WDC/Sandisk Corporation Message Board

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Technology Stocks : WDC/Sandisk Corporation

WDC 139.09

-0.8%

Nov 21 9:30 AM EST

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To: Ausdauer who wrote (15369)	10/12/2000 8:13:57 AM
From: Steve 667	Read Replies (3) of 60323

SANDISK ARE YOU LISTENING? Ausdauer wrote: "The point I was trying to make was that high capacity CompactFlash (type I) cards are not mass market items due to cost. The 256 megabyte CF card announced by Viking will not be a big seller. I suspect alot of these announcements are no more than temporary bragging rights. The average card capacity for CompactFlash that SanDisk sells is about 1/10th the maximum capacity industry-wide....Aftermarket purchases are mostly under 64 megabytes." Aus, I disagree with your assessment. I think you were as wrong about this as you were about the speed of the flash card not making any difference. (Subject of another post tomorrow) The demand for these larger cards is here and increasing by the day. Here is why. Many new mega-pixel cameras are coming on the market. By mega-pixel I mean digital cameras that can slap a whopping 3.1 pixels into one picture. These cameras are not cheap but they are popular! Now there is only one reason to pay the extra money for such a camera. That is to be able to print a picture at about 8 X 10 inches or larger with sharp details and have it look good. This is why I just plunked down $1200 for a Nikon 990 (great camera!) and an extra 128MB CP flash card. If that is not the primary reason for buying a mega-pixel camera then you are just throwing your money away. If you are taking pictures of smaller size and resolution then you can get many less expensive cameras that will do just fine. It is rather interesting to note that you cannot even see all the details of a mega-pixel photo on a computer monitor because even a good monitor will display only 100 pixels per inch or less. A good printer prints at about 200 pixels per inch. So to get a picture that will look good on an 8 X 10 you need a mega-pixel picture to start. As with my Nikon it will take several different size jpeg photos which will print nice but mediocre prints in the larger size prints. To get the really good quality prints, I must take pictures in the Full Hi-resolution mode. This produces a digital photo which is a Tiff file format and is over 9 MB in size for just one picture. And WOW the speed of the flash card makes one hell of a difference here!!! My Sandisk card takes 54 seconds just to save the image. (the subject of my next post) The image size is 2048 X 1536 pixels, which will give you about a 7.5 by 10 inch print without enlargement. Remember when you artificially enlarge, you loose image detail. Now what this means is that I am only able to take one of these pictures on the puny 16MB (Lexar) card that came with my Nixon 990! Even with the (yes Sandisk) 128 MB card I can only take about 13 such hi-resolution pictures. So I already want an even larger card. So you can see the instant need for much larger after market cards for every single mega-pixel camera sold. Not only that, but the resolution and photo size are getting even larger in the newer and more expensive cameras. Consider there are basically 3 markets for digital cameras: The first market is the largest by volume which is everybody that just wants to take quick pictures of average quality and be able to transfer them over the internet and print out their own picts and 3x5s or 5x7 are just fine for them. The second market are the professionals which is the smallest market, but big spenders on equipment as that is their livelihood. Then there is the third market, which like myself are amateur photographers but just enjoy taking pictures and want to do it digitally and want more than just 3 X 5 prints. And we want to be able to take more than 13 pictures without having to go download our card into the computer. The more we do, the more we want. It is the order of things. This is the market I think you are horribly underestimating. So if Sandisk is ignoring this market as well, they have miscalculated just as they miscalculated the need for the faster card speed. See my next post. So to ignore the larger capacity compact flash card market is a BIG mistake! HUGE! REALLY BIG! (as in the scene from 'Pretty Woman') HUGE! Also consider the Camcorder market will need even greater capacity cards although they will be the MMC. Yet another mistake perhaps. IMHO Nobody has answered the question yet as to why 2 different formats? I understand (though not completely) the SECURE DIGITAL MMC card, but why the un-secure MMC and the CompactFlash card? Why not just one? Steve 667 * Adults are just kids who owe money.

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