SanDisk Bringing out Wi-Fi SD Card for Zire 71

[Ed Hardy]

SanDisk has revealed to Brighthand its plans to release a Wi-Fi SD card for the Zire 71. This company also gives an explanation why this card can't be used with any other palmOne models.

Read more at http://www.brighthand.com/article/Sa...rd_for_Zire_71

[Mike Cane]

SanDisk would like to make this card compatible with other palmOne models, but it isn't getting the co-operation it needs. The Zire 72 and Tungsten T3 need to have a system patch applied before their SD slots can use this card. According to SanDisk, palmOne won't publicly release this. Instead, the patch will be built into the driver that palmOne will release with its Wi-Fi SD card, which is expected to be available soon. This patch isn't something SanDisk can develop itself, which means that the only option for Wi-Fi SD cards for the Zire 72 and Tungsten T3 is the one palmOne itself will sell.

I have just one thing to say about this:

Mr. Colligan, tear down this wall!

[George Mitchell]

When sandisk says "Soon" it basically means in about a year. They said soon on a generic card for palm OS, Still we have no card.

[imported_michaelp]

SanDisk promises to try to make versions of all of its SD products compatible with as many palmOne products as possible. However, it says the lack of support from palmOne makes this difficult.

Is PalmOne trying to kill itself? Who would buy a normal WiFi SD card when they could get one with 256mb? That just creates another reason why I will (most likely) never go Palm.

[sublime]

Yea, that does it. Palmone is no longer getting my support. This is ridiculous.

[imported_UHF]

More lost business.

[imported_jae]

... and naturally the Zire 71 lacks bluetooth (unlike the 72 + many other Palms), so it will still not be possible to have Wifi+Bluetooth in a single Palm device (with the exception of the Clie UX-50)

[rsc1000]

well - i'm not going to say this 'does it' for me as far as palmOne goes - but its still pretty crappy. so the t3 and Z72 can't get this patch - but the older Z71 doesn't need the patch. Where is the problem exactly? it must be a hardware driver implementation issue for the newer xscale based devices? or is it an issue of the SDIO drivers with newer version of the OS? either way - can't they also make this available for the T1 or T2 since these use older versions of Palm OS (like the z71 does) and are OMAP based like (also like the Z71)? or is there another issue? Is it perhaps specific to the driver for the type of components used for the SDIO slot itself maybe? i want answers palmOne!

[rsc1000]

further - the t2 is exactly the same processor as the z71 and and has the exact version of the os - why no t2 support?

[imported_palmhiker]

Who could possibly make reasonable use of this, considering the Z71's puny 16 MB of RAM? (I have one, and using ZLauncher to run most apps. off the card, I have 4 MB free.)