SD Cards with USB Adapters are Affordable Now

While SD Cards are cool, SD cards with built in USB adapters are even cooler.

I'm a big SD card user, with SD memory in my Palm Treo 700p, my Canon SD800 point and shoot camera, and my Panasonic camcorder (for photos, not video). Standardizing on this one popular memory format has allowed for great publishing flexibility. For example, I can take a photo with my digital camera, then stick the SD card from the camera into my Treo, and upload it to my Flickr account (and from their to my blog) using the Treo's email program. It converts the subject line of the email into the Flickr photo's title (and blog post title if you use that feature) and the email's body into the Flickr photo's description (or blog post's body).

But what if I want to transfer a lot of photos from my camera to Flickr? For that, I need to get the photos onto my computer first, and from there to Flickr using an uploader. MacBook Pro computers don't have a built in SD card reader like some PCs have, so I was forced to carry around a card reader to do the transfers (or I could carry around the camera's USB cable, that that's even bigger).

My preferred card reader is the Kingston TravelLite because it's small and cheap - around $8 on Amazon as of this writing.

However, there is no longer a need for card readers like this, since you can buy SD cards with USB jacks built right into them, including the two OCZ and Sandisk Ultra II models below.

I picked up this OCZ 1GB SD card with USB adapter at Fry's in San Jose for $29.99 last month. It's also available in a 2GB version for $44.95. The USB adapter is accessed by removing a small shield from the back end of the chip. Unfortunately, you have to remove a small shield from the chip, which means you'll eventually lose it if you're anything like me.

SanDisk offers a similar chip with a superior design where the back end of the chip is folded back to reveal the USB adapter:

This has been out for a bit over a year now, but started at around $109, which seemed a bit steep. Now it's down to $36.99 on Amazon for the 2GB model, making non-USB enabled SD cards obsolete, in my opinion.

Here is an example of how it's converted from SD to USB mode:

And here is Edge Memory's answer to integrated USB adapter SD card:

While I haven't used this model, I'm clearly not a fan for the same reason I'm not a fan of the OCZ: removable parts to lose.

With USB adapter integrated SD cards under $40, where is the market for non-adapter models?

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