Talk:XD-Picture Card

NPOV

Okay, my last version was way too negative, as I didn't do a good enough job of NPOVing a very, very overly negative rewrite someone did a while ago. On the other hand, User:Flasher came in with an edit that I consider a whitewash, often comparing xD to obsolete formats like pre-Pro Memory Sticks and SmartMedia.

I've structured I'm going to structure (see below) the article around the idea that xD is a "micro"-style memory card competing with the older formats, which is a somewhat controversial take, but I dunno how else to structure this.

Any edit is going to need to reflect the fact that this is a niche format, supported only by Olympus and Fuji, though. I'm not sure what further statistical comparisons to the micro formats serve, as these formats are almost exclusively the domain of smartphones, not digital cameras. A Man In Black 08:56, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, I'm going to put this at User:A Man In Black/xDtemp until I can finish restructuring the article. A Man In Black 09:06, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Scale

Is there any point in comparing the size of a xD card to an American one cent coin? Could you at least link to somewhere that shows a picture of a US one cent coin next to something else (a ruler, perhaps) to give non-Americans an idea of just how big that is?

The main text of the article gives us the actual dimensions of the card in standard units so even for those people who do have easy access to American coinage, the coin in the photo is redundant. A photo of the card itself showing different angles would be more useful.

Well, I'll try to make a picture of one with a ruler anyway. -- WB 03:55, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Competition

How do xD cards compete with the other formats? Only Fuji and Olympus cameras use xD cards and Fuji and Olympus cameras only use xD cards. Nobody gets to choose to use or not use xD cards (unless you expect anyone to believe people will make their camera buying choice based solely on what memory card format it uses). There can't be any competition between card formats, only manufacturers of the cards.

Device Speed

"xD cards are much slower than the main competitor SecureDigital (SD)." Can we have some numbers to prove this? I can't find read/write speeds on these bad boys anywhere. ---Ransom (--71.4.51.150 18:59, 21 March 2006 (UTC))

The following information was taken from a reseller's page, regarding a 512MB Fujifilm xD, at: [1] (09 May 2006): • Weight: 2 grammes • Size: 20 (L) x 25 (w) x 1,7 (t) mm • Power supply: 3.3V • Write speed: 3.0 Mo/s • Read speed: 5.0Mo/s • Pin number: 18 • Nand Flash memory • Warranty: 2 years

According to the wikipedia article, a Mo (as in Mo/s) is a megaoctect, analagous in almost all cases to a megabyte a byte and an octet being 8 bits in modern computing). The article does mention some uses of octect as three bits (because of the 8 values possible) - the use of this meaning would be a marketing sleight-of-hand if it is what is 'meant' in this case. It would be nice to presume the standard meaning is what is meant, though.

More to the comparison point, though - common SD cards are 66x rated, which is about 10 Megabytes/s. Cards of about twice that speed are also available. I'm not sure offhand if that's the read or write speed, but the 10 Megabytes/s exceeds xD by a factor of two regardless. --Keramos

Interface

Some discussion of the type of interface provided or a pinout might be useful, perhaps just an external link to that type of information.