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Technology Stocks : WDC/Sandisk Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Craig Freeman who wrote (6587)	8/6/1999 9:36:00 PM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 60323

Craig and thread: What do you think of the following news? --Trio proposes MO disk format for digital still cameras-- Three Japanese companies have proposed a compact magneto-optical disk format for digital still camera storage in hopes of breaking new ground for the disk-format system in Japan, where it faces pressure from disk formats such as writable CDs and Zip disks. Olympus Optical Co. Ltd., Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd. and Hitachi Maxell Ltd. have jointly developed a 50-mm-diameter, 730-Mbyte MO disk system dubbed the iD (intelligent, image disk) format. They have proposed that the new format be used as the next-generation storage medium for digital still cameras. The 50-mm MO disk system is based on the 6-Gbyte Advanced Storage Magneto Optical (AS-MO) disk format, which has the largest capacity among the already announced 12-cm-diameter rewritable media, including DVD-RAM. edtn.com Here are my views: (1) Olympus uses the SmartMedia card, but it appears that the manufacturers are having difficulty increasing its capacity. I've seen some 16mb cards for sale, but nothing near the capacity of the 96mb CF card I bought for my Nikon. (2) In an effort to get more memory, they are turning to magneto-optical drives, which, even though they may hold a lot of memory, also have moving parts and use a lot more power than a CF. (3) For memory devices that have moving parts, the IBM Microdrive would be more likely to find customers who need upwards of 300 mb. The 50 mm MO device described above might fill needs for 1 gb or more, but it still seems to me that anybody who goes this route is stuck with a lot of moving parts and big battery drain. I can see a market in studio cameras or sports photography, where it may be necessary to take dozens of high resolution shots using perhaps 6 m pixels per shot. (4) More than ever, it looks like the consumer market for amateur digital photography, palm computers, enhanced cell phones, etc. will gravitate toward the SanDisk CF and multi-media card standards, and away from SmartMedia, except where the intended use requires less than 32 mb memory.