For a few years now we’ve been watching Sony’s new product announcements carefully in the hope that one day they might actually concede that they’re wasting time, effort and money on their continued commitment to Memory Stick when the rest of the world has adopted SD in all its forms. Well, it looks like they’ve jumped ship at last.

Sony MicroSD 4GB and SDHC 32GB Class 4 cards

Sony Class 4 MicroSDHC 4GB and SDHC 32GB cards

Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with Memory Stick, it’s just that almost everyone else had adopted SD (which stands for “Secure Digital”) years back.

SD is everywhere. It’s used in our phones and other mobile devices as well as in digital cameras, SatNavs, car music systems, and even DAB receivers, so the fact that Memory Stick was physically incompatible with SD meant that we mostly stuck with SD.

Well, at long last, Sony is offering SD cards – in both the full-size, high-capacity form of SDHC and also as the thumbnail-sized MicroSD. Hooray! Not only that, but in a very astute marketing move the company is very cleverly giving us not one card slot but two in its latest camcorder range. So you’ll have a choice of using Memory Stick or SDHC or both.

Up to speed for HD video

The new products provide high capacity storage that’s ideal for HD camcorders (such as Sony’s own AVCHD range). SDHC – and its thumbnail-sized partner product, the MicroSD card – use identical storage technologies and differ only in their physical proportions. For 24Mbps AVCHD video recording, SDHC Class 4 offers the data transfer speed necessary for stable HD video recording. You really need Class 4 minimum.

Users of the Sony SD/SDHC and microSD/SDHC cards will get peace of mind thanks to File Rescue software, which is available as a simple, free download. This will facilitate rapid retrieval of photos, video, or music that were damaged or deleted by mistake. Touch wood.

What’s more, your music and pictures can be combined into amazingly wonderful and inspired slideshows thanks to downloadable x-Pict Story software. The software is so easy to use everyone in the family can join in, and a slideshow-sharing function ideal for uploading to video sharing service like YouTube means no-one need miss out on the fun. Granny will be impressed!

We should also add that both File Rescue and x-Pict Story are also available as free downloads for Memory Stick customers.

The new Sony SD/SDHC range

The SD/SDHC range includes 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, 16GB and 32GB models, while the microSD/microSDHC line-up offers a choice of 2GB, 4GB and 8GB capacities (SD Card Adaptor included as standard)

All cards are ultra-resistant to shock and can withstand temperature extremes from -25C to 85C

Availability

Sony SD and microSD products will go on sale in February 2010.

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