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Lexar plays the UDMA 6 card, too

Lexar follows close on the heels of SanDisk's announcement of its 90MB per second Extreme Pro CompactFlash card with its own player, the Lexar Professional 600X. Like SanDisk's, these expensive, ultrafast cards aren't for everyone; as detailed in the Extreme Pro post, you really need to be shooting with a fast, high-resolution camera recent enough to support UDMA 6 or frequently downloading lots of files with a fast reader to see the benefit.

I repeated the casual testing I did with the SanDisk card, and while the Lexar seems to be faster overall than the SanDisk, there are two things to keep in mind: different capacities will frequently perform differently and Lexar doesn't make the same durability claims or seem to invoke the error-correction algorithms SanDisk touts; the latter probably add some performance overhead, and might be a valuable trade-off for some shooters.… Read more

New Pretec CompactFlash card gets super fast

Pretec, a maker of CompactFlash cards including very high-capacity ones, on Tuesday brought the speed of CF cards to a new high.

The company unveiled what we believe to be the world's first CF that offers speed up to 666x, which translates to about 100MBps. This is about four times the speed of a typical CF card and getting close to the theoretical maximum speed of the CF specification, which is 133MBps.

(To further increase the maximum speed of CF cards, the CompactFlash Association has released the new generation of the CF specification, called CFast, which breaks the 133MBps … Read more

LG CF360 launches and does not disappoint

We told you about the LG CF360 yesterday and how its launch was imminent. Well, it just launched, and, indeed, it has all the features we mentioned and even more. These include but are not limited to a 1.3-megapixel camera, access to AT&T Mobile Music, AT&T Navigator, AT&T Video Share and Cellular Video, Bluetooth. It's available now for $29.99 after a two-year agreement and a $50 mail-in rebate.

LG CF360 for AT&T

LG seems to be planning a couple more handsets for AT&T. There's the LG Secret, which we talked about a week or so ago, and now apparently there'll be the LG CF360, a replacement to the LG CU515.

Features include a 1.3-megapixel camera, a microSD card slot, and AT&T Navigator support. No word on pricing, but we think it'll be available shortly.

(Via Engadget Mobile)

LG Secret not so secret after all

It looks like the LG CF750 Secret may be coming over to AT&T, according to this listing on LG's U.S. site. Hopefully it'll have many of the features found on its Asian/European counterpart, like the 5-megapixel camera, 3G, a touch-sensitive display, support for shooting video at 120fps into DivX format, Bluetooth, a music player, and also access to Google products like GMail and Google Maps.

No word on pricing or availability of course, but if it's already showing up on LG's site, we could see it soon.

(Via Engadget Mobile)

Pretec revs up huge, super-speedy CF cards

Pretec announced on Tuesday its latest CompactFlash cards, which are substantially faster and higher capacity than other available CF cards.

The new cards come in two speeds: 233x (35MB per second) and 333x (50MBps), which is for now, as far as we know, the fastest for CF cards. The 233x model comes in 64GB and 100GB capacities while the 333x model comes in 32GB and 50GB capacities.

These cards can be used with digital cameras or mobile devices or reconfigured to work as solid-state hard drives. As I blogged recently, this is also good news for those who want to … Read more

Make your own solid-state hard drive and save

No moving parts, shock resistant, and incredibly short seek time are some of many benefits you get from a solid-state hard drive. However, for now, the price for a SSD is so incredibly high that calling "insanely priced" might not be an over statement. It's hard to justify (or to afford for that matter) spending about $1,000 for only 64GB when you can pay about 10 percent of that cost for a regular 200GB laptop hard drive.

So how about making our own SSD?

Sans Digital just released the CR2T CompactFlash card enclosure that might make … Read more

Panasonic unveils Toughbook CF-U1

Panasonic today added a tablet UMPC to its rugged Toughbook line. Sure, you could buy six Asus Eee PCs and still have some walking around money left for the price of one $2,499 Toughbook CF-U1, but we doubt you'll grab your lunch pail and Eee PC and head down to the mine. Panasonic's latest Toughbook is, of course, built for use in the field. It's "engineered for the walking worker," according to Panasonic, and comes loaded with features.

The 5.6-inch LED backlit LCD touch screen is designed for viewing in direct sunlight, and below it is a backlit thumb keyboard divided by a number pad and arrow keys in its middle. On the right side, you can see a hand strap, but should you choose not to tether yourself to the Toughbook CF-U1, you can rest easy knowing it's been engineered to survive a four-foot drop and to resist rain, spills, dust, and vibration. It ships with two batteries, which, according to Panasonic, adds up to 9 hours of running time. The unit measures 7.2 inches wide by 5.9 inches deep by 2.2 inches high. It weighs a trim 2.3 pounds, which includes lugging around both batteries. It's completely fanless and uses a solid-state hard drive and an Intel Atom CPU, all of which should aid battery life.

In addition to a 2-megapixel Webcam and fingerprint scanner, it also features barcode and RFID readers and GPS. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 3G-mobile-broadband are also onboard. Many of these features are listed as options, so they most likely will add to the $2,499 price. Panasonic expects the Toughbook CF-U1 to ship in August.

Full specs after the break.… Read more

How fast is your flash?

It's languished for a while, but Rob Galbraith's extremely useful and detailed database of performance tests on CompactFlash and SD media has just been updated. If you've got burning questions about whether it's worth the extra bucks for a flashier flash card, this is the place to look. Recent additions include tests with the Canon EOS 40D and Nikon D300.