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For those still trying to adjust to the suddenly outdated Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) cards, this will be something of a shock.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

Nokia is King when it comes to mobile phones, accounting for a whopping 40% of the market worldwide. In the smartphone market Nokia are an even bigger player, with 52.9% of the market, and now being the sole owner of the Symbian Operating System means that 65% of smartphone owners worldwide use their OS

Apple iPhone accounts for just 6.5% of the smartphone market, meaning that they lag some way behind the likes of Nokia, and RIM (the makers of the Blackberry). Also surprising is that more smartphone users have Windows on their phones, than Apple’s software.

So what does all this mean?

Nokia’s N95

Well it means that Nokia know what they are doing, their N-Series of smartphones have been very popular. So popular in fact that their N95 was dubbed ‘iPhone Killer’, when it went up against the first iPhone.

A couple of months ago Apple launched their new iPhone and now Nokia is hitting back with the N96.

Nokia got it right with the N95 for many reasons, such as the GPS, 3G, and of course their microSD card expansion slot. The iPhone came with 4GB or the largest 5GB of storage space, and there was no way to expand that, a shocking omission in todays storage hungry world. The N95 was compatible with microSD cards up to 2GB, meaning that for less than £10 it was possible to even up and then better the iPhone’s storage.

Nokia’s N96

The N96 goes even further in this regard, as it had to in order to compete with the iPhone which has 16GB of internal storage. The N96 matches this, but of course has a microSD card slot and supports SDHC cards up to 16GB, giving a total storage capacity of 32GB! And that’s without swapping cards.

It’s amazing that Apple have missed this once again, the customers that this kind of phone is aimed at are going to need as much storage as possible for their MP3 and videos. Why buy a phone that stores 12,000 MP3s or 40 hours of video (iPhone) when you can have a phone that stores 24,000+ MP3s and 80+hours of video?

The iPhone, like most other Apple devices also has a built in battery, which was always going to be a problem and despite the complaints and criticism, the new iPhone has a built in battery too. Other complaints about the new iPhone are the 2 mega pixel camera, the same as the original iPhone – the N96 has a 5 mega pixel camera.

iPhone Style

The Apple of course has the edge when it comes to style, although the N96 doesn’t look half bad itself, and desirability, but this is all thanks to clever marketing. At the end of the day iPhone users are a niche market, Nokia are ahead of the game in almost all respects in the smartphone market.

Smartphone users want hot swappable expandable storage so that they can simply insert a flash memory card and access the documents, MP3s or videos on it on many different types of devices and unfortunately the Apple iPhone cannot deliver this.

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“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