SanDisk

Sandisk is using Photokina to launch several new cards with increased capacities and to publicly announce a totally new product line, Extreme III. Extreme III is the world's fastest flash memory card, with the CompactFlash (type I) and SD versions offering maximum speeds of 20 megabytes per second (MB/sec) and Memory Stick PRO 18 MB/sec. At the moment there are no cameras or readers on the market able to take full advantage of these amazing speeds, but Sandisk says it is working closely with manufacturers to ensure future products do. Exteme III cards will be available in late October, with CompactFlash in capacities of 1,2 and 4GB, SD in 1GB and Memory Stick PRO in 1 and 2GB versions. Sandisk also announced new high capacity Ultra II cards, with CompactFlash now going up to a remarkable 8GB, Memory Stick PRO 4GB and SD 2GB. In an interesting aside Sandisk revealed that its engineers have discovered that current digital cameras cannot access more than 1GB of memory on an SD card, for reasons yet to be fully explained. It is expected, or rather hoped, that camera manufacturers will be able to solve this serious problem via firmware updates. Also announced this week are a new range of low cost 'Shoot & Store' cards in all the popular formats and capacities of 32 and 64MB. These cards, which are rewritable, are being sold as 'consumable' - for people who want to leave their pictures on the card (i.e. those who don't have a PC), with prices from $9.99. Finally Sandisk announced a cute new digital photo TV player that also plays video clips and doubles as an MP3 music jukebox - all for around $49.99 including a remote control, and a new range of high speed ImageMate USB 2.0 card readers with easy transfer button.