Know Your Memory Cards

You've all probably got memory cards for your digital cameras and camcorders and cellphones. Unfortunately, there are a ton of different sizes and formats out there, so it's sometimes hard to know what to buy and what's compatible with what. Luckily, Gizmodo's come up with a chart of most of them, and does a pretty good job of explaining how they're all related.

Among all the nonsense, though, is some good news: memory cards are incredibly cheap, and getting cheaper everyday. Two years ago, I paid $100 for a 2 gig card. Yesterday, I paid $20 for an 8 gig version.

Also, most handheld gadgets (and some laptops) now take Secure Digital (SD) cards or the micro version of them. There's a new version of the SD card called the HCSD (ie high-capacity), but they're not backwards compatible with old SD card readers, so steer away from them for now unless you've got new gadgets and you need a ton of memory and really high transfer rates for your data.

The micro SD cards in your cellphone usually come with SD-cards adapters, so they'll work with everything else--as long as you hold on to the adapter. (If you lost it, get another one, complete with a 2 gig micro SD card, for $3.)

If you want your SD card to double as a USB drive, you'll have to pay a little bit extra ($20 for 2 gigs), but in my opinion it's worth it to have at least one.

The one major snag in this whole deal is that Sony refuses to use SD cards, instead going with the Memory Stick Pro Duo format. Luckily, as one Gizmodo commenter points out, for $25, you can get a 4 gig mini SD card that comes with an adapter so it turns into a Memory Stick. Problem solved, at least until the new batch of memory cards comes out.