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

To: John Stichnoth who wrote (8113)	11/14/1999 12:05:00 PM
From: John Stichnoth	Respond to of 60323

And, my reply To: StockHawk who wrote (10286) From: John Stichnoth Sunday, Nov 14 1999 11:54AM ET Reply # of 10334 Stock--Good post. I made a pretty good effort to find out about smartmedia the other day, but have been unable to find out: 1. Who makes SmartMedia? 2. Is SmartMedia proprietary, or is it a consortium standard, or what? My search did reveal that SmartMedia runs about 15% cheaper than Compact Flash of the same capacity. I'm not sure that means anything other than the supply/demand picture is easier for SmartMedia than CompactFlash. An anecdote: I went into my local camera store (note: NOT electronics store) the other day and asked if they had any 2 meg digital cameras. He had one, from Fuji. I asked, "Does it take CompactFlash?" Him: "No, smartmedia. Most cameras take smartmedia, maybe two-thirds." Me: "What size comes with the camera?" Him: "8 megs" Me: "Can I get larger memory?" Him: "Yes, I've got 16 meg" Me: "Can I get 32 megs?" Him: "Yes, but it's hard to get". Some comments based on that encounter: 1. Sandisk is still swimming upstream against some entrenched competition. 2. His estimates of market share contradict a review of websites. One website I looked at shows both smartmedia and CompactFlash on sale. The smartmedia offering listed 8 camera manufacturers as using it. The CompactFlash offering listed 19 manufacturers. 3. The camera store owner's attitude might be different from an electronics store's. 4. The additional cost of CompactFlash cards over smartmedia ($15) is trivial in comparison with the camera cost--$795. Best, JS [Voluntary disclosure: Long SNDK, although not as a pure Gorilla play. I think we may still be a year away from confirmation of SNDK as a gorilla, and flash technology is not particularly disruptive].

To: John Stichnoth who wrote (8113)	11/14/1999 4:17:00 PM
From: Starlight	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 60323

Just a little tidbit . . . At the EDIG annual meeting (I promise you this is ON-topic), I got a close-up look at their prototype design music player. It used a 64MB SanDisk CompactFlash card. I asked one of the company execs about the length of play time, and he said it was about one hour, but he added --- "they'll have one that plays for 5 1/2 hrs. before the end of the year." Has SanDisk announced such a card yet? Betty