Do you still remember the Lexar Shoot-n-Sync WiFi SD Card we talked about a while ago? It appeared to be just a Lexar-branded Eye-fi card. It turned out to be exactly the case. The Lexar even uses the same Eye-fi management software according to its support site.

Back then I was curious about why Eye-fi has three flavors (Home, Share, and Explorer) but Lexar only has one. After reading the review by CrunchGear, I now know why: you simply choose to pay $15/year to add unlimited Geotagging. Another $15/year gives you the access to wi-fi hotspots managed by Wayport.  Actually this is just like the customized service upgrades offered by Eye-fi.

According to the review, the Lexar Shoot-n-Sync WiFi SD card only supports wireless uploading and sharing of jpeg files. It won’t do anything to a RAW file. If you are a RAW shooter, you can shoot RAW+JPEG, it will upload the JPEG but leave the RAW untouched on the SD card. It may be OK for casual usages but is quite limited for serious RAW shooters who can fill up 2GB in no time. Hopefully larger capacity versions and CompactFlash (CF) form factor will be available soon.

Posted in Accessories, Photography gadgets on December 10th, 2008. No Comments.

Have you ever wondered why the memory card are becoming so cheap? Well, the NAND flash chips that go in those CF SD cards are in severe over-supply as the manufacturers such as Samsung, Hynix, Toshiba, Micron, etc continue to fight for market share. The average selling price (ASP) of NAND flash chips has declined 30% last quarter. This and the next quarter will be uglier for the chip manufacturers. Obviously the current global economic situation does not help either. We can expect the price trend to continue for a while, before some chip makers quit the market for good, or the solid-state drives (SSD) pick up the demand.

Posted in Accessories, Marketplace, News on December 3rd, 2008. No Comments.
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