SDXC cards are not cheap, but SanDisk's looking to alleviate the sticker shock by compromising on speed.
The company's first SDXC card stores 64 GB and writes at 15 MB per second. SanDisk also claims that the cards are shipping now, making them the first SDXC cards on the market. Previously, Panasonic and Toshiba said they'd be first with the new memory card format.
SanDisk's card will cost $350, a little more than twice the price of its 32 GB card in the last-gen SDHC format, though both transfer at the same speed. Panasonic's 64 GB card, by comparison, has 22 MB per second transfers, but will cost between $450 and $600. As Adobe's John Nack and John Peterson mockingly pointed out, gold is less expensive.
Of course, there's not much you can do with gold besides investing or fashioning it into jewelry. Right now, SDXC is mainly intended for videographers, who will need increasing amounts of storage for HD video, preferably at fast speeds. Eventually, the cards will be aimed at phones, televisions, Blu-ray players and computers, but I wouldn't expect to use SDXC for those devices until the cost comes down considerably.
When the SD Association unveiled the SDXC format a year ago, it said storage will eventually reach 2 TB per card. The association's also hoping for theoretical transfer speeds of 300 MB per second, but given that initial theoretical speeds were supposed to be 104 MB per second, there's a pretty big gap between theory and reality.
Keep in mind that in order to use SDXC, you need a device that supports the format. Manufacturers such as Canon are just now starting to release cameras and camcorders with SDXC slots, so it's unlikely the device you own will be able to take advantage. Still, you've got to start somewhere, and SanDisk has taken the first step.
