MS Pro slot nonsense

[Winston]

One small comment...Betamax.

[Javelin]

One smaller reply Blu-ray

One small comment...Betamax.

[Javelin]

hey my reply to barry never posted :/ and appears to be gone....

[Javelin]

Sorry Barry I had a much more well written response but the ether got it I guess:


I don't assume anything. this MS argument has been going on forever and I've been following it since Sony first sold me a Camera 10 years ago. it got an HR on DPR and had a MS slot. previous cameras had PCMCIA slots or a CD writer in them (mavica) it wasn't until a little later that Canon and Nikon went with CF cards I think they used PCMCIA slots or internal memory then mostly. and thats when the canon troll was born. after that on DPR the MS became the "Sony proprietary format" and was often listed as a con when they ran out of other cons ...so your argument isn't new but it's still wrong.

Sony is huge... their market share in all segments is significant. but your right you can't compare the thousands of products they don't make unless you take into account the hundreds of companies that number is divided against.

I don't have to worry about "tatty" (that word gives me a chuckle.. we never hear it here) cards if I just grab the memory stick off the display. the trademark and format is rigorously policed by Sony to protect their customers from the doggie-doo thats invaded the CF market. It's a pity some people don't recognize integrity and customer service when they see it.

Hrm.. the A100 only used CF cards all subsequent cameras have also an MS slot. your argument is weak here. because it looks like the next logical step is 2 MS slots 1 memory controller then the addition of the file writing and moving features that people are asking for. I'll bet they can't do it now because they have to have both MS and IDE controllers to support writing to the 2 formats. Not to mention the Minolta Legacy they vowed to protect. You see? they did you a favour here, strange you don't see that, do you need a hand written letter from some VP at Sony? Now that they can support the high write speeds for continuous burst they don't have to have CF slots. I would expect their next round of entry level cams to only have MS slots. Is Canon and Nikon going to be enough to support a memory format of their own? thats quickly what it's becoming .. proprietary Canon and Nikon.

The fact that you haven't had any problems doesn't mean very much. theres lots of evidence to the contrary. we also know that the cameras get damaged when the pins get bent. this design isn't made for what it's being used for. no amount of hobbling together parts is going to make it any stronger. in the end the rails will wear and the pins will get screwed up.

MS is already accepted on all types of devices in every market you can shake a stick at Including Canon/Epson/HP printers (proprietary huh?). what you mean is you will not accept MS .. and thats fine.. your entitled. CF is in a small little corner and that is high end Cameras. It's PCMCIA grandfather is still included with the odd laptop but thats quickly disappearing too. none of the P&S cameras are using CF anymore and no other devices are either. it's CF thats in decline. in the end whats going to kill it is when SD and MS have finally caught up in speed. and more media is distributed electronically. CF has no provision on the card or any plan to add any for of DRM They have to add another chip to handle that on the IDE controller which makes it even bigger and even more expensive. the Media companies are not going to allow devices that don't have that onto their services.. please also note.. the biggest media company is Sony right now. CF is already dead they just don't know it yet. and heres something else. the people who make the CF cards don't care one whit if it dies. because they also make SD and MS cards at the same time so they win no matter what. Sony on the other hand has a vested interest in it's success and is showing that they are willing to defend the format. SD is already starting to show the same kinds of quality issues with inferior flash ram and poor manufacturing quality.. so the future is brighter for MS than you think.

Until I bought the A200 I didn't even realize this was happening. I don't have anything else that uses CF anymore but I thought it was a popular format like all the rest of them. and really I had a hard time finding them and the selection was limited. Even when I bought my card reader, I had to spend about 20 dollars extra to buy the only one offered out of about 12 or 15 units that had a CF slot in it. Every single other card reader accepted MS in all it's flavours. If your shopping for CF card I hope you locked your car doors because the only reason to buy on now is if theres a DSLR in the trunk.

Sorry for the schizophrenic style of this response..

.

This is for Javelin..

Don't "assume" that everyone feels CF is unreliable. Let's see how many people use it as their primary card for the A900? Not many I bet, esp considering CF is so much faster.

Also, yes sony is big, but combine the electronic devices from all oher makers, and you will find sony in the minority.
If you bought cheap tatty CF cards, that's your own problem, I, and many others have used it without issue.
MS will never be accepted, nobody uses it, only sony. That is the crushing reality of the situation.
And name me the sony DSLR that only takes MS? Not a single one..wonder why???

