, and SanDisk is at the forefront of pushing faster Flash memory. Their line of Extreme SDHC cards for instance are Class 10 performance, and claim up to 30 MB/s (200x) read and write speeds. They also cost a fair bit more than other brands. I set out to answer a fairly straight-forward question: was it worth it, from a practical standpoint, so shell out the extra money for a SanDisk Extreme SDHC card? Read more...

"SanDisk has just announced that its 60GB and 120GB G3 solid state drives are headed out to retailers as we speak. Both North America and Europe are getting served simultaneously, with the drives promising sequential performance of up to 220MB/sec on the read side and up to 120MB/sec on the write side."

Prices are $229.99 and $399.99 respectively. Load your OS and applications on this and put all of your data on a secondary standard drive and you should get a nice performance increase.

"The Clip+ is a very welcome update to the original with improved build quality, design, and UI. The big news however is the addition of the microSD slot. Being able to upgrade your capacity for cheap is a very appealing feature of the Clip+ especially in such a small form factor. The ability to have potentially 40GB of music in very small space is a minimalists dream. The great sound quality, transfer protocol, and folder browsing will very much appeal to the enthusiasts, but the Clip+ is still very well suited for the tech beginner."

I really like the idea of an expandable MP3 player. I can't imagine that adding an SD card slot to full sized players would add much in the way of cost, yet it would allow considerable expansion. Of course I'm sure manufacturers would rather you upgrade than expand your players. This player is probably the exception simply because Sandisk also sells memory and figures they may still profit from any addition you make.

"SanDisk Corporation today announced that it has shipped the latest editions of its popular SanDisk ImageMate® memory card readers, which provide enhanced user experience through increased efficiency and faster data transfer rates. The new readers have shipped to retailers in North America and are available for purchase at this time. Faster, smaller and sleeker than their predecessors, and featuring upgraded software applications, the new ImageMate All-In-One and Multi-Card readers quickly and conveniently transfer data between a wide range of memory card formats and a host computer. The All-In-One memory card reader can reach speeds of up to 34 megabytes per second (MB/s)1 when using a SanDisk Extreme IV 45MB/s CompactFlash® card, and the Multi-Card reader is capable of up to 30MB/s2 read and 27 MB/s write data transfer rates when using a SanDisk Extreme III 30MB/s Edition SDHC card. Sporting a stylish glossy black and metallic silver design, each reader's tripod base is detachable, creating instant portability."

There's nothing particularly exciting about memory card readers, but I've got to hand it to SanDisk for trying to sex 'em up. Note that I've adjusted the photo above, lessening the shadow tones, because SanDisk's PR people thought it was a good idea to release images where it was impossible to see the slots. The bigger of the two, which has support for SD, SDHC, miniSDHC, microSDHC, MMC, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro Duo, xD and CompactFlash, will sell for $29.99 USD. The smaller one on the right supports xD, Memory Stick, SD, SDHC, MMC, and will sell for $19.99 USD.

"SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK), the proven leader in flash memory, today announced the availability of SanDisk Mobile Ultra, microSD, microSDHC and Memory Stick Micro (M2) flash mobile memory cards, which are available in 2GB, 4GB and 8GB* capacities -- the industry’s first premium mobile phone storage cards. A must-have product for consumers who embody the digital lifestyle, the SanDisk Mobile Ultra high-performance cards are “best of breed” premium cards that provide fast side-loading speeds. This means that users will experience accelerated transfer rates of digital files to and from their mobile memory card and their computer. In addition to speed, SanDisk Mobile Ultra cards allow consumers to “wake up” the multimedia features of mobile phones by increasing the phone’s storage capacity for maps, music, videos, photos, games and other essential applications. For avid mobile phone videographers, events and experiences captured by the phone’s video camera can be quickly and efficiently transferred to social media or video-sharing websites. For added value and convenience, the card is bundled with a MobileMate™ Micro Reader that plugs directly into a USB 2.0 port to assist in this quick transport and easy management of digital content."



