I gave my spare 2GB SD card to my daughter last night to put into her OLPC XO. The SD card showed up right away and was usable from applications such as the word processor. I’m not sure how Fedora generated the card name (model number?). But, it was definitely not user friendly (e.g., /media/flash). In any case, I wanted to get another spare SD card in case one failed in my Pocket PC or an older camera (that doesn’t use SDHC cards). So, with coupon in hand, I head over to Costco this evening and picked up an empty card to take to the cashier. The coupon dropped the price $10 to $30. This was an ok price, but not great for a 2GB card. Then, when I received the real package from the Costco runner, I noticed it was a twin-pack. $15 for each 2GB SanDisk Ultra II SD card. Now, that was pretty good and I didn’t have to wait for it to be delivered.
It has been amazing to watch prices drop while capacities increased over just the past few years. It wasn’t too long ago when 128MB SD cards were considered large and with relatively large prices too. The huge demand and success of the Eee PC (and to a lesser extend the OLPC) shows that inexpensive computers with small flash based storage devices (compared to hard disk) can be a hit. I’m still waiting for for the Asus Eee PC 8G (1GB system RAM, 8GB storage flash RAM) to become available before buying one for myself. And, I am definitely interested to learn what Apple announces at Macworld next week. Fingers crossed that the rumored subnotebook flash-based device is reasonably priced (under $1500).