[Javelin]

Betamax had a 3 year run before VHS came out in the Canadian market in any threatening way (thats what I did for a living then). it took another number of years for VHS to eventually take over in the consumer space and probably another 5 years beyond that in the professional area before Beta wass replaced by other technology. Betamax was a huge sucess no matter which way you look at it. heres something else that people don't realize. VHS couldn't work without some of Sony's technology. Those licenses meant that Sony got paid even on every VHS player sold. People like to bring up beta as a failure when really those same people let marketing machines trick them out of a superiour product/technology sold by fewer companies that were more motivated and dedicated to preserving the quality of the products they sold. We are here in a discussion forum talking about SLR type cameras. where here because the quality of the P&S world doesn't fit our vision of what we want. We spend more on our cameras and drag around more gear all because of the need/want for better quality. When we were shooting film were we shooting 110 instamatics and processing our film at a K-mart? nope we wanted quality then too. So here is sony, they have a better memory format for us to use in our cameras and their catching grief from people who insist on better quality from everything else they use in the hobby.. it doesn't make sense to me and doesn't fit .. same with the great Infolithium debates that pop up again and again..

One small comment...Betamax.

[KevinBarrett]

I wonder if there is this much talk in the Nikon forums about the D700 having only one memory slot. A lot of complaints are made of Sony incorporating this extra memory card capability, but I wonder, if the Alpha line had only ever had just one slot, just for a CF card, would there have been as much noise for them to expand to use two, CF + SD? Just a thought.

[Javelin]

The only reason this is an issue is because it's a memory stick slot. On the sony cameras it made sense for them to support their own cards on the camera. for Nikon 2 CF slots or 2 SD slots would make sense. one CF and one SD wouldn't and would probably cause many furrowed brows over there as Nikon doesn't care whats used as long as it works with their feature set.

[Dr. Harout]

In some very old posts I mentioned my trust for MS. Probably not giving any explanation. But maybe time has come.
I agree with Javelin. People might not accept new things right away. It needs time to get adapted. Time has showed us the problem with pins, specially when you use them a lot. I was and am always afraid of those pins. Once they bend, try to avoid that slot. That's why I do not take the CF card out. I always read it through the camera linked to PC (and that is the recommended choice).
I do accept that CF cards are still quicker (yet) but frankly I don't care. I never or seldom use high speed continuous shots. For me the only concern for MS slots is the spring mechanism within it and definitely not the card itself.
So, I think the best advice here would be, use whatever medium you want or trust, just don't take them out and put them again repeatedly (such movements should be reserved for other purposes ).
And finally, MS is here to stay for long, believe me.

[KevinBarrett]

But the D700 has only one slot, period, not two slots of the same kind. The only apparent reason for this seems to be to keep it from getting too close to the D3.

Sony has gone the extra mile for their customers by incorporating two memory formats when they didn't have to, and DPR slays them for it. Compare:

Nikon D700

Unlike the D3 the D700 only has one Compact Flash slot, and unusually for a Nikon at this level there's no lock or release lever for the slot compartment cover (you just slide it backwards to open it). The D700 supports Compact Flash Type I including FAT32 (cards over 2 GB) and UDMA (high throughput), but notably becomes the first Nikon at this level to drop support for Type II CF cards (e.g. microdrives).

Sony a900

Once again Sony has included that professional photography essential, the Memory Stick Duo slot (in addition to the arguably more useful CompactFlash slot). This vestigial slot will undoubtedly appeal to PSP touting hipsters prepared to pay over the odds for a proprietary memory format, but for the rest of us it's doomed to remain a small, narrow place to keep dust.

They sell little plugs for that small narrow place at most every electronics retailer, plugs that hold pictures. I have noticed, however, that DPReview has cleaned up this little insult. I'd say "kudos for doing the right thing," but the right thing would have been not to publish the first version.

[Javelin]

I hadn't realized they edited that out. it hurts my heart to see DPR having to edit this doggie-doo out. any other time they could justify everything they wrote. .. seems a lot ofthings have changed since I bought my F717 and now.. Sony had the only camera to get a double highly recomended! once upon a time they were spoke of on DPR as serious pro quality cameras (the canon trolls were dripping with jelously) and since the DSLR's came out Sony was taken less seriously and actually ridiculed by the newer reviewers and now that there producing top flight cameras the bias forthe traditional SLR cameras is very aparent.

they left this in tho

"(I'm sure there'll be a huge sigh of relief from semi professional photographers that their SLR can now accept the same slow, pricey memory cards as their PlayStation). "

I didn't realize that nikon dropped the slot for the microdrive.. Barry better stock up on those CF cards

But the D700 has only one slot, period, not two slots of the same kind. The only apparent reason for this seems to be to keep it from getting too close to the D3.

