One alternative, and this applies not just to the Dell Mini 9, but to any netbook that accepts Secure Digital Cards (SD cards), is to purchase a large capacity SD card and use that as an extra hard drive.

This is a lot simpler than you’d think, and provides far more benefits than simply increasing the storage capacity on the device.

Boost your storage

How simple? You need only purchase the card, and then slot it into the card reader. If you’re using Windows XP, you’re done and if you are using Ubuntu, you’re done! In both cases the Operating System will recognise the card as extra storage and use can simply use it as such from then on.

If your netbook supports SDHC cards. like the Dell Mini 9, you can purchase an 8GB SD card to give the device a serious storage boost, alternatively you can purchase a microSD card of a similar capacity. Your netbook may not support microSD cards, but all our microSD cards include an SD adaptor, which means that they can be used as if they were an SD card, as well as being used as a microSD card.

Security

So you have your nice, shiny and new Dell Mini 9 and you take it everywhere with you, and do everything on it; which of course will soon have you wondering – what if! What if you lose it? What if you some miscreant steals it? What information will they be able to get hold of? Sadly, the answer is everything that you have on there, unless you encrypt it.

The next version of Windows, Windows 7, will apparently offer to encrypt your flash memory cards and USB drives for you when you first connect them; giving the option of a password and/or a keyfile. Fortunately, you won’t have to wait for Windows 7, there are free programs that can do similar things. Truecrypt is one of the easiest to use and most versatile.

Simply install the program and then insert your SD flash card. You then have two options; if you are only ever going to use the drive inside your Dell Mini 9, or similar netbook, you can wipe the disk and encrypt the whole disk; if you are likely to take the disk out and use it in other PCs that won’t have Truecrypt installed, you can create a traveller disk.

The former means that you can use the drive like any other hard drive, but with everything that is written to the drive being encrypted ‘on-the-fly’, the latter means that you can use the SD card on any PC and will simply need to enter the password to access the encrypted section of the drive.

The best option is probably the Traveller Disk (Tools > Traveller Disk Setup) option as that means that the disk is usable if it is taken out of your netbook, but whatever option you choose, Truecrypt guides you through it. Like Windows 7 you have a choice of using a keyfile or keyfiles and/or a password.

Unbreakable

A keyfile can either be created or any file used on your PC. A word of warning however, a keyfile is exactly that, a key to open the drive/file if you forget which file you used, or that file is lost or altered in any way, you won’t be able to gain access to your drive/files.

There is no way to crack this type of encryption, it is said that even with all the computing power in the world it would take years, if not centuries to crack a decent keyfile(s) or passwords. Make sure you backup your keyfile(s), just in case.

With Windows XP you have a further option once the SD card has been encrypted. When inserted the card appears under removable storage devices in My Computer. However you can mount it as a new hard drive by simply entering the password and opening with Truecrypt, you can then use it as you would any normal hard drive.

The next-generation SDXC (eXtended Capacity) memory card specification, pending release in Q1 2009, dramatically improves consumers’ digital lifestyles by increasing storage capacity from 32 GB up to 2 TB and increasing SD interface read/write speeds up to 104 MB per second in 2009 with a road map to 300 MB per second. SDXC will provide more portable storage and speed, which are often required to support new features in consumer electronic devices and mobile phones.
The SD Association

For those still trying to adjust to the suddenly outdated Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) cards, this will be something of a shock.

What happened to SDHC?

For those that are worried about their new SDHC cards and what it will mean to them, well they shouldn’t be too concerned. As far we know, there are no SDXC compatible devices on the market at the moment, so SDHC is still the best format to have. Presumably the devices will also be backwards compatible with SDHC and standard SD cards too, so no need to throw away your old cards just yet.

For those who don’t know, SDHC was the next generation of SD cards released just a little under three years ago, taking the maximum capacity all the way from 2GB (the standard SD cards maximum capacity) up to 32GB. That wasn’t the whole picture though, there were many problems with the larger format cards, even 2GB SD cards were not always assured to work in SD cards readers, 4GB SDHC cards made the situation even more confusing, and for some it made purchasing a new SD card something of a minefield.

Many devices, such as the Nintendo Wii, did not support the new format SDHC cards, leaving their owners stuck on with a maximum 2GB card. We’ve always advised those looking for a new SD card to check their device for an SDHC compatible logo, otherwise to stick to the 2GB SD cards for best compatibility.

