Memory Cards

A memory card or flash memory card is usually used with digital photo cameras, handhelds, laptops, music players, telephones and some other electronic devices. Compact flash memory cards offer the possibility of power-free storage, high rerecording lifetime and a small compact size. There are a wide range of memory cards and even more tasks that they are used for.

PCMCIA cards where the first memory cards to appear on the market and used for laptop PCs often to install a network easily on the PC. Next to come out on the market were Compact Flash cards, SmartMedia cards and some miniature cards (SID). Newer products include SD/MMC cards, memory stick, XD memory cards an a few other not so often used versions.

The trend for ever smaller cell phones, PDAs, compact and ultra compact digital cameras rouses the needs for ever smaller digital memory cards.

In newer PCs built in slots for various digital memory cards like Memory Stick, Compact Flash card, SD memory cards and others are added and memory card reader functions are already integrated into the software and operation system.

The XD memory card also called XD-Picture card is a type of Flash memory card that is mainly used in the digital camera sector. XD (Extreme Digital) cards were originally developed by Olympus and Fujifilm and introduced in 2002. Olympus XD memory cards and some others can be bought in Canada and online Canadian stores sometimes cheaper and on discount.

The SD memory card, also called Secure Digital memory card is another type of flash memory card that is commonly used in portable devices such as digital cameras, handheld computers, PDAs and even GPS systems. Scandisk, Matsushita and Toshiba developed this type of memory card. It is a very popular memory card, but older devices are not compatible with the new extended memory sizes and data format.
The microSD memory card is developed leaning on ScanDisks TransFLash card technology. The micro SD card is a very small and removable flash memory card and is primarily used in cell phones. Other uses for the Scandisk micro SD card are handheld GPS systems, portable MP3 players and some expandable USB flash drives. It has a quarter the size of a regular SD memory card and is about the size of a penny.

Currently the microSD memory card is the smallest memory card available in the consumer market. With an adapter this card can also be used in SD or miniSD memory card slots and readers.

But digital camera memory cards are the most usage of memory cards since the digital camera market is ever growing and a lot more people own cameras or cell phone.