Sony has gone the extra mile for their customers by incorporating two memory formats when they didn't have to, and DPR slays them for it. Compare:

Nikon D700

Unlike the D3 the D700 only has one Compact Flash slot, and unusually for a Nikon at this level there's no lock or release lever for the slot compartment cover (you just slide it backwards to open it). The D700 supports Compact Flash Type I including FAT32 (cards over 2 GB) and UDMA (high throughput), but notably becomes the first Nikon at this level to drop support for Type II CF cards (e.g. microdrives).

Sony a900

Once again Sony has included that professional photography essential, the Memory Stick Duo slot (in addition to the arguably more useful CompactFlash slot). This vestigial slot will undoubtedly appeal to PSP touting hipsters prepared to pay over the odds for a proprietary memory format, but for the rest of us it's doomed to remain a small, narrow place to keep dust.

They sell little plugs for that small narrow place at most every electronics retailer, plugs that hold pictures. I have noticed, however, that DPReview has cleaned up this little insult. I'd say "kudos for doing the right thing," but the right thing would have been not to publish the first version.

[aster]

Hi,

Having read everything written above, I'm surprised that there's even an argument about the existence of MS cards or a biased-opinionated reviewers league!

I owned both MS and CF cards since the first Sony camera I purchased because it could accept both mediums in different slots. And I liked the idea of having been offered a choice in the first place. My first Sony camera, the Sony DSC-V3 came with both slots and later when I purchased the Alpha 100 it had the same slots which was very welcome because I just had to use the ones I had for the DSC-V3. I have both slots always full and it helps a lot. I like the idea that they are both propriety mediums too, and don't like the idea of buying from other manufacturers in case they would harm the camera or the stored material in the card.

Well, anything is open to improvement, so the MS-CF working at the same time to store different data or improve versatility of use is always welcome, even if the Sony executive gave a brisk 'no' for the time being. Things can change...

Yildiz

[bfitzgerald]

For the record, MS is not "new" and swanky, it has been out for longer than SD (over time both have been updated)
Aside from Konica, and a few compacts, I don't remember any other maker using their slots..but the fact remains, nobody does now.
Saying you can use MS in many devices isn't the point, find me a single digital device that does not take SD? Hard to do..try putting your MS into your sat nav..good luck on that one, try putting it into the car stereo..but hey, they all take SD mostly.

This is not the point. The real rub is MS hurts sony in the long run. I have many SD cards, for many devices, including a few compacts etc. I won't be buying a sony compact, any time soo, not because they are not decent (IMO they are improved of late, and some are pretty good), but when I have loads of SD cards lying about, why would I bother with "yet another memory card format" ??? I am not the only one who feels this, instantly sony are cashed out of it, on that basis alone. Not clever.

Nobody, even Javelin, can dispute the plain and simple fact, that only 2 formats have widespread acceptance from makers. CF, and SD.
And it is unfortunate that sony have this horrible history with proprietary formats..and they are unable to see the wood for the trees. It's a consumer turn off, putting it mildly. Look at the ATRAC format, it was doomed to failure..MP3 is universal, hell even WMA has strong support (though not as good as MP3)
Sometimes you have to call it as it is, corporate madness at it's worst. And don't even start me off on the lithium battery situation

[Greg Beetham]

Hmm the eternal struggle for proprietary format supremacy, some win, some loose..sometimes undeservedly (it's amazing what good marketing will do), and some, the struggle goes on.
I haven't had any problems so far with my two cameras and a bunch of CF cards, some Kingston some Sandisk, but the potential is certainly there for something to go wrong with the pinout arrangement, that I will concede.
There have been some reports of bent pins, but it's not clear what the exact cause of this was...(operator problems could be a good bet), worn rails? it's possible, has any tests have been done too see how many times the card would have to be inserted back and forth before the rails actually wear enough to cause pin missalignment? in both of my cameras the rails have zero play still. A worse worry was the counterfeit CF memory that was floating about, one can only hope that's been cleaned up.
A quick look at the Kingston site reveals that they make CF and SD but no MS, while Sandisk make all three, (and then some).
Speaking of proprietary, Sony recently had a "win" with their Bluray format, even if the MS pro duo is not sweeping all before it...yet.
Greg

[pakodominguez]

And just about every other 3rd party manufacturer.
And the list for MS is:
Sony

Can we spot a trend here?
Only sony die hard fans support MS, everyone else hates the format

I'm not a Sony die-hard
I don't hate MS
I just think that, if the memory format is a point that can make you buy or not a $3000 camera, you better rethink your priorities...

[bfitzgerald]

Maybe someone could shed light on the "dumb slot" concept. I doubt it's patent based.
That kinda kills the appeal even more.

I have a great idea, how about 2 CF slots? Ooops, there I am using logic again
You could say for the A700 that the MS slot is better than nothing, but A900, top dog flaghsip..not so easy. Never mind Nikon, they wanted to not hurt the D3 so much, this is sony's pro beast.