A continuing problem for the consumer with electronics is the lack of standards. Corporate competition is good for innovation and pricing, but it can also have a negative impact on the consumer. As a consumer we are left with choosing or duplicating our purchases. Case in point, my recent purchase of the Sony DSC-W70 camera. The W70 was designed with yet another flash memory card format; the Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo. In my collection I have a Compact Flash card from an old iPack, a MultiMediaCard for my Olympus digital camera, Secure Digital (SD) cards for several PDA's/ThinkPad X41, Mini SD cards for my T-Mobile MDA, Memory Stick Pro cards for my Sony DSC-P10 and now a Memory Stick Pro Duo card for the DSC-W70. It is good thing Lexar designed a small USB card reader (Trio) to read most of the formats. Clearly innovation has driven the size of the flash down and capacity up. Competition has driven the price down. All good things, however it has ended costing more since I have had to purchase cards for each new device not too competitive but good for corporate profits. I have tried to compare devices to for flash memory card compatibility but there are always trade offs in functionality and memory card format is low on my list, probably below battery format. In this case the lack of a standard cost the consumer and in my opinion stifles competition. Memory Sticks are still more expensive per MB than SD cards which are closer to a standard and more widely used.
I did find some interesting differences and similarities between the SD and Memory Stick standards.
Sony made an important design choice in miniaturizing the Memory Stick, they kept the pin connections identical. This allows you to use a Memory Stick Pro Duo card with a Memory Stick Pro card reader. There is no need for an adapter, although if the Memory Stick Pro device requires that the Memory Stick Pro card be fully inserted (flush with the case), you will need an adapter to use a Memory Stick Pro Duo card. The SD format chose to miniaturize by downsizing the entire package including the pin connections. This forces the use the an adapter for all devices with standard SD slot. I found it interesting that through the translucent packaging of the Memory Stick you can see the memory chip, it seems to be about the size of the mini SD card. It would have been nice for two formats to have come up with a compromise and saved all of us consumers additional costs and choice headaches!
And now here we go again with the Blue-ray and HD-DVD high definition DVD standards. I am hoping that the majority of consumers stand on the sidelines forcing a compromise between the two sides. It is funny or sad that Sony seems to always be in the middle of a consumer electronics standards fight; Beta vs VHS, SACD vs DVD-Audio, SD card vs Memory Stick, and now Blue-ray vs HD-DVD. I find Sony's technology innovations to be excellent but it seems that product marketing/design are not always in line with the consumer and they clearly are afraid of sharing with other companies.
The week of October 23rd in My Digital Life
Apple's iPod turns 5 today and in 22 days Microsoft will be releasing Zune. It is interesting that it took 5 years for the iPod to solidify its market position and for Microsoft to respond. Five years seems like a long time, however when you are developing new products it really is not. People or I should say technology pundits get upset when it takes a long time for the delivery of new OS' such as Vista or Internet Explorer 7, but fail to recognize all the minor updates in between. Even though Internet time was invented, things don't happen overnight, unfortunately the speed of information flow on Internet time makes us think that the delivery of new products should happen at the same speed. This perception has forced companies to provide Beta releases of products. I think this is a good thing, however for the wider distribution to the public it is important to have a solid product and that takes time. Just think; it took Apple 5 years to develop a character based search on the iPod! When it comes to product development Internet time is not reality.
One of the features; I really like on my Sony DSC-W70 is the ability to take high quality movies for viewing on a TV, however to date I have not found a single application that allows me to easily assemble still photographs, movies, and soundtracks. I have been using Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006 Photo Story to create slide shows from my still photographs. It is a very intuitive application, helps you create a sound track and produces excellent results, however it does not allow you to insert movies. In order to insert movies, I have had to jump into Microsoft's Movie Maker which is an excellent basic movie editor, unfortunately there is very noticeable loss of image quality when you migrate the Photo Story to Movie Maker. This week I am off to see if there something better, even checking out Apple's iPhoto and iMovie.
My review of the excellent weather application Fizz Weather should be appearing on pocketnow.com this week and I am finishing up my review of the Mobility Electronics Sierra Bluetooth keyboard.
Posted by sskarlatos on October 23, 2006 at 09:06 AM in Commentary, iPod Tips, Sony DSC-W70, Travel Technology, Zune | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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