Isolinear Chips? Not Quite, But Lots of Portable Storage!

On the "Star Trek" TV shows, someone's always sticking a little cartridge of some kind into a slot to retrieve information about an alien culture that's just killed off three redshirts and is about to declare war on the Federation.

A CompactFlash card is about 1.25" by 1.75", and about .125" thick. The larger capacity cards can hold one gigabyte, or about 1024 megabytes of data.

This is an incredibly far cry from my early computing days, when we could put about 200 kilobytes of data on a floppy disk. That's not quite as much as a single webpage on the Disney website. In comparison, one gigabyte is almost twice as much information as is found on the average CD-ROM. The average CD-ROM will hold about 650 megabytes of information, compared to the 1024 megabytes that the larger CompactFlash cards can hold.

CompactFlash is typically used for moving data like digital pictures from a camera to a computer - it's speedy, easy to use, and doubles not only as a transfer method, but as a storage facility for the images while they're in the camera.


The SanDisk CompactFlash Card Reader USB allows you to plug the CompactFlash card into a USB port, and mount it just like a floppy disk or hard disk.

As a Mac user, I see the CompactFlash card appear on my "desktop" just like I'd put in a CD-ROM or other removable media. I can copy the files directly from the CF card into my home directory, or I can use iPhoto to import the images from the CF card into my own "Photos" directory. Very easy, and very fast - especially when compared with cameras that require proprietary serial cables and software that limits the transfer methods.

I have several 64MB cards, which I use to take pictures with my HP PhotoSmart C200 - I can stuff over 110 "high resolution" photographs onto a single 64MB card, and with market prices running at about $28 for a 64MB card, $46 for a 128MB card, and $90 for a 256MB card, I don't have to worry much about running out of "film" on vacation.


The SanDisk CompactFlash Card Reader USB doesn't require any additional drivers when used under Mac OS X. In OS 8.x and 9, it'll require both a functioning USB port and the additional SanDisk driver.

I've not used the device under Windows at all yet.

Oddly, every once in a while I stick a card into the reader, and it fails to mount on the desktop. When this happens, I have to unplug the card reader from the USB port and plug it back in, at which time everything works just fine.

The Sandisk reader has no moving parts - no eject buttons, no levers, nothing. The card is simply inserted with finger pressure, and after you've dismounted the card from the Desktop, you just pull the card back out. In a world of tiny little pieces that break too easily, this is a nice feature.

CompactFlash is one of those amazing little things that you just can't live without once you've figured out what you can do with it. I can use the CompactFlash cards to move rather large amounts of data in my pocket, just by copying files onto the cards, and taking the reader with me.

Unlike some of the other memory formats (Sony's Memory Stick being one example) I've never damaged a CompactFlash card by inserting it into the reader. SmartMedia and Memory Stick devices just feel a little flimsier to me, I guess.