$5 Micro SD Cards

Amazing how cheap memory has become. I remember paying $400 for an 8-Gb Compact Flash card for my camera way back when.

I've paid that for faster cards, usually getting an adapter or even a microSD USB device in the deal by watching for sales at Tmart and One Sale a Day. (Don't see any deals at the moment though. Currently Tmart has a 8G microSD with SD adapter and a USB flash holder for $5.33, but no speed is given.) And I don't have to deal with the electronic bay of thieves.

My first PC had a 40mb hd, and 1meg of memory and that was an upgrade. Within a few months I ran out of hd space and paid $160 for a 40mb hd. Used 5-1/4 floppies and 3-1/2 disks. It all ran on MSDOS 3.0 (?).

The entire unit with 14" monitor ran me about $1300. Look what you can get for that now.

Lots of changes in 20 years.

The adapter is included.

13 years and almost 500 transactions have had but one deal that went sideways and less than 1% return for quality.

whoppppeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I'm retired from IBM, and I bought my first IBM PC through the IBM Employee Purchase Plan back in '82. If memory serves (and that's iffy), I paid $2,400, ($2,400 in 1982 dollars!) for a two floppy PC (a one floppy PC was available but I opted for the two drive model); no graphics, of course; and 256KB? of RAM memory. And I was tickled pink to have it. I became quite the BASIC coder back in the day. Happy trails to you.

Phil

I bought my first computer on the "grey market" in 1985 for $3500 and it was considered to be a real bargain at the time. An IBM XT with 20 MB hard drive, 640K memory, DOS 2.1, AST 6 pack card, 2400 baud modem, Amdek monochrome (gold on black) graphics monitor and a dot-matrix Proprinter (remember those?) The main programs I used were Visicalc, Word Perfect and Microsoft Basic compiler (not mentioning Liesure Suit Larry ). I did tons of programming on that machine and made a good deal of money selling my software. I sold it in 1995 for $200 and it still worked perfectly. Ahhhh! the memories.

Anyone remember those? I didn't list this as my first, but it really was. Don't recall if I had the gold or green display or the specs, but I thought I really got a good deal @ $600. Sold it a year later for the same, then bought the one first mentioned. I'm not so sure that it wasn't an AMD processor, but that may have been the next. After that I put together my own - case, graphics, sound, memory and all the rest. Did that for a few friends though the years, too. Last one built was the one I still use - AMD 3000 XP platform. Still running great. 3 years ago bought us each a netbook. Little slow at times, but keeps us in the same room

Nice but you weren't livin' if you didn't start on a Commodore 64!

with the cassette tape drive storage...

How about a Commodore 64 with the tape drive storage? Even better, how about paying $70 to have the Commodore 64 repaired after one of its chips failed?

Fun times. Sometimes I miss those days.

My 1st computer was a Vic 20 with the cassette tape drive, and even a thermal paper printer that was 4" in wide!!

I got a mag with all the programs to type in and save on the tape drive.. woo-woo.. And would you belive I still have the system and works to this day (all those cartriges too)

You guys all started out really fancy.
My first "computer" ??? was a Timex-Sinclair. Had a touchkeypad, hooked up to a B/W TV and used any regular cassete drive to load programs. Wait 20 minutes hoping for it to load and it came up as "Did not load"!

I think this was in 1986.

"My" first computer was actually owned by the Navy and was a UDT or Univac Digital Trainer. Had all of 256 16 bit words (512 bytes) of core memory and used actual registers for input. You could input a short routine allowing the machine to read a paper tape from a Frieden Flex-o-writer in 1967. From their I went to a Univac 1218-33 which had 12K of core memory and interfaced to a 4 deck reel-to-reel tape drive, an ASR-33 teletype, a line printer that could spit out 300 Lines of 120 characters per minute and a CRPI. That was a combination Card Reader, Punch and Interpreter for all those 80 column punch card we kept supply inventories on.