Most new devices do now support SDHC cards, however with the new SDXC format due to appear in March this year, it is likely that the confusion will begin again.

Terrabytes

If you are unsure, anything larger than 32GB is not SDHC, as that is the capacity limit for those cards. 32 Gigabytes may have seemed ample when SDHC was conceived, but in today’s High Definition world, it isn’t really enough. Even the largest capacity SDHC cards could only fit a little over 4 hours of HD recording on the card (a standard 2GB SD card, less than 30mins).

When SD cards were first released we talked in capacities of megabytes, with the emergence of SDHC this soon changed to gigabytes (1024 megabytes) and now with Secure Digital eXtended capacity we have moved up again into terrabytes (1024 gigabytes), albeit only two. Amazingly the SDXC cards have a maximum capacity of 2TB (terrabytes), which means up to 480 hours of HD recording!

A 2 TB SDXC memory card can store 100 HD movies, 480 hours of HD recording or 136,000 fine-grade photos. Faster bus speeds will enable professional-level recording in compact consumer camcorders and increase the number of frames shot in a second with SDXC cameras.

An incredible amount of space, although it will probably be some years before we see such cards on the market, and even longer before they are at an affordable price on a par with today’s popular 8GB SDHC cards.

These small sized, mini laptops also tend to be a little on the small side specification wise too, so at Horizon Flash Memory we’d thought that we’d take a look at them to see how they measure up and offer some advice on how to get the best for your money.

The humble laptop

Up until quite recently laptops were pretty expensive. You would normally pay about the same for a laptop as a typical desktop PC, except the laptop would be much less powerful.

Things have changed in the past year or so, the parts for laptops have come down in price and in turn the laptops themselves have dropped in price. Today £600 would get you a 2.4 GHz Quad Core processor with 3GB of RAM and a 750GB hard drive in a desktop PC.

The same spent on a laptop would get a 2GHz Core Duo with 3GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive. Although the desktop PC would be more powerful, to the average user there would be no discernible difference. But that has been the point regarding PC power for a few years now.

The Dell Mini 9 (pictured above) has a 1.6GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and a 8GB or 16GB hard drive; paltry compared to the PC and laptop mentioned above, but to the average user, perfectly acceptable. Particularly at half the price of the other two examples.

Gamers

The price decrease and also the popularity of the new netbooks is in part due to the fact that PCs and Notebooks don’t need to be as powerful as they now are, and Joe Public is catching on to this. Most users simply require a PC/laptop to surf the internet, check their email and carry out a little word processing. For these tasks a powerful processor, lots of RAM, a powerful graphics card and a large hard drive just aren’t needed.

In fact, despite what PC vendors may claim, the only thing driving up computing power in home computers today, are games. The netbook that started off this new trend was anything but powerful, the Asus Eee PC had just a 900MHz, 256MB of RAM and a 2GB hard drive. A specification that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a PC running Windows 98 a decade ago.

While adequate for surfing the internet, checking email and word processing, it wasn’t ideal.

Who for?

The next generation of netbooks have improved greatly in overall computing power, the Dell mini being a good example, but netbooks do have their drawbacks. The low price of these devices may be enticing but are they suitable for everyone?

If you are looking for a laptop for just surfing the internet, chatting to friends, checking email, working on office documents, then a netbook is ideal. If you want to play games, play CD/DVDs, do serious photo or video editing then you should look elsewhere. Netbooks don’t have CD or DVD drives, they don’t have the type of graphics card or the overall computing power to cope with even very old games.

Another often overlooked drawback to netbooks is the fact that many of them use SSDs (Solid State Drives). Although SSDs have many advantages over traditional hard drives, such as being shock proof, they are expensive and only available in comparatively low capacities. Even a 32GB SSD would cost about the same as the netbook itself (around £250).

This is why many netbooks seem to have very small hard drives, around the 4GB-16GB capacity. So if you are planning on using your netbook for a DVD repository or for storing your entire music collection, you may want to think again.

Secure Digital (SD)

There are however other alternatives to a bigger capacity solid state drive. Most netbooks have a card reader slot, and if used with an 8GB SD memory card it could double or even quadruple the storage space of some netbooks. More importantly, you can buy SD cards for less than £12. With SD memory cards being so small, the average user could carry a few around, containing DVDs, music, documents etc, and just swap them round when needed.

