Sdxc

So what in the world can the SDXC slot be used for other than for extra portable storage (which I don't need)?

 

It's the same SD Card slot as before, except it now also supports SDXC SD Cards, that can have higher capacity.

 

Haven't found a use for the SD card slot either

Any way it can be used for some other function, the way an expresscard slot can be used with an external soundcard or esata adapter?

 

a lot of cameras use SD cards... thats the primary use of them as far as I've seen, but you can use them for any storage needs.

 

I would have much rather seen the slot modified to have the inserted card flush with the body, than upping the capacity capability.

Wasupwidat?

 

Hate to say this, but your cat's breaking into your computer.

 

It's hunting for the mouse.

 

Imagine scenario: A female friend has some "juicy" photos she really wants to show you. She takes out the SD Card from her camera and gives it to you.

There, a use case for SD Card slot.

 

can anyone tell me whats the speed of sdxc? i heard it something like 5x times SLOWER then hdd, is it correct?

 

There are two types of SD standards for SDXC cards: SD 3.0 and SD 4.0. SD 3.0 still enforces the use of FAT32 so capacities are limited to 32GB but transfer speeds are up to 832Mbps (which I believe is faster than any SDHC class card). SD 4.0 is either already out now or it should be coming out soon (it was supposed to be released in Spring 2010). It specifies the use of the exFAT file system so capacities are going to drastically increase (along with prices) and transfer speeds should be around 2.4Gbps.

So SDXC transfer speeds are slower than 3Gbps SATA with SD 4.0 specified cards and readers trailing behind by not that much. Their transfer speeds are still extremely fast for such little cards with small, wafer thin connections. Then again, SD cards were never meant to replace full on hard drives or SSD drives so 2.4Gbps is pretty damn fast when just transferring/reading photos and HD videos taken with digital cameras (even high end DSLR models).

 

My thinking behind this is — can i actually put windows or mac os on sdxc and boot+work from it? (i mean i know that i can but is it fast enough?) That would be really cool for different purpose — be it testing new lion OS or playing games under win7.

That looks easier then replacing optical drive with SSD for same results.
So my question is this — will i notice slow speed in games and applications if i happen to boot from sdxc? Those are really cheap too, i am tempted to try.

p.s. another question about solving the same task — will i notice a speed decrease if i do the same under firewire 800 with external hdd?

 

So assuming both OSX and Windows can read and write to exFAT, then can the SDXC card could serve as a makeshift shared drive that's not limited to 4GB(e.g. a place to store music and videos accessible by both OSX and Boot Camp)?

 

I assume you could use an SDXC card as an alternate form of SSD storage, I did that with my HP netbook with just a 32GB SDHC card. I didn't notice a performance decrease as that entire system was throttled down by the lowly Atom processor in it. You may notice a slowdown if you want to do something such as playing games or running programs right off of the card (I would think so). It would be fine for playing back audio and video content though. One aspect that you have to think about is pricing. Right now, a 64GB SDXC card is around $200 for one that just fits SD 3.0 standards with a maximum transfer rate of 50 MB/s (not the standard but the card). Most other 64GB SDXC cards have transfer speeds of around 15-20 MB/s. There isn't anything higher than 64GB available to the end-consumer either (that will change but higher capacity cards will definitely cost more.

Also, it should be usable as a shared drive so long as Apple supplies Windows drivers to properly use the card. The file system of the SDXC card is something that works with Windows and, if Apple releases drivers for it, the slot will work the same as any other SDXC card slot on any other notebook.

 

That sounds fine to me since I don't have very much music--so whatever the smallest size is would work for me. At least I won't have to duplicate my itunes library any more!