Rumor: New Memory Sticks on the Way

Will these new/larger capacity cards worh with the $500 Clie NX I bought recently? :-|

"It should: According to various sources within Sony, the CNET article is inaccurate... Brighthand and ClieSource spoke to Sony as well and got the same response."

Oh thank god! It says that it may not work with older Clies, but the NX is hardly old! I wonder what the NX has that the older Clies don't? Possibly something in OS 5?

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Absolutely. You just need a card reader. There are several multi-card readers that seem useful for using SONY Memory Sticks in this way as well as several other memory cards (eg, CompactFlash, Secure Digital, etc). Best Buy sells a USB 2.0 P-N-Y multicard reader for $50. Elsewhere in response to this article someone comments favorably about the USB 2.0 Imation multicard reader over the Dazzle USB 1.0 model. It would be interesting to hear of anyone else's experience with these and other readers on the market.

Thanks, Robrecht

So it's C|net secret source or Ed's from brighthand mysterious Sony spokesman. Great. Neither have the guts to print real name.

Isn't this big enough problem for Sony that the spokes person can be quoted on the record?

So secretive, Why doesn't Sony just come out in the open and say. No it's not true. End of story.

....but than again, maybe drama does sell, some sort of marketing ploy.

What I do not understand (aside from profits, greed, cheapness, lack of foresight and more greed) is WHY the removable media market is so fraught with problems in regards to increasing size?

WIth Smartmedia, where the controller resides in the device instead of on the chip, this problem is somewhat understandable-hence the moniker of "StupidMedia".

However, with the more recent memory formats--MS & MMC/SD, this proves to be distressing--ESPECIALLY with Sony's closed, prporietary Memory Stick format. They really have no reasonable excuse to switch over to a new MS format (assuming the article above is true). I don't actually think the memory stick form factor is going away anytime soon, as I posed a few weeks here in another discussion, I have seen a slew of 32"+ Sony Wega TVs in the shops lately with a built in MS slot. Seeing as how a television is replaced, on average, every 7-10 years at minimum, I'd think Sony is counting on the format being around for a reasonably long time. What I'd like to know is if there has been some upgrade to the innards of recent(ish) Sony devices (in all categories) that permits them to access the faster/larger Memory Sticks.

My father's almost 3 year old Sony F55 2.0 mpixel digicam, I am almost certain, will be shut out from any higher capacities in the future ,despite what Sony has been promising us all this time.

I really wish the industry as a whole would experience a huge shakeout and leave only CF and SD (not MMC) behind to make things simpler. Since we continue to get more and more formats (XD, MS Duo) that offer NOTHING of benefit at the present time except for smaller sizes that are easily lost. Consumers are forced to pay more money for a less practical card with the dreadful 128 mb ceiling and dog-slow throughput speeds. SD has actually surprised me with its rapid ascent to higher capacities, but the cost is still relatlvely prohibitive compared to CF.

Whether or not they manage to cobble together some sort of backwards compatibility, the fact remains that MemorySticks are overpriced, more cumbersome than MMC/SD, and that they are proprietary. And there are three different versions of it now.

The fact also remains that Sony is really late in coming out with large capacities: SD/MMC is getting up to 1Gbyte, and CF is getting up to 3 Gbyte.

We don't need MemoryStick, and in my book, it remains a strong negative for any Sony device.

After a rebate and with the use of a promo code (MAPPCTBANK35), some people have been getting 128 MB SanDisk Memory Sticks for $27.61

Thanks, Robrecht

When 64Mbyte/128Mbyte was state of the art, MemoryStick was twice as expensive as other comparable flash formats. Now, of course, those capacities are so outdated that the price differential has decreased, but it's still there to some degree.

When the large capacity MemorySticks come out, you can bet that Sony will be charging a large premium over other offerings again.

10-1 the new sony sticks will be compatible for Palm PDAs, but won't have the fast transfer rate and be stuck at the 2.5 MB/Sec -- a patch will be needed for them to work, but they will work.

OR...

The new memsticks will require a convertor which will cause the new mem sticks to stick out of the unit by about 1/2".

OR...

They won't be compatible at all and Sony will release a new NX series in 2 months which is exactly the same as the one we have now, but with a mem stick slot designed for the new mem cards.

fleegle:

Here is the quote I replied to:

"When 64Mbyte/128Mbyte was state of the art, MemoryStick was twice as expensive as other comparable flash formats."

Please note that SD was even more expensive than Memory Stick at this time, as well.

Most PDA users don't need more than 16 MB of RAM... for those who do, they have the option of expansion features. :)

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I don't know if I would go as far as to say that users do not need more than 16MB of RAM... The more RAM the better- would program execution always be faster in RAM vs. expansion memory?

George

> would program execution always be faster in RAM vs. expansion memory?

Programs don't execute in expansion memory, they get copied to system RAM just like they do on your home PC. Expansion RAM is simply a storage mechanism, just like your hard drive. It is not really possible to use it any other way.

Note that PalmOS handhelds really only have 32 kB (Pilot 1000) to 2 MB (NX) of fully program usable RAM. The rest is locked up in the storage heap, which acts like more like a pseudo-flash-ROM (fast reads, very slow writes via OS calls) than like the RAM in your PC.

However you look at it, DRAM requires more power. That's the implication of the "D" in "DRAM". To get lower power, one either uses SRAM or flash (or more exotic technologies).

I could easily see a super low-power Palm designed with only 1 MB of SRAM for the OS and apps (same as the TT uses), another 1 MB of SRAM "disk" cache plus 16 MB of fast-flash memory to emulate the old DRAM storage heap, and 1 GB of slow flash, on-board or in a slot.

> So, as always, more IS better.

Well, unless we want to end up with a bigger mess than Pocket PC, getting the Palm application developers to clean up their apps IS better.

>Furthermore, notice how on some Palms, such as the T|T, the 16mb of ram actually translates into 14.x usable megabytes of free memory.

Nope. There is only around 700 kB of free application usable memory on a Tungsten T . The OS uses another 300 kB, for a 1 MB dynamic heap total. This leaves 14+ MB available for database storage; but this isn't free memory, this is simulated flash-ROM (fast reads, slow OS-mediated writes). Since database records are all less than 64k, there's no reason why the database storage can't be cached (as some VFS "hacks" have shown).

Almost no one uses a RAMDisk on their PC anymore. Instead there's usually a disk cache and virtual memory management as part of the OS. All saved data is stored on disk.

>>But doesn't too much RAM cause more battery drain, >>which is such a critical issue with SONY?

Here's my opinion in a nut shell. The whole internal storage method needs to be rethought. Internal RAM requires a constant power feed, but cards do not. Handheld makers need to replace typical RAM storage with a card-like memory structure. This would work wonders for batterry life and would reduce rediculous problems like batteries running out even if you don't touch your Palm.