The high speed of SD memory cards means that there isn’t much difference between using one of them for storing information, or using your SSD.

With all this in mind, which are the best netbooks available?

The options

There are plenty of netbooks around, so here is our pick of the bunch.

Maplin minibook – £119.99

• Screen: 7in
• OS: Linux
• Max Res: 800×480
• Processor: 400MHz
• RAM: 128MB
• Hard Drive: 2GB
• USB: 3 ports
• SD Card Slot
• Battery: 3 hours

They are practically giving this netbook away, and on closer inspection it is clear why. The screen resolution is pretty low and won’t make comfortable viewing. The laptop has a version of Linux that can’t easily be added to, it has the Firefox 2 web browser installed but without flash, or the ability to update it, meaning that this is little better than a mobile phone for surfing the internet and about as powerful.

The MSI Wind – £299

• Screen: 10.2in
• OS: SUSE Linux/XP Home
• Max Res:1024×600
• Processor: 1.6MHz Atom
• RAM: 1GB
• Hard Drive: 120GB
• USB: 3 ports
• SD Card Slot
• Battery: 2.5 hours

A serious netbook, the 10inch screen has a pretty decent resolution, a fast processor for a netbook and a large amount of RAM, especially in comparison to the Maplin above, and a massive hard drive. Sadly the hard drive is SATA rather than solid state but not bad on a low cost notebook, let alone a netbook.

The card reader slot allows expansion of the inbuilt memory through an SD memory card, but with 120GB hard drive it isn’t really likely to be needed.

The ASUS Eee PC 901 – £275

• Screen: 8.9in
• OS: Linux/XP Home
• Max Res:1024×600
• Processor: 1.6MHz Atom
• RAM: 1GB
• Hard Drive: 12GB(XP)/20GB(Linux)
• USB: 3 ports
• SD Card Slot
• Battery: 8 hours

The Eee PC is the one that started the netbooks craze, and it is clearly one of the best. It matches the MSI wind, has a SSD hard drive and has much better battery life. The SD memory card slot also accepts SDHC cards, meaning up to 8GB SD memory cards can be used.

The Dell Mini 9 – £299

• Screen: 8.9in
• OS: Ubuntu Linux/XP Home
• Max Res:1024×600
• Processor: 1.6MHz Atom
• RAM: 1GB
• Hard Drive: 16GB(XP)/8GB(Linux)
• USB: 3 ports
• SD Card Slot
• Battery: 5 hours

Another good netbook and virtually the same specification as the MSI Wind and the Eee PC. Again the SD card slot is SDHC compatible meaning that even with the Linux option of just 8GB of hard disk space, a couple of cards can seriously increase storage space.

Highlights

There are some great options when it comes to netbooks, but with many of them having similar specifications, what are the most important features?

Battery power

This shouldn’t be understated, after all what is the use of an ultra mobile, ultra portable laptop that doesn’t last more than an hour away from the plug socket? Manufacturer’s claims about battery life should also be taken with a pinch of salt. A 3.5 hour battery may last 3.5 hours at first, after a few months 3.5 becomes 2.5 as battery capacity diminishes over time, at a rate of about 20% per year.

With new batteries costing almost as much as a netbook itself, you’ll want a netbook that has a bit of leeway with the capacity. The Maplin minibook has 3 hours, the MSI Wind just 2.5 hours, neither would be very useful for watching DVDs or on a long train journey.

Processing power and RAM

Even surfing the internet and checking email requires a slick processor occasionally, after all no one likes a lag when opening pages or email attachments. A 1.6GHz processor and 1GB of RAM would be ample for everything other than games or photo/video editing. The Maplin minibook is shockingly low powered, even at that price and with just 3 hours battery, you just won’t have the time for the processor and RAM to chug along.

Hard drive

The hard drive is very important, after all this is where all of your music and movies will be stored when you are on the go. Sadly few of the netbooks offer the kind of capacity needed for storing even a couple of DVDs. But this is where the SD memory card slot comes in handy. If the netbook has a small hard drive, like the Eee PC and the Dell Mini 9, make sure that the card slot accepts SDHC memory cards to boost the hard drive. You’d need at least 8GB hard drive for most purposes, and then a couple of 8GB SD cards to cover any extra music and video files, which should be plenty for most people and at around £12 each, not likely to break the bank.

