Saturday, March 10, 2007

New additions to Sandisk Extreme III range

Sandisk is expanding its range of Extreme III media with new 4GB SDHC™ and Memory Stick PRO Duo™cards. The SDHC is rated as 'Class 6' which guarantees a minimum sustained write speed of 6MB/s, although Sandisk say it is capable of 20MB/s. It will also be bundled with a MicroMate™ USB 2.0 reader, ensuring compatibility with the new standard. The Memory Stick PRO Duo™ card is said to have a sequential read/write rating of 18MB/s.
Press Release:
SanDisk Introduces 4-Gigabyte SanDisk Extreme III Cards For Next Generation Of High-Performance Digital Cameras


New Pro-Level Memory Cards In SDHC and Memory Stick PRO Duo FormatsHave Fast Read/Write Speeds, Store Thousands of Photos And Hours Of Video


LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, Mar. 8, 2007 – Ready for the newest digital still cameras and camcorders, SanDisk® Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK) today expanded its award-winning SanDisk Extreme® III pro line with a 4-Gigabyte (GB)1 SDHC™ (SD High Capacity) Class 6 memory card and a 4-Gigabyte Memory Stick PRO Duo™ card. As an added bonus, the SDHC card will be packaged with a SanDisk MicroMate™ USB 2.0 Reader – a $20 value – so that users have a one-stop solution for capturing, storing and transferring their images.
The announcement was made at the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) show at the Las Vegas Convention Center, where SanDisk is displaying its photographic products in Booth G191 on Level 1 of the South Hall. A 4GB SanDisk Extreme III card can store more than 2,000 high-resolution pictures or up to 8 hours of MPEG 4 video2. “The SanDisk Extreme III line has become a best-of-class standard for professional photographers who demand speed, durability and reliability,” said Tanya Chuang, SanDisk’s director of retail product marketing, global imaging market. “Now we’re raising the bar again with these new cards. And by including an SDHC-compatible reader with each SDHC card, we’re enabling users to easily transfer images from their cameras to their computers.”
Major camera manufacturers, including Canon, Nikon, Panasonic and Leica, have already shipped or announced a variety of pro-level digital still cameras that use the SDHC format, which is designed to allow for capacities greater than 2GB. Consumer-oriented digital still and video cameras that use standard SDHC cards have been available at retailers since last year. Devices must be SDHC compatible in order to work with SDHC memory cards.
SanDisk Extreme III cards have won accolades and awards worldwide since their introduction in 2004, and have been used by professional digital photographers from the Winter Olympics to the Sahara Desert. The SanDisk Extreme III 4GB SDHC card has a sequential read/write speed of 20 megabytes (MB) per second3, while the SanDisk Extreme III 4GB Memory Stick PRO Duo card has a sequential read/write speed of 18 MB per second. Both cards are designed for shooting in extreme temperatures (-13 to 185 degrees Fahrenheit or -25 to 85 degrees Celsius), high altitudes and other demanding situations. SanDisk Extreme III SDHC cards have a speed rating of Class 6, the highest available, meaning that they have a minimum continuous data transfer rate of 6MB/second4. The speed rating system, adopted by the SD Association, is intended to help consumers select the right card for the desired application. It does not denote the fastest memory card. Sony and SanDisk co-developed the Memory Stick PRO format, and SanDisk manufactures its own Memory Stick PRO Duo cards. All SanDisk Extreme III cards offer ESP Technology to streamline data transfer, RescuePRO® software to recover accidentally deleted files and images, a dedicated technical support telephone hotline and a limited lifetime warranty. SanDisk’s ultra-portable, high-performance MicroMate SDHC Reader, which normally retails for $19.99, meets the new SDA 2.0 specifications and can quickly move images from an SDHC card to a personal computer. It also reads standard SD as well as SDHC flash memory cards. The reader is being bundled with the 4GB SanDisk Extreme III SDHC card at no extra cost.

Suggested Pricing and Availability
SanDisk Extreme III SDHC Bundle
4GB + MicroMate USB 2.0 Reader
$139.99April 2007SanDisk Extreme III MSPD4 GB$179.99
April 2007
For additional information on SDHC, please visit SanDisk’s website:
What is SDHC: http://www.sandisk.com/sdhc/SDHC.pdf
SDHC product information: http://www.sandisk.com/sdhc/
1 1 gigabyte (GB) = 1 billion bytes.
2 Approximations based on compressed JPEG images on a 5MP camera (pictures) and hours of Super Fine MPEG 4 video (320 x 240, 384 kbps video). Actual numbers may vary depending on camera model, resolution and compression.
3 Based on SanDisk internal testing. 1 megabyte (MB) = 1 million bytes.
4 The SDA speed class rating was developed to identify minimum data transfer and latency requirements for a host application, and is generally related to the emerging application of uninterrupted real-time video capture (from camcorders and camera phones, for example) with an appropriately rated SD card. By contrast, SanDisk's own minimum performance specifications apply to sequential write and read operations in non-real-time applications such as file transfers between a card and a computer or in digital cameras between the camera’s buffer and the card. Performance varies depending on host device.
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