Lexar Media 64MB SD Card - Just Like Upgrading to a Larger House
Written: Jul 28 '03 (Updated Jul 28 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: very small, easy to use, fairly reliable and durable
Cons: due to my processor the card seems slow
The Bottom Line: This memory card was a perfect match for my Palm m130, and it provided me with plenty of room.
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| vadimio's Full Review: Lexar 64MB SD Secure Digital Card (SD064-231) Flas... |
What is a Memory Card?
If I had to describe what a memory card is, I would have to say that it is like a miniature floppy disk that holds various files such as music, documents and programs. Memory cards are compatible with many different devices nowadays, especially PDAs, digital cameras, MP3 players and even cell phones. There are many different kinds of memory cards and there are many different brands. Sony products are compatible with Memory Sticks, other products use CompactFlash, MultiMediaCard, Secure Digital and other cards. They are generally similar in size, and their main difference is what products they are compatible with. Memory cards come with various amounts of total space, as you can find 32, 64, 128, 256, 512 megabytes, as well as a few gigabytes.
Why did I Choose the Lexar Media 64MB SD Card?
I was shopping around for a memory card because I wanted to expand the total memory for my Palm m130 . The m130 comes with eight megabytes of built-in memory, which is hardly enough for a person that loves to carry dozens of games, e-books, pictures and applications on his PDA. My PDA supports Secure Digital and MultiMediaCards, but I read that SD was a tiny bit better and more popular. I did my research and found that 64 megs would be enough for me because I would never use up 128 megs since I can’t play MP3s, and 32 megs seemed puny to me. I was about to purchase the SanDisk card, when I read a few consumer reviews that claimed that they had some technical problems with their memory card, and one claimed that the Lexar was much better. I checked out the Lexar card, and since all of the reviews were very positive, I went to Amazon, found that they had 3 cards left in stock, and I purchased one right away. The price was $39.99 and they claimed that I saved 20%. Lexar is known for equipment mainly made for cameras, but their memory cards work with PDAs extremely well.
What Does This Card Look Like?
These cards are tiny. By taking out a ruler and measuring, I found the card to be 2.3 by 3.1 by 0.2 centimeters. I do not know the weight and don’t have a scale, but the thing is extremely light, possibly about as much as a potato chip. The card is blue and has a rectangular shape, with one ‘chipped’ corner, which notifies you about which way to insert the card in. The front has a sticker, with the Lexar Media logo, an SD logo, an arrow pointing to the front, a lock sign, and 64 MB written in bold letters. The back claims that the card was made in Taiwan and has copper parts on top. The left side on the card has a small white switch. The card is made of plastic but it seems fairly durable I would not worry if it fell out of the PDA or off a table.
How Do You Use the Card?
First of all, this card has an extra feature. The white switch that was just mentioned is use to toggle between Read/Write protection. If the feature is activated, you are unable to delete or to add data onto the card. This may be useful for some people. If you transfer files frequently, you should not turn this feature on. Using the card is very simple. I inserted the card into the memory card slot without any trouble (it makes a clicking sound), and the Palm recognized the card right away. To take the card out, just push on the card with your finger and then let go, which will make the card comes out. To my slight surprise, instead of the advertised 64 megs of real estate, the Palm said that I have 59.4 megabytes to work with. This upset me, but then I remembered that the same thing occurs with computers and all memory cards, it is due to virtual memory or something like that. Transferring files was easy, you just select ‘copy’ and select to the card, or download a program such as FileZ. The Memory card actually eats a little of the battery power, but it is not worth complaining about. Since the m130 has a fairly slow processor, switching between the main unit and memory card can take a good 5-6 seconds, but it is not THAT bad. However, it is true that it does take a little longer to open files that are on the card than those that are found on the main memory.
Overall, I am satisfied with the Lexar Media 64MB SD Card. I have been able to fit 5 e-books, roughly 10 games, and a few applications and still have over 75% of the memory available. If I had a more powerful PDA, than the speed of the card would be faster, but I do not think that it is a grave problem. I found this card to be easy to use and really found no problems with it.
Update: By the way, I just ran some VFSMark tests and if you want the results, visit the comments section.
Recommended:
Yes
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vadimio
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