I remember the first "kit" computers coming on the market by ALTAIR in 75 or 76. I was managing the branch office for a mini manufacturer at the time. By then we had gone from teletype/typewriter consoles to CRT. The Radio Shack TRS-80 came out in '77 in a package that was very similar to the first Macintosh computers 10 years later.

Oh, we used "cartridge" disk drives by Diablo Systems. Those had a 10" platter that stored 2.5 Mb.

Christmas 1981 Toys R Us had a sale on a Texas Instruments (not TI-99) unit that you hooked up to your TV. Basically, nothing more than a keyboard as I recall. Price was good - $50 after my wife's employee discount. You had to program in Basic whatever you wanted to do. It was a bit frustrating and not user friendly, for me anyway.

Start on a Commodore 64???

I didn't start on a Commodore 64. I did have a Commodore 64, in fact had several of them. Wrote a Forth interpreter for mine. But I had several computers before that, including a Vic 20, a Fairchild F8, a number of S100 bus systems including North Star, some South West Technical Products computers, and my first computer, a PDP-11.

You young whipper-snappers who think you got an early start because you had a C64 just don't get it. You missed the joys of toggling in programs on the lights and switches, and of interfacing up an ASR-33 teletype to your computer.

$ 5.03 plus $ 1.50 shipping is not such a hot deal. I can buy a 8 GB LEXAR locally for $5.00 and a 32 GB for $ 20.00.

Free marketing. hmmm...

My wife having a typing service, and the day she finally gave me 4 hours to install a hard drive in her Leading Edge Model "D" computer. She got up earlier and got her work done (2x 5.25" floppies), then I tore in and installed a whopping 20Mb hard drive card (Controller & Drive) and loaded DOS, a Menu program, her database and word processor program, and a couple utilities... and configured the menu program to work with the other programs....

It took 4.5 hours, and she was quite perturbed with me, because she had picked up work, and there I was, slowing her down....

But once she saw the speed savings of the hard drive over floppy program speed..... She was happy!!

... when it comes time to load the latest LM update or a 3GB OSM into your Oregon? ... and when a SanDisk Ultra 16GB MicroSDHC Class 10 UHS can be had for $10.99 on Amazon?

I also started with a Timex Sinclair. I think it was a TS-1000, although it's been so long I don't remember any more. I got it in the very early 80's, I'm thinking 1982 or so.

Shipping is FREE and NO gas. Do you pay sales Tax?

We all have out favorite places to shop and often tax and gas don't play a big part. The main thing is that you get what your think is a good deal and are satisfied with.

I need a few of those.

TS-1000 but I got the thermal printer & 1K memory module. ah, memories!

Back to the days the whole system had less memory than just the cache memory on today's CPU.

Amen

Before you jump on "deal" make sure it is what you need. Class 4 is older, slower card. If you put map on it it may slow down GPS operation. I you put it into smartphone it may be good as storage, but it will suck if you put on it programs and try to run them. Same with taking pictures or recording video.

In conclusion: before you buy card check what you really need. Not only capacity but read/write speed as well.

was my first "laptop", was programming on an Apple IIE, all around 82'.

I appreciate you posting that.

Commodore 64?!?! You were into new hardware. My high school had Commodore PET computers with external cassette players. Still I learned programming on an even older PDP-11.

now if only the cost of gas would follow suit.

I picked up a few Kingston 32 GB Class 10 from Dell last month for $12 with discounts. Used those to replace many (not all) of my 8 GB cards which I now rotate trough all my Garmin's.

Great deal for the * GB, there are deals out there...

Started with a Coleco Adam then a VIC 20 with dataset, then the C=64. Commodore 128 and so on...

The class ratings on SD cards refer to the write speed of the card, not the read speed which is always faster. Granted, a card rated at Class 4 guarantees only a 4MB per second write speed, but then how often do you put new maps on the card? Once a quarter transfers may not be worth the extra couple of minutes to most people, but then it could be to others. The class ratings are more important for those applications such as photography where the transfer speed can affect the time between shots in a sequence a photographer wants to capture.

