Over the years, manufacturers have come out with more and more flash memory formats, and none of them are any better than the others. SmartMedia, CompactFlash, Secure Digital (SD), MiniSD, xD, and all the different flavors of Sony's Memory Stick (Pro, Duo, etc...). The worst are xD, and Memory Stick, because they cost so much more per megabyte and offer no advantage. It's just a way for them to make more money. Sony leverages it's market share in a wide variety of electronic devices to promote its own memory format and charges a premium for its memory. If you have a PSP, Sony Digital Camera, or Sony laptop, you'll probably be buying a Sony Memory Stick at some point. Their memory of course doesn't work in any other brand's devices so you'd have to buy more flash memory for your other devices to accommodate the different formats.
Recently, the microSD format of flash memory is taking off and for good reason. It's small, the capacities are equal to the other formats, and the prices are comparable to the other formats (and much cheaper than memory stick, or xD). I came across this adapter called the PhotoFast cr-5300, which is a $10 device that you can put a microSD card in, and use in Memory Stick Pro Duo devices. Why would you want to do that? Well, simply put, it's much cheaper to buy microSD. Plus you get the added benefit of unifying your memory. I have a camera that uses SD and a PSP that uses Memory Stick. Now I can just buy microSD memory and use it in both. microSD to SD adapters are everywhere and now with the Memory Stick adapter, I think microSD is the most versatile format.
The other good thing about microSD is its size. They are tiny, and I also use a 2 gig microSD USB key drive for carrying around and transferring files from computer to computer. 8 gig cards are available and hopefully a 16 gig microSD card will be released. The only problem I see with microSD is that at 11mm x 15mm x 1mm, they might be easy to lose. But I can live with that! I think it's a wonderful format and hopefully manufacturers will consolidate and standardize their products on this format so we don't have to waste any more time and energy on the insane number competing flash memory formats.
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