"nobody does SD-cards bundled with phones anymore"
Surely you mean "nobody does *low-capacity SD-cards we can't normally shift ourselves* bundled with phones anymore"? I doubt they were selling them for much anyway.
We thought the flash storage market was booming, but even so SanDisk came within a whisker of making a loss in its second quarter as revenues of $1.03 billion tumbled 25 per cent annually and 14 per cent compared to the first quarter. The profit was just $13 million, compared to $114.3 million the previous quarter. Revenues …
If I had a big stack of 1 or 2 gig SD cards, I could back-up all my movies and music onto them, easily; it's a lot easier to store a stack of SD cards than it is a stack of DVDs. However, the only people that sell them in bulk either sell them for the same price as if I'd bought them one at a time, or in lot sizes larger than I could afford. Ten, yes. Ten thousand, not so much.
Are you kidding? Are you on crack? Are you being sarcastic?
2G SD cards? Really. That's just puny. You can't back up squat on one of those. You'll be like some guy from the 80s with a stack of floppies Except floppies are actually a lot easier to deal with because you can actually see the and put writable labels on them.
There's a reason that Trek "invented" the micro floppy in the 60s.
Using SD cards is less absurd than using DVDs but in 2012 that's not really saying much.
I take that back. SD cards aren't any less absurd than DVDs. At least I can write on my DVDs and tell at a clance what's on them.
An SD card may or may not last longer but it will likely get lost in the couch cushions.
SD cards are great for expandable storage in devices. They're terribly silly when it comes to carying things around.
Kidding? Hardly; a 1GB SD card handles the average DVD movie perfectly, and an SD card stores much more easily than a DVD. For one thing, I can put it in my pocket. As for marking them, an SD card (and I mean SD, not microSD) is plenty big enough to write a title on.
My point was not that it was a perfect solution, however - just that if I could buy cards in bulk, I would do so, and use them to store my DVD collection. I could also see some use for storing games on them; a 2GB drive could store two or three .iso files just fine. Somewhere there should be an option to buy, in moderate bulk, small or otherwise useless SD cards...
There is a company named "Team" sounding very lame (IMHO) who puts ECC in memory cards (at least, advertises feature) and their class 10 price is cheaper than Sandisk class 4.
Sandisk allows their distributors go insane with 32Gb+ high speed models. They don't do basic things being a large company like lobbying google& all non Microsoft for ext4 (or anything non fat) for operating systems. Result? You can't plug anything higher than 32gb to a lot of devices.
If I were them, I would even lobby for a flat filesystem on Android. This "internal memory", "sd card" thing really confuses average people. Manufacturers hate it too. "out of internal memory" is still a major issue. Plug a sd card and capacity magically increased. Linux/ Unix can do it, stop this needless C: D: joke, even Microsoft hates it.
On the internal external memory thing, why not just colour (color) code them?
Normal file system tones for local drive and something stand out (E.G. purple) for those stored on the specific removable memory type.
If the memory can't be removed by all means hide the disk management but where files will "disappear" of you pull the card mark them as such. Have the SD card slot that is the same colour may hint where they reside.
I'd like an option for each file or folder to right click "Take With" - "Purple" so that I can at a stroke move the file to that removable drive.
If you format USB thumb drives with reference (like "Presentations") have the file system remember that and if you want to "Take With" - "Presentations" it will prompt you to connect the drive.
Have an encrypted drives tagged and trust dated if you try to save "Company Accounts" or "Database of personal data" to disk "Presentations" it refuses, but may offer Connect "Secure201209" or "Create new encrypted drive".
Half the reason unencrypted data gets lost in the post is CD/DVD go in envelopes and the PC has not been set up to tell you that's a bad idea.
Get these storage companies to dream up "more finger friendly" encrypted data post-card format (rectangular) with visible ident codes so "company A" uses one to store the sensitive data for "company B" peels off the spare ident tag and keeps that.
On receipt company B phones A with a challenge request (additional step required to un-encrypt) "company A" uses local software with the Ident Tag to pass a few numbers to company B and the memory can be read.
result lost cards can go home if found, unencryption harder without the (one time pad type) challenge and both companies have a record of transfer.
Micro memory sales being held back by narrow thinking to me.
Sorry for the long train of thought post.
Some people a er colour blind though. So really, it's no different to "E drive" that we had before. It's just as intuitive, or unintuitive as the current system. :P
Perhaps try and get people to think of the memory card as an "upgrade" over a hot swappable? Then they expect it to be a loss if they remove it. The old LG Viewty had the card reader under the battery. It was a pain, but I guess it discouraged hot swapping, and the loosing of installed apps in the process.
SanDisk & co should have long been pushing for UDF and putting drivers on the SD Card Assocation website or even the cards themselves for the older operating systems (and we're talking about ancient ones like Windows 95/98, and System 9) that can only read the later versions of UDF suitable for media like SD cards, but even so data can still be read.
If SanDisk can do blanket propaganda for silly music services then they can do it for UDF. Instead they did a deal with Microsoft (exFAT) and look where that's got them.
....FAKE "high capacity" MicroSD cards.
I recently bought an alledged 32Gb card from a company in Luton and it turned out to be a fake.
The scammers program them to appear to be 32GB, but as soon as you load them up, they mysteriously corrupt the data.
Fortunately after threatening them with Trading Standards, they refunded my purchase price.
I reported them anyway and it turns out TS have a "list" of their customers!! so they are obviously into scamming big time.
Recommendation is to only buy from reputable sellers like Amazon, MRMemory, eBuyer, etc. You may pay a bit more,but you get what you ordered.