Sandisk

http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=xs_gb_l-1_0942_21277ed2?ie=UTF8&...

I remember buying a 32gb MicroSDHC Class 10 for $75 about two years back. Now $15? Geez.

Two years back? Well, you simply overpaid. I expect that if you looked around you could still find someone willing to sell you that card for that same price now. But two years ago the price had already come well down, I got a 32 gig microSD card for about $15 just about 2 years ago.

Thanks for the tip

Thanks!! I'll be buying several

I use different types of sd cards depending for what I'll be using it with.

The gurus around here have stated that a class 4 card is sufficient when using a GPS device & I totally agree with them.

If on the other hand you want to efficiently record high resolution picture/video footage with your camera then a superior class is recommended.

Not all sd cards that have a class 10 rating are the same nor give the same result & some are better than others.

Three examples from the same company with different ratings and pricing:

1- SanDisk Extreme® SDHC™ UHS-I card class 10

Read/Write speeds up to 45MB/s

http://www.sandisk.com/products/memory-cards/sd/extreme-uhs-...

2- SanDisk Extreme® PLUS SDHC™ UHS-I card class 10

Performance/speed: Up to 80MB/s** read speed; up to 60MB/s** write speed

http://www.sandisk.com/products/memory-cards/sd/extremeplus/...

3- SanDisk Extreme Pro® SDHC™ UHS-I Memory Card class 10

Delivers up to 90MB/s**write and 95MB/s read rate for extreme speed.

http://www.sandisk.com/products/memory-cards/sd/extremepro-s...

Choose your card according to what you'll be using it for and don't just look at the class rating when purchasing, there's a little more to it than that.

Cheers

@canuk
Thanks for your post. I did not know that all 10s are not equal. This is particularly true in other instances LOL.

You're right, a couple years ago when I was shopping for a few SD cards of varying sizes (8, 16, and 32gb), and varying classes (4, 6, and 10); I tested their performance and the results were very interesting.

Same size, same class, different manufacturer = different results.
Different size, same class, same or different manufacturer = different results.
And the results are not always what the manufacturer claims, usually lower.

For those who may want to test their cards, I use "Crystal Disk Mark", it's a free program, just google it.

Does anyone know how fast these GPS devices can actually access these cards? What I mean is if the device can only go as fast as let's say class 4, then way would I want to spend the extra money (no matter how little) for the faster speed memory.

I saw this deal earlier and ordered two of the Sandisk Extreme 45/45 32 GB Micro SD for 20.99 each. No need for these high end cards in my Garmin devices, so I will use one in my Galaxy Note 8.0 tablet and the other in my Casio camera. Will then filter the replaced cards down to other devices(phone, picture frame, Garmin Oregon, nuvi's) and retire a couple of my old 2 or 4 GB cards.

By today's standards, the IT Nasa used in the Apollo manned lunar programme is pretty basic. But while they were no more powerful than a pocket calculator, these ingenious computer systems were able to guide astronauts across 356,000 km of space from the Earth to the Moon and return them safely.

http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Apollo-11-The-computer...

Class 4 is more than enough for the current Garmin GPS models.

Because you might not always use the card in the device that you are buying it for now, and because the slower rating might reflect lower quality in other areas too. I do agree with those saying that higher speeds like class 10 are of major importance for cameras and video applications (even cell phone cameras). But the truth is that there are a lot of very low quality cards out there. And the Chinese ship out a lot with marginal memory and marginal specs, sometimes with counterfeit markings saying the devices are name brands. I'll leave it to you to decide if expensive name brand or Chinese counterfeit products are more likely to be on the electronic bay of thieves. But if you can buy a better product for pennies more, or even the same price, then you would be best off buying the product that is better quality. While you might figure that the card is fast enough for your current GPS receiver, next year you might have a new receiver with a new 32 gig card in it, and you could find yourself looking around for a card to stick in a cell phone. At that point having paid two cents more for a faster card that is still able to retain data might not seem like it was a foolish choice.