If you own a device with a microSD/microSDHC or M2 slot, check out SanDisk's new Mobile Ultra cards. They're available at capacities of up to 8GB and come bundled with a slim MobileMate Micro Reader to make those card-to-computer transfers a breeze. The 8GB Mobile Ultra microSDHC has a $119.99 MSRP tag, but if you shop around, you can probably find a better deal.

I've had two different SanDisk Sansa Clips, and both have given me radically different experiences, so this is going to be a strange review. I bought the first Sansa Clip when I was in Las Vegas for CES 2008, because I knew I was going to start working out when I returned home and wanted something as small as possible (the Zune 8 is too big for my needs). I picked up the 2 GB version (they didn't have the 4 GB at the time) in red, and was quite impressed with the brightness and clarity of the little two-colour, four-line OLED screen they managed to put on it. I liked having the voice recorder because it allowed me to make a voice recording of my lock combination code, and yes, I did have to use it when I forgot what the combination was. The sound quality is pretty good as well (loaded up with 128 kbps WMA files), although it doesn't go loud enough when you're working out at a noisy gym. I've used it with both the Super.fi 5 EB and the Metro.fi 2 Ultimate Ears headphones, and I have no complaints about the sound.

One of the main reasons I bought it was for the integrated clip. I had a Zen Stone but refused to spend nearly as much for the clip as for the player itself, so I figured I'd get a new player instead. My wife uses a second-generation iPod Shuffle and she loves how she can simply clip it to part of her workout outfit and go - I clipped the Sansa Clip to the waistline of my gym shorts and it worked pretty well, though on two occasions the Sansa Clip disconnected from the clip and fell to the gym floor. Not all that impressive. Anythingbutipod.com has a detailed review that talks about all the features if you want to dive deeper. Back to my tale of techno-woe. Read more...

"SanDisk Corporation, a leading seller of MP3 players in the United States, today announced the company will promote DRM-free music from more than 50 new and emerging artists on a microSD card. This U.S.-based program is the first of its kind to use microSD cards, and helps launch the new 8GB (gigabyte) Sansa Fuze MP3 player. The “Sansa Sessions” microSD card is comprised of a collection of rock, pop, and hip hop songs, music videos, and photos from more than 30 labels. Featured artists include All Time Low, Ladytron, Magnet, Nada Surf, Of Montreal and The Coup."



You know, it's funny. Less than two years ago it seemed as though the main-stream music industry was on its last leg. With almost monthly reports of some poor sap (or grandmother) being sued for alleged file sharing, Sony violating their paying customers computers with rootkits, and not to mention the RIAA running amok as if they were Judge Dredd himself - it can almost be considered a miracle that I can sit here and write this post while listening to a fairly high quality legally purchased DRM free album of one of my favorite bands. While the days of yesteryear have left a horrible taste in any music lover’s mouth, times are changing... and quickly! As cool as this Sansa Sessions gimmick is, you do have to purchase a SanDisk Sansa Fuze MP3 player to redeem this preloaded microSD card... but hey, at the end of the day you receive a free microSD card that can be used in almost anything nowadays and it is preloaded with DRM-free content. All in all, this isn't a bad deal if you ask me.

"Giving photo enthusiasts the freedom to take more pictures and shoot more video, SanDisk Corporation today increased both capacities and speeds in its SanDisk Ultra® II line with the introduction of 32- and 16-gigabyte (GB)1 SDHC™ cards and an 8GB SDHC Plus card. The announcement was made at the photo industry’s PMA 08 International Convention here. Ideal for today’s camcorders and point-and-shoot digital cameras that can record both video and still images, the cards offer faster read and write speeds of 15 megabytes per second2 (15MB/sec), up from previous speeds of 10MB/sec read and 9MB/sec write in the SanDisk Ultra II line."



In the words of James Brown, GOOD GOD Y'ALL! That's a lot of storage on a small card - but it also has a matching price tag. The 32 GB card is $349 USD (but not shipping until April), the 16 GB card is $179 USD, and the 8 GB is $99.