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

To: Ausdauer who wrote (7727)	10/17/1999 11:15:00 AM
From: Rocky Reid	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 60323

I received my Sandisk CompactFlash 48MB card via UPS this past Thursday. I ordered it for $109 along with an Epson 850Z digital camera for $676. The camera still is vaporware despite Epson's claims that it was released Oct. 5. Anyway, the first thing I noticed that the Sandisk CF card is totally overpackaged. The device itself is very small. Very cool. Ic-direct.com could've mailed it to me first-class in a regular white envelope for Chrissakes. Instead, I get an 8-inch tall by 6-inch retail packaging with the tiny CF card peeking through a plastic window. Not only that, but ic.direct then ships it in a brown box with dimensions of about 12"x10"x10" with a big plastic bubble taking up 90% of the volume. Total waste for a product with dimensions of only 1.4"x 1.6"x .13" Rant aside, I'm quite happy with my purchase. I guess for now I'm stuck to just looking at my durable new 48MB Sandisk CaompactFlash card- until Epson stops pulling an "Iomega" with their vaporware 850Z camera, and finally starts shipping it.

To: Ausdauer who wrote (7727)	10/17/1999 12:12:00 PM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 60323

Aus, I think it's some of the very patents you mentioned, dealing with eliminating non-working parts of the memory, etc. SNDK has so much of the fundamentals of flash memory design covered by patents that it is unlikely that either the Memory Stick or the SmartMedia cards can perform adequately without using some of these patents. There is another issue that works against the Memory Stick - capacity. It's analagous to the competition between beta and VHS, where VHS won out because initially it could handle twice as much video recording time as beta. You'd think Sony would have learned by that experience. A similar pattern is taking place in digital cellular, where the European designed GSM is losing out to the superior CDMA system designed by QUALCOMM. Put in layman's language, a GSM channel can transmit about five conversations nearly simultaneously, whereas CDMA, because of its inherent design features can transmit at least 15 conversations on one channel. Therefore, CDMA through its design is more economical than GSM. The technology developed by SNDK, and now being improved through cooperation with Toshiba, appears to far outdistance the competing SmartMedia and Memory Stick in capacity, and for that reason alone will succeed.