Mr. Flash Products Any Good?

[GTaudiophile]

My 64MB Viking CF card doesn't cut it with my Canon G2. Newegg sells a 256MG Mr. Flash CF card for $83 and a CF card reader for $18. Are their products any good? What about write speed on the CF card: slower than Viking?

 

[Eug]

<< My 64MB Viking CF card doesn't cut it with my Canon G2. Newegg sells a 256MG Mr. Flash CF card for $83 and a CF card reader for $18. Are their products any good? What about write speed on the CF card: slower than Viking? >>


Should work, but may be slow for continuous shooting. See here. Do you take more than 3-4 pictures at a time? If not the speed difference may be irrelevant, since you're using your on-board RAM anyway.

I bought a Ridata 256 MB myself. I'd consider a Mr. Flash as a backup, but I already have extra 64 and 96 MB high speed cards. Plus I have a Firewire CF reader, which will make use of the higher speed of these cards.

 

[Amused]

Your nest [edit]nest??? BEST) bang for the buck is a 1GB IBM Microdrive.

My brother and I have abused the hell out of these things, and his kids use them to store school work on. We've never had a problem with them

Newegg has them for $268.

 

[GTaudiophile]

<< Your nest bang for the buck is a 1GB IBM Microdrive.

My brother and I have abused the hell out of these things, and his kids use them to store school work on. We've never had a problem with them

Newegg has them for $268. >>



Yes, but how does a Microdrive compare to CF media in terms of write-times and power consumption?

 

[Amused]

<<

<< Your best bang for the buck is a 1GB IBM Microdrive.

My brother and I have abused the hell out of these things, and his kids use them to store school work on. We've never had a problem with them

Newegg has them for $268. >>



Yes, but how does a Microdrive compare to CF media in terms of write-times and power consumption? >>



Power consumption is a bit higher, but not drastically so. Speed is surprisingly good. Much faster than the slowest CF, and not too much slower than the fastest.

See here for a speed review of CF with the MD included

 

[SteelCityFan]

I have a Kodak 3500 (1800x1200) digital camera (I think that's the numbers)...

I bought a 128MB Mr. Flash CF card in November of 2001 for $43 from Newegg. I have had absolutely no problems with it whatsoever. It MIGHT be slightly slower than some of the more expensive cards out there, but I think that would really only be noticeable during transfers... if your camera can even read at the card's max speed.

As far as taking multiple pics within a short time... I don't notice a very big difference between the card and the 8MB of internal memory.

For the price, it can't be beat.

 

[BeauJangles]

my 128 meg Mr Flash card is still running strong since Christmas.

 

[Radboy]

folks at dpreview forums seem to feel that Ridata are the ones to get. I have ordered from them (Australia) & found their service impressive.

 

[Nova101]

Please see this page:

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/mediacompare/

Mr. Flash is some of the worst stuff on the market. Stick with Viking or Ridata.

While microdrives provide the most memory for your buck, they have several disadvantages. You must remember that the microdrive is exactly what the name says, a micro harddrive. Thus, they have moving parts, they use more power than a CF card, their shock resistance is lower than a CF and they have poor cold weather performance. In general, microdrives are more prone to failure than solid state CF cards. I think the decision all depends on how paranoid the person is about failures and how long you go between being able to dump images to another media. If you are going on a week long vacation and on the last day the drive files and you lose 1 GB of pictures...

Also, if you check reviews, you will find that microdrives slow down startup times on the camera.

Personally, I recommend several 256 MB Ridatas. They are fast and reliable and if the worst happens and your card dies, you still have all the other pictures on other cards.

 

[SteelCityFan]

Nova101


You throw out a statement saying that Mr Flash is the "worst stuff on the net" but then you give no reasons or no "proof" to back it up. The article you link to makes no mention of Mr Flash at all. Have you ever used them even?

I have taken about 500 pictures with the one I have and have found it to work flawlessly... and at the time I purchased it, it was less than half the price of the ones you mention. What do I get for the addtional $50 it would have cost me to go with the 128MB Viking or whatever card? A 5% increase in read/write speed? big deal. Even the majority of cards they did review on this article are so close in speed that no one would notice... that is if the camera used can even write that fast.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Thanks. I ended up getting a 256MB Viking card for $90 from Amazon.

 

[Draco]

I've had a 128mb Mr. Flash CF card in my Canon S30 for a couple months. It's been working fine. Great deal! Got it from Newegg. I haven't tried any real intense fast shooting, but it seems quick enough.