Rating: Summary: Card died after 1 week Review: I used this card for about a week. I used it to store and listen to mp3 music. After about a week the card just died on me. I could not read from it or write to it. Could not format it with either my pocket pc or a usb card reader. I had to send it back for a refund. If you get a good one I suppose this would be a great value, but I'm hesitant getting another.
Rating: Summary: Slow. Review: I was baptized by fire on my learning curve of flash memory speed. My digital camera can take movies at 640x480 at 30 frames per second (about 1.2MB/sec), but forget about doing something like that with this product. To my memory, I could still take them at 15fps or 320x240 at at least 15fps and possibly 30fps too, which is fast enough for most people taking snapshots and uploading via a USB 1 connection, which is inherently limited at 1MB/sec anyway.
Amazon was great about the return, and I returned the kindness with a purchase of a Sandisk Ultra II ("40x") card, which even at 40x and a write-acceleration-enabled camera, isn't quite fast enough for me, but still loads faster than this one. I think Sandisk rates this card at 4x or 6x or something. I could take about 15sec of vga/30 movie before my camera buffer overflowed. I can take about about 60sec with the 40x Ultra II, continuous. Apparently the real-world write speed of my Ultra II in my camera (varies from cam to cam) is just below my camera's write speed requirements.
I personally am waiting for the retail release of the Seagate ST1 CF hard drive, a competitor to Hitachi's Microdrive. The ST1 will be in 2.5GB and 5GB format; an OEM 5-gigger is currently being used in the Rio Carbon MP3 player, and the 2.5GB is apparently used in Seagate's USB 2.0 portable storage solution, both available at Amazon. The Seagates seem to be a lot less fragile than the Hitachi's. Barring that, I'd consider the Lexar 80x card or anything by Lexar, for that matter, over Sandisk.
If you don't have a write-acceleration-capable camera, this may be the deal you were looking for, but I was surprised to see the number of reliability complaints here. This card probably ideal for portable media players. I doubt I'd trust it for a Pocket PC, though. Enthusiasts should look for another card, but cheapies might want to splurge. After reading my Sandisk warranty, by the way, I was not impressed. I don't remember why, I'm sorry, but there was a very real reason which could be found with research in forums. I don't think I would buy Sandisk now at all; Lexar seems to have better reliability, truer specs, and I think a better warranty policy.
Rating: Summary: Card Malfunction Review: I was given the Viking 1 GB CompactFlash card as a gift prior to a vacation. I put the card in my 5 MP Olympus Camedia C 5050 and was delighted to see 800+ available photos. Unfortunately, the card malfunctioned after I'd taken 600 vacation photos--with no hope of recovering those 600 photos. This was the first CompactFlash card malfunction I'd experienced in nearly three years of intensive flash card usage (cards from a variety of manufacturers, including Viking). On the other hand, my husband has used his own Viking 1 GB CF card for two months in a 3 MP Kodak DC 4800 (1000+ phots) and a 6MP Canon EOS 10D (400+ photos) with no problems to date. Unfortunately, I won't get my photos back. Caveat Emptor.
Rating: Summary: Great memory card for my Jornada 720 Palmtop! Review: I've been using Viking cards for a long time know. My first CF card was Kingston 16MB costing me about $60 in 2000. I then got a 32MB San Disk card for like $40 in 2002. I then ditched SanDisk and Kingston and went to Viking in late 2002 and have been using them ever since. Well just last week bought this CF card for $88! Its amazing how cheap and how much disk space you get with these cards.
Viking has worked for me and is plenty fast for my needs. Sure since I do not work with video I may not notice the speed problems, but for what I do this card is great! I am going to transfer a ton of songs and photos over to my Jornada, know since I have the disk space! My PC laptop is running out of space, so this card could help free up some space a little.
Thanks Viking!
Rating: Summary: Works Great - I Will Buy Another 1 or 2 Review: If you need a faster card you will probably need to pay a premium. If you don't need the speed, then Viking may be your best buy.
I have been using Viking for over 2 years without complaint. I have 3-1GB and 2-512 MB Viking CF cards. I'll buy another 1 to 3 GBs of Viking cards as the price drops. I need more storage space.
I use a Canon A80 (only JPEGs), Canon D60 & Canon MkII. Never found CF card speed to be a problem for the A80 shooting JPEG. There are times that I need to wait 15 to 30 sec for the D60 memory to unload some of the 4 or 5 pictures just taken shooting RAW. Not many times though.
On the other hand the 1DMk2 has a large in camera memory buffer to hold pictures as it writes to the CF card. The Viking card has never been a limitation for the MKII.
Check your real needs. If you must have faster, then the Sandisk 1GB Ultra may be for you. I'll stick with Viking performance and save on cost.
Rating: Summary: expansion pack plus and Viking CF 1GB flash card Review: Just wanted to share my views. I'm using an Ipaq 5455 pocket pc and have added an expansion pack plus which has its own battery. I added the Viking 1 GB compact flash card and have had no problems whatsoever. I am watching movies and saving dictations and some pics and have never lost any data. I think it was a very good deal for me. I have read where some of the other folks are using it in certain digital cameras and have had problems,,so can't really comment on that. I want to also get an secure disk 512 MB Viking but seem overpriced.
Rating: Summary: Great Value. Educate Yourself Before You Buy Review: The fact of the matter is, at the time of writing this review, there is no better value (GB/$) than this 1 GB disk. It is not as fast as many that you can purchase, but even for me taking wedding photos, my on-camera cache is enough to compensate for that speed. For the average or even semi-professional photographer (unless your goal is to be taking many rapid-fire shots) even this slow speed should be more than enough.
Vikikng quality and their 5 year manufacturer's warranty make this card that much better of a value over the no-name cheap competition. However, in my 4-year experience with Viking, Sandisk, and no-name compact flash, Viking has actually had poorer performance than the no-namers. However, Viking has been true to their word to replace damaged or malfunctioning Compact Flash cards with a simple visit to their website to fill out a claim.
The card is not perfect. It may fail and you will be stuck with 1 Gig of corrupted imgaes. That could happen with any card that you purchase. The card is slower than some, but most of the cameras being sold today have at least a 4 picture cache which means you will rarely even notice the effects under normal shooting conditions. The card is not the cure-all for the digital storage world, but at the time of writing this review it was only about fifty-nine bucks making it the best value out there that I have seen, all this with no-cost shipping and no sales tax.
So take the plusses and the minusses into account and make your choice...unless you have very special needs that would necessitate a faster card, this will probably be what you should choose.
-Jacob Hantla
Rating: Summary: Card Errors, Service disapointment Review: The first time I used this card, it had card errors. 1 or 2 missing pictures. I reformatted it and kept using it without additional issues, but eventually it lost all my pictures on one shoot. I contacted Viking's 24/7 technical support, but they were closed, and I sent in the card for 24 hour replacement and received a replacement four business days later. Though I am in the market for another 1 gigabyte card, and the Viking is presently the best price. I will not buy it.
Rating: Summary: Great CF Card! Review: These cards offer a high build quality and great performance for the price! I highly reccomend them and have never had a problen with any of my Viking cards.
Rating: Summary: Viking drops the ball continued Review: This is my second comment on this card. I have recently found out that there are compatibility issues with some higher memory cards and certain cameras and manufacturers. Apparently the firmware version I have on my Olympus C-5050 is v77 and works poorly with higher capacity cards. Companies are still giving little info on this, but Viking's website says the CF1GB works on my camera...
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