And the question should be "why pay more" rather than "way pay more".

Nowhere can I find what the actual SD card read\write speed capabilities are on later Nuvi models. They do use USB2 speed.
Older models like the 3XX and 6XX series are slow since they use USB1.

Whatever class SD card you're using it will be restricted to the Nuvi's SD card read\write limitations.
Thus a class 10 card would in fact be a waste of money since the Nuvi can't perform at that level.
It will work but at a reduced speed to conform with the Nuvi's limitations.

The only advantage I see if using a faster class speed is writing to the SD card using a CARD READER that can write to SD cards at a higher speed than 4. This poses a problem since when updating maps the SD card must be in the Nuvi for the download and restricted to the lower write speed.

The only method and advantage to downloading maps faster is to have a faster speed SD card such as a 6 or 10 and place it in a card reader.
Then you would have to use member alandb's cloning method to trick Garmin into thinking the SD card is the Nuvi. It should install the map faster than trying to update the map using an SD card inserted into the Nuvi and updating the map.

Here is the link for the cloning method:
http://www.poi-factory.com/node/39231

To summarize, in my opinion, the only reason to use a higher class card than 4 would be using the Cloning Method to get it to write faster for map downloads or for transferring large files with the use of a card reader.

Then it must have been longer. I know it was awhile back so perhaps four. All in all, they are all coming down in price.

As others have stated you have to be careful where you'll be buying for example your next sd card or toy and personally a seller on the internet from China spooks me somewhat.

Here's what I do.

1- Go to the Best Buy website and look at the Lowest Price Guarantee criteria. I'm linking the Canadian site as an example

http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/help/lowest-price-guarantee/hc10...

2- Surf a little on the internet to try and find the lowest price possible on another website. It doesn't really matter if you trust the site or not the goal is to get the cheapest possible price.

3- Call Best Buy, provide the website where you found it cheaper and they'll match their price + give you 10% on the difference.

Here's a visual example:

SanDisk Extreme Pro 8GB 95MB/s SDHC Memory Card is sold by Best Buy at 44.95$

http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/sandisk-sandisk-extreme-...

SanDisk Extreme Pro 8GB 95MB/s SDHC Memory Card is sold at the following website for 20.05$

http://www.shoprbc.com/ca/shop/product_details.php?pid=10185...

(At the bottom left hand side of the page it's also marked free local pick-up)

Now 44.95$ - 20.05$ = A difference of 24.90$

10% of 24.90$ = 2.49$

Best Buy will then sell you the sd card at 20.05$ - 2.49$ for a grand total of 17.56$ and then of course you have to pay the taxes on the 17.56$

I've done this several times and it works like a charm. I'll keep the other websites I've found that meet Best Buys criteria for future comparisons and purchases. Best Buy isn't doing that well neither so if you do your homework they'll definitely want to make the sale.

You get what your looking for at an excellent price from a reliable retailer thus the product you've just purchased is also 100% authentic.

Cheers

Who remembers low level formatting and interleaving a 5 or 10MB MFM or RLL disk?

Debug> g=c800:5

I bet not many today will remember that one. I once had a smart-alec young Windows 98 user tell me you could not low level format a hard disk, it would destroy whatever special markings had been laid down on it. I told him he only knew anything about IDE and later and had clearly never heard of MFM or RLL, which he then confirmed.

And how about 8" floppies? I used to use those programming HP-BASIC on an HP-9845 back in the days when vendor hardware techs really were hardware techs. They carried real tools and oscilloscopes and actually repaired hardware. I had a problem one time with one of the floppy drives intermittently faulty, the tech realigned the heads, but then I could not read the programs off the disk, and we foolishly only had the one copy, not having made a backup because the heads were misaligned. He adjusted it back out of alignment and managed to get it back to where it had been, we attached a second floppy drive and copied the programs to a good floppy, then he corrected the alignment, and we could copies again with two good floppy drives.

Some of us are really giving our age away now - that goes back to 30 years ago.