Fommy Product Review:

Dane-Elec is still a bit of a small name and unknown to a lot of consumers, but they have been producing quality memory and products for over twenty years now, and regardless of their relatively small status, they are still the world's third largest producer/manufacturer of flash memory and they continue to grow each year. To insure you of their quality and their level of dedication, they back up their microSD cards with a five year warranty.

Their MicroSD card kits come with more than just a simple card to plug into your phone, they come with two adapters as well. More than likely your phone only requires the card itself, but the adapters can serve a variety of purposes. You can always multipurpose the card as well, you can insert the card into a camera, take a picture with the memory card installed and then move it right back to your phone to send it away or use it as a background for example.

To start, let’s look at the largest, this is simply an SD adapter. And just like the other adapter, you simply slide the memory card into the port and then click it into a compatible device. Typically, the SD card is for larger mobile devices, and rarely used for mobile devices anymore. You'll most commonly see SD cards in use in cameras and camcorders, where have a small unit of fairly cheap reusable memory is quite a boon. But it is also seen on a variety of devices, from the PDAs of yesteryear to storage of downloads on Nintendo's famous Wii console. As well, this is the most common sized SD card port you're likely to find on a printer or computer as well, making it very easy to shoot and print or download things from your phone to your computer. In general though, regular SD cards are much larger than the microSD + adapter combination (who are reported to reach 2 TB this year), but being able to use it in a variety of devices is very handy.

The second adapter is called a MiniSD, and is a bit of a black sheep in the SD card family and in generally sees the least use, mainly because for the most part it has the same capacity of it's small brethren, the MicroSD. It's still used in some newer mobile phones and (non-apple) MP3 players, but has significantly fallen out of use in the last year. Some manufactures still produce the occasional device that uses it though.

Last but not least, is the MicroSD card itself. It's quite tiny but holds a lot of space. To put it in comparison, the 8 GB MicroSD card holds more than three thousand times more memory than my first computer. This card is what is most commonly used in mobile devices these days, phones in particular. There is one thing you should beware of though, many SD cards bear the moniker "HC" or "High Capacity", you should make sure your phone/device is compatible with high capacity cards before purchasing them, they simply won't work with incompatible devices. On the flip side, they are backwards compatible, so if your phone/device does support high capacity cards it WILL support non-high capacity cards.

If you don't know how much space you're likely to take up, here is some average statistics based on a GB (gigabyte of usage). These aren't exact by any means but should give you a good guideline:

1 GB : 250 songs : 1000 photos taken with a 2 megapixel camera : 5.5 hours of video recorded at 384 kbps with MPEG-4 encoding*

And as a quick note, you won't get exactly the space printed on the card. Many of the cards have software on them to begin with (auto-loaders for example), that can be removed, but many devices will install things on them as well, so you won't get the full capacity in storage. This space loss doesn't take into consideration memory conversion either; it would be a lengthy explanation to explain exactly what I mean, but to put it simply: the way most people calculate memory size and the way manufacturers label memory aren't exactly the same. It's the same thing on hard drives as well, if you buy a 160GB hard drive, you won't get exactly 160GB.

I hope this information has been helpful. Dane-Elec products great quality products of all kinds, even if they aren't at the top of the charts and their five year manufacturers warranty means you'll definitely be getting your money's worth.

Features:

• Extra memory anytime or anywhere.
• Stores 2GB of software, music, pictures, videos, e-books, and more.
• Small - about the size of a postage stamp (24mm X 32mm X 2.1mm).
• Secure - built-in write-protect switch prevents accidental data loss.
• Fast - data transfer rate up to 2 MB/sec (average).
• Simple - as easy as plug-and-play.
• Economical - low power consumption is easy on batteries.
• Efficient - average write speeds of 1.5 MB/sec.