Although smaller capacity than the standard hard drives, SSDs give better performance and battery life, perhaps why the Eee PC has 8 hours, the Dell mini 9 has 5 hours but the MSI Wind just 2.5 hours. So whilst a 120GB hard drive has its advantages, you’d be much better served by a solid state drive.

Operating system

Most people tend to just go with an operating system that they are used to, which usually means Windows. As the netbooks don’t have powerful graphics cards or processors, they are unable to run Windows Vista, which just leaves Windows XP Home Edition. But with Linux laptops being cheaper, and ones such as Dell’s mini 9 having the user friendly Ubuntu installed, Linux netbooks may be worth a punt. There are drawbacks however, things will be laid out differently, favourite programs such as Internet Explorer and Outlook and many of your favourite programs just won’t be work on Linux.

However if you are ever going to move away from Windows and try something else, a low powered laptop that won’t play games anyway, just may be the time to do it. Linux doesn’t have spyware or adware, or viruses, or the need for an expensive anti-virus or firewall package. It doesn’t need activating, in fact copying the discs and giving them to friends is actively encouraged . It also looks better than the seven year old Windows XP, is free to upgrade, and all the software is free.

That said those who buy Linux netbooks are apparently three times more likely to return them than those running Windows, so perhaps you do get what you pay for.

Follow that car

According to a recent survey, Black Cab passengers in London have left more than 60,000 devices ranging from mobile phones, MP3 players, USB memory sticks, and even laptops in cabs in the past six months.

Quite a shocking statistic, particularly as many of those devices carry personal information and it would be extremely easy for a identity thief to extract the information. But what can be done to guard against such losses when we are all forced to carry around a plethora of devices such as mobile phones, laptops and USB memory sticks and flash cards?

After each one of the data slip ups mentioned earlier, a word was bandied about quite frequently – encryption.

Ciphers

Encryption works by scrambling the information stored on a device so that it can only be decrypted using a specific password. These days encryption is so advanced that unless the thief/discoverer has a couple of supercomputers lying around their home, they aren’t going to be able to access your encrypted information.

Encryption isn’t just reserved for spies and military types there are plenty of free, military grade encryption utilities out there that are simple enough for anyone to use.

For those who use USB memory sticks or even SD memory cards or microSD memory cards, I would even go as far as saying encryption is a necessity.

Misplaced information

People often underestimate the dangers of carrying around USB memory sticks (also known as Pen Drives) and flash cards, as this expert points out:

“If it gets into the wrong hands of a criminal, hacker or opportunist, losing your mobile device can have serious implications, so our advice is always encrypt it and password protect it to stop it ever being accessed by anyone other than yourself.”
BBC News | Michael Callahan – Credant Technologies

One of the easiest ways of encrypting your information is to use a piece of software like TrueCrypt. This free and open source software allows you to encrypt an entire hard drive, USB memory sticks or flash cards.

Simply download and install the software, insert your USB flash memory stick or flash memory card and open the software. When presented with a choice of what drives to encrypt, just select your chosen USB memory stick or flash memory card and then the type of encryption, ranging from the standard US NSA quality encryption to even tougher encryption.

The software has a Traveller Mode, which, once set up, allows you to then use the device in another PC. It also works on-the-fly so you can use the USB stick or memory as normal, the software will encrypt/decrypt as necessary.

The software is amazingly easy to use, a step by step tutorial can be found here. All this of course begs the question, if it were that easy, why doesn’t (or didn’t) the Government use encryption?

Tip of the tongue

There are downsides to using encryption. With most applications if you forget the password you can simply click the ‘Forgot Password’ link or reset it. If you encrypt a USB memory drive or flash card and forget the password, well, then you have just lost all the information on that drive, permanently. There is no way to get the information back without the password.

It isn’t the end of the world though, you can also re-format the drive or delete the container, and start again, this time using a password that is memorable. Avoid using something that seems memorable at the time, but when needed you can’t for the life of you recall it.

This could be where a site such as Password Chart comes in handy, it allows the creation of completely random and seemingly meaningless passwords from memorable words. For instance using Horizon and Memory we are able to create the password – jD_6jD4c8@n^P

Apart from the inconvenience of losing access to your own information, and feeling like a bit of an idiot for forgetting your own password, there is another reason why you may not want to forget your encryption password.

The long arm of the law

Since 1st October 2007 it became an offence to fail to hand over encryption passwords to the police, if they request them. Being unable to remember the password is not classed as a plausible defence.

