Your continuous restatement of false information does not make it true.
If you can afford the largest capacity SD, then you can afford multiple microSD's of the fastest speed.
A fist full of slow, low capacity microSD cards can never equal one top line SD card. You may want to swap tiny cards that you have to pinch between your skin and finger nail to pick up - but you would be in a minority.
Then there is the function follows form argument. This is a non-argument as the function lost has not been defined either.
They have been defined many times. You choose to ignore them.
Functions lost with microSD instead of SD:
1. Maximum per card capacity halved during one part of the product cycle and quartered during the other. In a few weeks SD will max at 256GB per card. It will be 8-12 months before microSD hits 128GB.
2. Maximum per card data transfer speed halved.
3. Time to market for equivalent sizes/speed delayed 18+ months.
4. Pandora/Computer/Prosumer Camera interchange.
5. microSD's inferior structure places data at risk any time you have to physically move it in or out of any device.
The preference of using one lage card that can be easily swapped between user devices has been mentioned often enough. Very little has been spoken about cost, capability, and size constraints other than to reaffirm that SD=microSD in terms of speed, the newest SD>microSD in terms of cost/capacity (it takes a moment for capacity size to trickle down to the microSD format) and that the P2 should just be made bigger because...
The only way to make any of that true is to use very selective and incompatible or time-shifted sources for your data. The ONLY time microSD and SD become equivalent in price per (insert metric) is when you're comparing the bottom of both product heaps. At that point you're dealing with comparing 36 month old SD tech to 18 month old microSD tech.
Let's look at actual computing devices that also have form/size constraints. Let's identify why those engineers, who likely voiced the same ideas or concerns as everyone else in this thread did, went with the storage solutions that they did. Why did they choose SD vs microSD and vice versa, and is it relevant to the P2? Overwhelmingly tablet PC manufacturers prefer microSD.
Overwhelmingly. Microsoft has even gotten into the microSD action with the
Surface. Why? Is it because the tablet PC user won't swap cards as often as the P2 user? Why does the P2 user have to swap cards at all if the P2 has a USB port? Are their computing needs less than ours? Do they need less memory space than we do?
Yes. They need less memory space than we do. They are making 'networked devices' where the OS is controlled by the manufacturer (or re-seller). Their applications are tiny - and insanely expensive per MB. They do not take on general computing tasks but rather shuffle those off to the cloud. They do not generally house media - they access it remotely over a pipe paid for in $/MB.
The Pandora - and hopefully the Pandora II - are general use computing devices. It is a replacement desktop in the palm of your hand. It needs more space, more speed and can do many many many more things than any phone, tablet or other controlled environment device could touch.
Is the argument that SD leads the larger capacity front now, just as relevant a year or more from now?
Yes - it will be. Just as it has been for the last 5 or so years. This is directly due to the physical volume constraints of the two devices and the physical size of the chips you can shove into them. microSD has a volume of around 1/3 that of SD - and has to wait until process reduction makes chips ~1/8th the physical volume before it can reach a given SD card's capacity. So long as both exist, SD will always be both twice the capacity and twice the speed or 8+ times the capacity and the same speed as micro SD of an equivalent technology process. Physics is as it is.
How much does it matter that an SD card is more easily handled when a usb cable is just as easily handled?
Irrelevant if you want to boot off of the fastest, highest capacity media available. I want the Pandora II to be able to boot and read/write data twice as fast as you seem to. You DO realize you're arguing for a slower device with a lower capacity right?
How many of us have a high speed camera that we need to swap back and forth the largest and fastest available SD cards with?
Anyone who has a modern dedicated camera or camcorder pretty much fits here.
It appears that the main reason why we need to use oversize cards
Oversize? You mean larger capacity faster cards?
issi because of a perception that microSD's are not fast enough (debunked)
Not debunked in the slightest term. Gee - if I look at this microSD card released last month it's just as fast as this other SD card that released a year and a half ago. That means they're the same right? It's a fool's argument.
and that microSD's are inferior because you can not pay $900 for a 256gb card just yet
Bleeding edge tech has always had bleeding edge prices. It's expensive because at it's time of release there will be only one company selling it - exclusivity. It will come down as the market adjusts.
(oh yeah and that microSD's are just too small to handle).
On that one we're in agreement, although you were being sarcastic. I'm a man with man hands. To manipulate microSD cards I literally have to pick them up between my finger nail and the skin underneath it or use tweezers. Those little things break if you look at them sideways. They're made to be inserted into the back of a phone - behind the back cover - and never removed for the life of the device. They're simply not built for repeated insertion/removal.
Currently it is harder to fit more memory into less space. That's why the capacity lag between the two formats exist. However as die/internal chip dimensions shrink, memory capacity increases. Smaller die sizes of the chip means that more chips per wafer can be
produced simutaneously, lowering the cost of the component.
So you understand what I stated above - that SD gets to be twice as fast and twice the capacity with a dual channel controller by using two of the exact same features that you'll find in a single microSD card.
This last relation lowers the cost of microSD chips faster than the cost of SD chips. SD chips are easier to make but there are fewer produced per wafer. The reverse is true for MicroSD because each die is smaller in size than the die size of SD memory.
Just when I start to think you get it - you prove me wrong.
Both card types use the same chips off of the same wafers using the same processes. SD simply has the volume to put a bit over twice as many of them in - and then stripe the set for speed.
Using the same process (lithography), SD will be twice the capacity (number of chips) and twice the speed (stripe over those chips) as microSD. It's that physics thing biting back again.
A recap from my perspective:
MicroSD offers the same functionality with lower end user cost although capacity appears to lag behind the newest SD cards. MicroSD also allows for size/form factor constraints adding space for more components and added functionality that wouldn't be present otherwise (unless you had a brick in mind or a 1980's era cellphone-Exaggeration!)
Per your examples, the user cost is only lower if you're willing to wait 36+ months for the tech to catch up with your wallet - bottom feeding the technical curve.
Nobody is asking for a brick. We also don't need something as small as a cell phone. Something in between with amazing capabilities - that's what we're after.
SD allows for higher capacity and higher costs associated with that capacity at the expense of form factor and reduced space for components or added functionality (unless you really didn't want, bluetooth, wi-fi, usb, micro hdmi, serial etc in something that looks like it is reasonably modern for a device coming out in the future.)
Nobody's talking about giving up the whistles for this. We're talking about retaining functionality we already have. It doesn't look good if the Pandora II can only have half the disk (card capacity) of the Pandora I. It doesn't look good if the Pandora II takes twice as long to load a photo collection as it takes the Pandora I. It doesn't look good if the Pandora II takes twice as long to load an emulator as it takes the Pandora I. It doesn't look good if the Pandora II has half the capacity for music libraries as the Pandora I.
microSD is ALL about sacrificing capability for aesthetics. Function following form.
We want our functionality back.
