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Compact flash and Smartmedia. What's the difference??

Smartmedia is very thin and black (in general)... Compact Flash is a little thicker... sort of like a very small floppy
 
Nah, generally you can find Smartmedia's on sale for the same price as compact flash... 250$ for 1 gig seems like a lot, I can get 128 meg smartmedias/CF cards for like 40.
 
um find a smart media 1gig cartridge, i don't think they even exist. in my opinion compact flash is superior. It has a controller on board so support for larger capacity isn't a problem. smart media is smaller but your limited to what your device can support😛 also the compact flash is slightly larger, allowing for much larger capacities at cheaper prices😛 you can also get ibm microdrives and stuff for compact flash😛
 
Thanks for the replies guys. I'm looking to get the Canon S200 and it supports CF type 1. I guess I'll be able to fit a 256 mb in there. Are there any difference in brands??
 


<< um find a smart media 1gig cartridge, i don't think they even exist. in my opinion compact flash is superior. It has a controller on board so support for larger capacity isn't a problem. smart media is smaller but your limited to what your device can support😛 also the compact flash is slightly larger, allowing for much larger capacities at cheaper prices😛 you can also get ibm microdrives and stuff for compact flash😛 >>


I agree. In real life most of the time they work out to be the same though. However, one thing one must remember is that older machines not built to work with high capacity SmartMedia WON'T work with it, but usually older Compact Flash compatible machines will work with newer cards. It's irrelevant though if you're buying a SM camera today since it should work with all SmartMedia out there today. Because the controller is built-in though for CF, the PC Card adapter for CF is $10. For SmartMedia it's $100. OTOH, you can get floppy adapters for SmartMedia (for $$$) whereas CF is too big for a floppy adapter.

As for speed, expensive compact flash is much faster than cheap CF. However, most of the time the camera is the bottleneck. Furthermore, most cameras have cache memory so unless you take 6 pictures in a row in 10 seconds to exhaust the cache you won't notice the speed difference. I do notice the speed difference when downloading 200 MB of pix through my Firewire CF reader though.
 
One word of warning: the "MrFlash" brand of CF cards that Newegg sells have been reported by many users to drain batteries significantly faster than other brands.
 


<< One word of warning: the "MrFlash" brand of CF cards that Newegg sells have been reported by many users to drain batteries significantly faster than other brands. >>


Ah.. No wonder my iPAQ gets drained so quickly. How significant is the difference?
 
I've used Compactflash in my digital camera, and must say that I appreciate the sturdyness of the media. Having seen Smartmedia in friends' cameras, I'm glad I didn't get that, since it is so flimsy compared to Compactflash. As to the technical differences, I have no idea at all how either of them work. 🙂
 


<< Ah.. No wonder my iPAQ gets drained so quickly. How significant is the difference? >>



I've read that for some people it can be more than double. There was a lot of discussion about it over at Brighthand.
 
I like the Smartmedia's too... their lack of protection shouldn't be an issue unless you seriously bang them around. I like thir small, thin profile too... the CF's thickness is just discouraging.
 
A CF card is barely bigger than two thumbnails (depends on the size of the thumbnails 🙂). Thickness is negligible.

BTW, Sandisk's Ultra line is faster than most, if not all, cards.
 
In the long run, both CF and SM will likely be replaced by SD. CF is thicker than SM because it is hollow and contains electronic circuitry. SM is totally inert - NAND technology. The fact that it is thinner leads to amyth of reagility. It is actually tougher and more rugged than CF. I have prven that extensively. To satisfy a bet, I slipped a 8 MB SM in its thin plastic sleeve and ran over it with my minivan. I then picked it up, put it in the camera and took a perfect. picture. The CF owner chickened out. 🙂

You can step on a SM with no effect - but that can crush a CF and make it unusable because of the delicate edge connector receptable.
 
I'm having serious deja-vu in this thread. The running over the MMC was exactly the same example bandied here about 6 months ago. And it's a great point. I love both CF and MMC. If I absolutely HAD to choose one for my devices, it would be CF. That's because CF can be more than just storage. I have a CF LAN card for instance. And my camera uses CF, so that lets me swap to preview on my Jornada's larger screen. If I had a camera with MMC, I would have a PocketPC with MMC. I'm easy to please.

My only concern is with SD and its future ability to prevent me from using my data how it best suits me.
 
No, SD is not Sony's Memory Stick. That is MS. SD stand, I beleieve, for Secure Disk.

SD

Sorry about the deja vu - I said the same thing back then - but this is a new question of the same ilk. 🙂
 
Some more questions. How does 96 dollars sound for a 256Mb Viking CF card??? I've serached around the net and the lowest I can find it 100+ for not really a well known brand CF card. I was wondering how does 96 sound for this Viking CF?

Anybody?
 
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