Of course the average person is unlikely to have their USB memory stick or Flash memory card confiscated by the police, but the two year prison sentence mean that it is worth bearing in mind.

Better safe…

Most people will probably assume that they do not need to use encryption, or even that it is too much hassle. But like using car alarms and house alarms, a minor inconvenience can quickly become part of an everyday routine.

Your information and privacy are extremely important, once they are out there in the hands of criminals and hackers, there is no way to get that information back again. The safest bet is to make sure that the information that falls into their hands is unusable, and the only way to do that is encryption.

Perhaps the most common ways that on-line shoppers are exploited is in regards to faulty or returned goods.

The Restocking Fee

One of the most common tactics by unscrupulous traders is the infamous restocking fee. This is where, when a customer decides to return an item for some reason other than it being faulty, as per the Distance Selling Regulations, they are charged a restocking fee or an administration charge, typically 10% of the item cost, some companies even charge as much 20-25%!

This can add up, as many companies also expect their customers to bear the costs of returning unwanted items. Take for example our 8GB SD card, priced at £11.49 (£13.50 incl VAT) plus £1.50 delivery means that it would cost £15 to have it delivered to your door.

Now if a customer were to decide to return this item to us it would cost them just £1.50 and they’d get back their full £15. If we were one of these unscrupulous traders, it would cost somewhere between £3-£5.

One of our major competitors charges a restocking fee of 10%. An 8GB card from them is about £21, plus £1.99 postage. Simply returning the item to them, as customers are entitled to do by law, would set a customer back almost £5.

Such fees are an easy way of making money for on-line retailers, a restocking fee either discourages customers from returning goods, as they would then be out of pocket and have nothing to show for it, or at worst for the retailer, it is money for old rope.

The Law

I have used the word unscrupulous here, but such actions are in fact illegal. This extract from the Distance Selling Regulations explains:

If you want the consumer to return the goods and to pay for that return, you must make it clear in the contract and as part of the required written information – see paragraph 3.10. If the consumer then fails to return the goods, or sends them at your expense, you can charge them the direct cost to you of the return, even if you have already refunded the consumer’s money. You are not allowed to make any further charges, such as a restocking charge or an administration charge.

The law is unambiguous on this, it is illegal for companies to charge consumers (it’s a different matter for businesses) a restocking or administration fee. The question then of course is why do they do it?

Unfortunately it is a simple answer of – because they can.

Terms and Conditions

Most companies place this sort of information in their terms and conditions, and unfortunately few consumers take the time to read them, and who can blame them? It is only after a customer has paid and when they want to return an item, that they find out about such things. By this time the restocking or administration charge will come straight out of any refund.

The only recourse a customer has at this point is Trading Standards and the Small Claims court. Naturally with the law on the side of the customer it is a sure fire certainty that the customer will win.

Unfortunately it is not as clear cut as that, most people won’t bother going through all the hassle of taking a company to court to claim money back and unfortunately the minimum amount that you can claim through the small claims court is £15. Few items will have a restocking fee that large, so this means that basically such companies can get away with it.

The only real option a consumer has is to avoid such companies in the first place. Always read the Returns information or FAQs before buying from a company on-line. At the first mention of any such fees, direct your browser elsewhere.

Faulty Goods

Another shady tactic used by on-line retailers is with faulty goods, where they ask the consumer to take the matter up with the manufacturer, usually after the customer has had the goods for a certain period, normally 28-30 days.

Unfortunately there is no way to avoid this pre-sale, other than to read reviews about the company before hand and see what others have had to say about their service. This is part of the reason that Horizon Flash Memory has joined the Comodo UserTrust scheme.

Once again this palming off of the customer onto the manufacturer contravenes the law, this time the Sale of Goods Act, which clearly states that your contract is with the company that you handed your money over to, not the manufacturer. This is true of any retailer, whether the item was purchased on-line or on the high street.

The reason that some companies use this tactic is once again money; this time they are trying to keep hold of the money taken from the customer. If a product is faulty, they will either have to repair it, replace it or give the customer a refund. By deflecting this onto the manufacturer, the retailer gets to keep all of the money. The manufacturer is under no obligation to give the customer his money back, and may even charge to repair the goods.

Again the only options are Trading Standards and the Courts, but as more money is likely to be involved than claiming back the restocking fee, the Small Claims court is probably the best option. The court would likely order the retailer to fulfil its obligations under the Sale of Goods Act and also refund the customer his court costs.

