Obituary -- the demise of SmartMedia

[Sunny]

The SmartMedia format seems to be officially dead -- even the SmartMedia.org domain is now up for sale. See http://www.buydomains.com/home_premium.jsp?domain=smartmedia.org&pop=false

If you see a digital camera that still supports SmartMedia cards, then you’d better stay away – the card format is now dead and no new digital camera is produced that uses it anymore.

[Tapas]

Shaun,

That is a good find. This drives the last nail into the coffin. Besides with your workaround of using a SmartMedia adapter, there is no reason now to invest in a SmartMedia card. The xD memory cards are cheaper.

The SmartMedia format was limited by its physical dimensions. It was too thin which made it too fragile. It has a maximum capacity of 128MB. This is not much. The CF cards now come in 8GB versions, with SD soon to follow. Both CF and SD are much more durable and can survive a fall from 10 feet. And now we have the mini SD format.

I think it will do us good if SmartMedia goes the way of the dodo including the Sony Memory Sticks. CF, SD and SD mini is all that you need to address the entire spectrum of flash memory devices.

Tapas

[ds_1910]

Yamaha should now come out with an upgrade to Compact Flash or Memory Stick to be retro-fitted into the now obsolete Smartmedia Device Slot of the Yamaha CVP-300 series Clavinova.

Wishful thinking ....

[Martyn]

Shaun,

It looks to me that the domain smartmedia.org was not previously registered to anyone other than a domain trading company. See the Whois entry:- http://whois.worldsearch.com/smartmedia.org, which shows that smartmedia.org was first registered in 2004.

The official site for SmartMedia is in fact http://www.ssfdc.or.jp/english/ (SSFDC stands for Solid State Floppy Disk Card, SmartMedia's original name).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmartMedia tells us:-
"The format has been superseded by the smaller and higher capacity XD-Picture Card format. Nevertheless, major manufacturers continue to produce SmartMedia cards as of 2004 due to the large number of users."

So perhaps the dodo is not quite dead....

[Sunny]

SmartMedia is a newer (and better-known) name for SSFDC. If the SSFDC organization is serious about keeping the SmartMedia format alive (instead of hanging it on a life-support system), I'd imagine that they should have registered the domain name long ago (or at least grab the cyber-space real estate immediately now that the domain is up for sale).

Also, SmartMedia is a registered trademark. If someone has been cyber-squating the domain name bearing their trademark, wouldn't the organization have sued to boot the cyber-squatter off the domain or at least do something about it?

If they are doing neither of the above, at least the perception that it's dead is undisputed. Silence means consent.