Compact Flash Cards

Few consumer electronics have grown as popular or as fast as digital cameras. As cameras grew smaller with every incarnation, digital pictures needed to be stored in smaller and smaller spaces. Memory cards filled that need, just like Overstock.com fills your need for quality discount electronics.

Among the first memory cards were Compact Flash cards (CF). First introduced in the early 1990s, there are now two types, called (not surprisingly) Type I and Type II. The differences between Compact Flash card types are minimal--most CF-compatible cameras can use both. However, the difference between a Compact Flash card and other memory cards is big! Each Compact Flash card has a controller chip inside, most other memory cards use a chip inside the host device. This means almost any older CF-compatible digital camera can use the newest and latest high-speed, high capacity Compact Flash cards. That's a real positive in these days of planned obsolescence.

So, how many pictures can a Compact Flash card hold? There are many factors: The camera's resolution (3MP vs. 6MP vs. 12MP); the digital picture file format (TIFF vs. JPEG) and so on. A 1GB card can hold as few as 200 digital photos or as many as 800 digital pictures. The good news is prices keep dropping (and all the faster at Overstock.com), so the high-capacity memory card you want is a much cheaper that it was last year.

Even more good news: so many consumer electronics use so many memory cards that memory card readers were created to allow people to plug into and read every common memory card in use. So, if you forgot to have a family conference and your relatives weren't as smart as you (they didn't buy Compact Flash cards and they didn't buy them at Overstock.com) don't gloat (much as you deserve to). Just get them a memory card reader and they can download your digital photos as easily as they download their own.