Once Bitten, Twice Shy

The most important thing to remember in all of this is that once a retailer has ripped you off in this manner, never to shop there again. The internet offers an abundance of choice, which means that there are plenty of honest and trustworthy traders, such as Horizon Flash Memory and many others where a customer can spend his money.

Also take advantage of review sites, not just for when things go wrong but also when you are happy with a service, this will help show that good customer service can be rewarding.

Technorati Tags: SD cards, Online Shopping, Retailers, Horizon Flash Memory, 8GB SD, SD, DSR, Scam, Watchdog

“We’re not thinking about fighting Sony, but about how many people we can get to play games. The thing we’re thinking about most is not portable systems, consoles, and so forth, but that we want to get new people playing games.”

I don’t think even he could have foreseen just how popular it would become and just what a difference the Nintendo Wii would make to the gaming world.

The machine is unbelievably popular, and as he noted, not just in the traditional market. We now see Nintendo Wii’s in the homes of the traditional gamers parents, their grandparents and even in nursing homes. Something that was inconceivable before the Wii came along.

Secure Digital Cards

The Wii isn’t much compared to the other next generation consoles, in fact it barely measures up specification wise to the XBox, let alone the XBox 360. It is also lacking in the storage department, only having 512MB of storage (the Xbox had about 10GB), but it does allow owners to add pictures and files from their own SD cards.

A smart move by Nintendo, the Xbox 360 uses it’s own propriety memory cards, but the SD card has become the de facto standard for flash memory cards in recent years, with most people having several cards from digital cameras, PDAs, mobile phones and now even sat-navs, lying around the home. Not to mention the fact that they can also use the newer miniSD and microSD cards as well with an adaptor. SD cards are a very cheap form of storage, allowing users to more than double the storage capacity of their Wii for less than £3.

Secure Digital High Capacity Cards

Sadly, despite coming to market several months after SDHC, the Nintendo Wii does not support SDHC cards and this has caused some issues for those looking to expand their Nintendo Wii’s storage capacity.

SDHC itself is something of a murky area, many manufacturers and retailers do not do enough to make customers aware of what SDHC is, why it is different from standard SD, or even that it is different.

SDHC is a completely different standard to standard SD and is not backwards compatible. There is more information on SDHC on the Horizon Web Blog – The Mystery Behind SDHC. But in a nutshell, unless your camera, mobile phone, sat-nav or PDA specifically says that it supports SDHC cards, it more than likely does not.

So although those new 4GB, 8GB and even 16GB and 32GB SD cards may seem like an excellent way of perhaps recording more video or taking thousands of photographs, rather than just hundreds, unfortunately for most people, particulary those with devices a year or two old, it just isn’t possible.

If you’re in any doubt as to whether your device is SDHC compatible, feel free to contact us at Horizon Flash Memory, or even comment here with the make and model of your device and we’d be happy to let you know.

Conflicting Advice

Nintendo Wii owners, like most people it seems, have difficulty finding out whether their device is SDHC compatible and then which cards to purchase. A simple search for ‘Nintendo Wii compatible SD cards‘, turns up all sorts of conflicting advice.

Even the Nintendo Wii website itself makes no mention of SDHC cards, simply stating that the Wii is only compatible with SD cards of 2GB or less.

At Horizon Flash Memory, we can give simple clear advice on this issue, SDHC cards are not compatible with the Nintendo Wii, no cards more than 2GB in capacity will work. Needless to say all of our SD cards of 2GB or less are 100% compatible with the Nintendo Wii – and this is guaranteed.

Cheap As Chips

There is an upside however to not being able to use the newer, higher capacity SD cards. As the capacities get higher and higher the prices at the bottom end of the capacity scale get cheaper and cheaper.

If you shop around you can find lower capacity SD cards at unbelievably low prices. Strangely, there are also places that sell 512MB SD cards for between £8-£10 each! So as always it is important to shop around to get the best deals.

And while our 1GB and 2GB SD cards are not quite as cheap as chips, at £2.99 and £4.49 respectively, they are both cheaper than cod and chips, and offer fantastic value.

Technorati Tags: Horizon Flash Memory, Nintendo, Wii, Nintendo Wii, SD cards, SDHC, Secure Digital Cards, microSD, Flash Memory, Memory Cards, Xbox