SanDisk SD (Secure Digital) Cards
www.sandisk.com, prices vary with capacity, 5 year warranty

SanDisk is one of the big names in the storage card arena. Heck, they invented the CompactFlash card in 1994, and worked jointly with Matsushita (known mostly by the name Panasonic in this country) and Toshiba to develop the SD memory card. We've been using their CF cards for years and the SD cards have worked perfectly for us in a Palm m130, i705, Casio E-200 and iPAQ 3835. We've tested their 32 meg and 128 meg cards. Transfer speeds are excellent, and we haven't experienced MediaPlayer skips and stutters on the iPAQ 3800 series (that iPAQ has some speed issues with SD cards because of the way Compaq implemented SD). SanDisk is the OEM manufacturer of Compaq SD cards. Buying hint: Compaq marks up the price of their cards, buy SanDisk instead! The cards come with a protective case.

SimpleTech SD (Secure Digital) Cards
www.simpletech.com, prices vary with capacity, 1 year warranty

SimpleTech is another big name in the storage card arena. They've been around for over a decade and make all kinds of memory products. Their cards are widely available and competitively priced. We've been using their CF cards for years in a variety of PDAs and digital cameras, and the 64 and 128 meg SD cards we tested have worked perfectly for us in a Palm m130, m515, iPAQ 3835 and Toshiba e740. Transfer speeds are excellent (max transfer speed is 2MB/sec), and the cards are fully compatible with the SD Memory Card Physical Layer Specification version 1.01, File System Specification version 1.01, and Security Specification version 1.01. The cards come with a protective case.

Now, this is one cool invention! Springboard memory and backup modules have been very expensive (around $59 for an 16 meg module). CompactFlash (CF) cards are the cheapest storage card technology these days, and they're readily available and fast. Wish you could use CF cards with your Visor? MemPlug CF lets you do just that. It's a Springboard module that has a built-in CF type I slot.

They also have models that accept, SD/MMC cards, MemorySticks and SmartMedia cards. If you've got a collection of these cards from your digital camera, MP3 player or old PDA you're in luck.

Though not a household name among retail customers, Silicon Storage Technology has been making memory products since 1989. Located in Northern California, SST has been making all kinds of flash memory products for years, including PC BIOS chips, ATA Disk chips and more.

Their cards are quite fast, with 1.4 MByte/sec write times and read times of 6 Mbyte/sec. burst. Reliability has been excellent for our 128 meg card. Transferring a card between an HP digital camera and an iPAQ worked perfectly with no card corruption.

The cards come with a protective case.

Another smaller company, Butterfly Media is located in Los Angeles, and has been in the memory making business since 1998. They also make PC memory, notebook memory, SD and SmartMedia cards. They began making CompactFlash cards in 1999, and offer a range of sizes (currently 8 - 256 meg) all made in L.A.

Reliability and speed have been good on the 32 meg and 128 megs cards we tested. Butterfly cards have transfer rates that are quite good: Read 3.2Mbyte/sec Max. Write 0.6Mbyte/sec Max. Transferring a card between an HP digital camera and an iPAQ worked perfectly with no card corruption.

The cards come with a protective case.

Butterfly sells direct via their web site, and also through Fry's Electronics stores.

Delkin has been making memory products in the San Diego, California area since 1986. That's a long time in the high tech world! They call their cards "eFilm" and eFilm memory cards come in CompactFlash, SmartMedia, MultiMedia,
SD Card, and PC Card formats. That said, they aren't just for digital cameras!

This is the only CompactFlash card we've seen that actually comes with a mini-CD ROM of bundled software. You'll get software such as "Digital Camera Suite", "Explorer" to view and catalog digital images, MP3 software and more. Not bad! Delkin cards are at times priced higher than some competitors, but the software bundle could make it worthwhile for you.

The cards come with a protective case.

SanDisk MMC cards (MultiMedia Card) were jointly developed by SanDisk, Matsushita and Toshiba. SanDisk MMC cards are available in 16, 32 and 64 meg capacities. We've used their MMC cards in various Palm PDAs with SD slots and the Casio E-200 and iPAQ 3800 series. In all cases there were no compatibility issues and despite the fact that MMC cards are slower than SD cards, we didn't experience painful waits while programs launched and data was accessed except in the case of Pocket Windows Media player on the Pocket PCs. We did notice occasional stutters with MMC cards compared to SD cards. Not SanDisk's fault, but rather than fact that SD cards have faster transfer rates than MMC cards.

The cards come with a protective case.

Toshiba is the inventor of one of the small miracles in portable computing: the 1.8 PC Card hard drive. They've been one of the big innovators and manufacturers of notebook computer hard drives for several years, so they're a name you can trust in micro storage. These PCMCIA cards actually have little spinning platters inside, same as your notebook hard drive, only smaller. These are available in 2 gig and 5 gig capacities, and the technology has been around for a few years now, and has proven to be reliable.

You can also insert one of these cards into a PC or Mac notebook's PC Card slot in order to transfer files, or to use it as a secondary hard drive. Any PDA that can accept PCMCIA cards, such as the Compaq iPAQ with a PC Card expansion sleeve can use these cards for storage in the same fashion you'd use a CompactFlash card.

Toshiba 2 gig PC Card Hard Drive and Case

Standard Memory Sticks

SanDisk is one of the big names in the storage card arena. Heck, they invented the CompactFlash card in 1994, and worked jointly with Matsushita (known mostly by the name Panasonic in this country) and Toshiba to develop the SD memory card. Most recently they worked with Sony to develop the new high capacity, high speed Memory Stick PRO cards that will be coming out in 2003. So they're a name you can trust when it comes to Memory Sticks, and you can often find them at major retailers for a few bucks less than Sony brand sticks.

We've used their Memory Sticks, up to the 128 meg capacity, in Sony PDAs such as the SJ30, NR70V and NX70V without a problem. They behave nicely in card readers and generally make us happy campers. Transfer rates are excellent, and those of you who use Memory Stick devices should be pleased to know that they are one of the fastest memory technologies used in PDAs and digicams.

Memory Stick Pro

These cards were released in the Spring of 2003, first by Sony and then by Sandisk. The Pro cards were a joint development effort between Sony and Sandisk, so you can trust you're getting the same quality that you'll find in the Sony branded Pro cards. They come in 3 capacities: 256 meg, 512 meg and 1 gig. Not only do they offer larger capacity than regular Memory Sticks, but they're faster. Just how fast depends on the device you're using the card with. Devices with native Memory Stick Pro support show greater than 33% faster overall speeds improvements compared to regular sticks. Read and db access are the most improved. I tested the 256 meg Memory Stick Pro against a 128 meg Sandisk Memory Stick using VFSMark on an NX80V, which has native support for Pro. Each card had 60 megs of identical data on them. The VFSMark overall score for the Pro card was 251, compared to 160 for the standard stick (higher numbers are better). Not bad! A great choice if you like to watch videos on your Clie, and want the quickest image writes when taking photos with the built-in camera.

Sony NX, NZ and TG models are compatible with the Memory Stick Pro format. The NX73V, NX80V and TG50 have native support. For older NX models and the NZ90, you'll need to install a Sony-supplied driver. Some recent Sony cameras also support the Pro format.