Fujifilm 32 MB xD Picture Card

I'm definitely happy. Incidentally, I bought the FinePix S3000 camera which uses the xD card. There were consistent reviews about problems with indoor pictures with the camera in limited light. The flash does just fine indoors, and I was amazed with the battery life after so many flash shots.


Complainers still listen to their 8 track tapes   September 12, 2003
Christopher Bowers (buffalo, NY United States)
7 out of 10 found this review helpful

A new format is a good thing. If you dont like change then dont use it. There is no reason to complain. This is a fine way to store pictures, and there is nothing wrong with technological advancement. Good products live on (mostly) and bad ones go away.
The xD is smaller and faster, and has more potential in the long run. If a better one comes along, so be it. It seems to be reliable in terms of storing memory. Isnt that the most important thing?


Lose this Format!   August 15, 2003
4 out of 27 found this review helpful

Just another example of technology forcing us to upgrade. I have been uising SmartMedia for three years, love my Olympus Cameras and now we are going to have this forced down our throats?

Maybe PDA's and MP3's need this, but the camera format we had was just fine!

Do not succumb!


Tiny and promising, but do we really need it?   April 15, 2003
Gadgester (New York)
30 out of 34 found this review helpful

Measuring at an incredibly small 0.8 x 1.0 x 0.07 inches, xD picture cards are a new flash storage format jointly developed by Fuji and Olympus, the two largest manufacturers of digital cameras in the world, as a futuristic successor to the SmartMedia card. The xD cards are actually manufactured by Toshiba, known for its promotion of the competing Secure Digital (SD) flash storage format, and are about 1/3 the size of a SmartMedia card and slightly smaller than SD and MMC cards. (Confused by the alphabet soup yet?)

Sidebar: xD stands for "extreme digital"

But smallness does not mean lameness. Fuji and Olympus promise very high read/write speeds (3MB/sec for writes and 5MB/sec for reads) as well as lower power consumption for the xD cards. They also claim that eventually xD's capacity will reach 8GB (!!!), although no timetable has been set. Right now xD cards come in 32MB, 64MB, 128MB and 256MB flavors, and generally cost 50% more than same-capacity SD cards, but their prices are likely to drop quickly as more digital cameras accept the format.

Which brings us to the critical question, how many digital cameras accept xD cards? Not many at this point, and digital cameras that accept SmartMedia cannot use xD. But given the market clout of Olympus and Fuji, we'll surely see more xD-friendly models soon. The question is whether other camera producers (Canon, Nikon, Kodak, Toshiba...) will also adopt the technology. My prediction is since Canon has made a commitment to continued use of CompactFlash, they are unlikely to go with the xD. Toshiba manufactures xD cards for Fuji and Olympus, so they may adopt it if they see serious commitment by the latter two.

Since so far few cameras use the xD format, there is little real-world comparison between xD and competing formats such as SD and Sony's MemoryStick/MemoryStick PRO. Whether you'll need xD is entirely dependent on whether the digital camera you choose will accept it. My advice is pick a digital camera without regard to the storage format it takes, because all the formats out there -- SD, MMC, SM, CF, MS, and now xD -- get the job done.


Works fine. Whats not to like?   March 31, 2003
Sandy Johnston (Hobart, OK USA)
10 out of 11 found this review helpful

No problems here. Holds more pictures than my 13 year old can take in 24 hours.