Electronica nonsense continues

[dreamshark]

So... my new mini-laptop is lovely, but has no CD drive (being too small to jam one of those in). That's fine, since it has several USB ports and not one but TWO card readers. I discovered that I could install games (older ones, anyway) from a thumb drive and games that normally require the game CD to be inserted would run if the thumb drive was there. But thumb drives stick out in an awkward way, so it seemed like a better idea to use an SD card instead, especially since you can now buy SD cards with up to 4G capacity for under $10. So I bought a half-dozen 2G and 4G SDs from Amazon, figuring I could use them to put pictures on for my inlaws to use in their new electronic picture frame, or to show on my new HD computer.

Imagine my annoyance when I discovered that old SD readers cannot read these high-capacity SDs! The little Acer is fine - its brand-new SD readers can see the 4G cards with no problem. But I have no SD reader on my primary computer that can deal with these little puppies!  So now I need to get a new SD reader. Judging from reader reviews, this is a common problem. Many SD readers for sale online don't say whether they can read 4G cards or not, and apparently a lot of them don't.

Now that I think about it, I don't know if the magic picture frames can handle high-capacity cards. Or the TV for that matter (although it had better, since I bought it just 3 weeks ago, and the card-reader is built-in to it!).

Bother.

Comments

Tiger direct

[romsfuulynn.livejournal.com]

is generally pretty good about differentiating between the SD types.

The other option might be to get the more expensive non SDHC SD cards like this one:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2315930&CatId=2412

Or go with more smaller cards - there isn't as much of a price differential between the non-SDHC cards and the SDHC cards at the 1 or 2 GB range. (And you can get a USB multireader for under $20.)

I think SDHC starts being the default at the 4GB size.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

My original reader doesn't handle the 1G xD card, and the newer Targus USB 2.0 14 in one Card Reader reads the 1 G xD but not the 4G SD. I have to hook the camera to the computer directly. So I don't have any answers except to ask about a return policy and bring it home for a test.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

The key to finding a reader that will work with my cards seems to be "SDHC." Once I searched on "card reader SDHC" I was able to find what I was looking for, which I have now ordered.

In the meantime, I can read and write the SDHC cards with the mini-laptop; it just adds an extra step to the process. I am putting some pictures on one of the 4G cards so I can see if my TV can read them, and if so what they look like. I'm not sure why anybody would want to show normal-size photos on a 42" screen, but I'm curious to see if I can.

Re: Tiger direct

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Tiger Direct did turn out to be a good source; thank you.