August 12, 2005

A Real "Smart" Memory Card from SanDisk

Secure Digital cards are great to have. They store lots of things - photos for your camera or files on your PDA. In order to use them on your PC, if your PC does not have a built in SD card reader, as many newer notebooks do, you've got to use a wire to connect say your camera to your PC or use a memory card reader.

The NY Times found a solution.

David Pogue writes But SanDisk has now come up with a third option: stick the memory card directly into any computer.

It turns out that SanDisk's SD Plus is a card with a twist--or, rather, a fold. Even though the card itself is smaller than a postage stamp, it's been built with teeny, tiny hinges. And when you fold it back on itself, you reveal a set of metal contacts that you can insert directly into the U.S.B. jack of your Mac or PC.

The card doesn't have an actual U.S.B. connector of the sort you find at the end of your camera's cable; it dispenses with the outer rectangle frame. All that really counts, it turns out, is those metal contacts.

That's it. The computer sees the card as an external drive--a flash drive, just as though you'd inserted the card into a card reader--and you can download the photos just as you always do. Except you've completely eliminated the need for an additional piece of gear that bridges your camera and your computer.

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