[mikhael]

Originally posted by Sandwich
Mind clarifying that statement with some particulars?

Two huge, immense, gigantic ones come to mind. One is surmountable, the other is not.

Sony's mindbogglingly bad technical support (demonstrated thoroughly every time I have to order replacement parts for clients on the breakage prone VAIO laptop line). They can fix. They used to have good technical and customer support.

The Sony lock-in. They can't fix this because it goes against the core principles of the Sony Consumer Electronics division. MagicGate/Sony Memory Stick is incompatible with any non-Sony camera, laptop, etc. SD, CF and microdrives are used on many different devices, including most PDAs, laptops and desktop computers. This is the same reason I don't touch anything that uses XD.

[Flipside]

I want to get a Minolta 7D, if I can ever afford it...

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0409/04091504km7d.asp

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by mikhael

Two huge, immense, gigantic ones come to mind. One is surmountable, the other is not.

Sony's mindbogglingly bad technical support (demonstrated thoroughly every time I have to order replacement parts for clients on the breakage prone VAIO laptop line). They can fix. They used to have good technical and customer support.

The Sony lock-in. They can't fix this because it goes against the core principles of the Sony Consumer Electronics division. MagicGate/Sony Memory Stick is incompatible with any non-Sony camera, laptop, etc. SD, CF and microdrives are used on many different devices, including most PDAs, laptops and desktop computers. This is the same reason I don't touch anything that uses XD.

Tech support - or lack thereof - I grant you. But Sony, in their more recent line of prosumer and professional cameras, has included CF (sometimes just type 1, other times both type 1 & 2) slots in addition to the Memory Schtick.

[mikhael]

Gotta have both, Mike. And I shouldn't have to go to the prosumer lines to get to standardized, non-Sony interfaces.

[Fineus]

In my opinion they (Digital Camera companies such as Sony, Canon, Nikon and Minolta) should force everyone into just one single form of data storage before it's too late. The division only causes problems for compatability and as time goes by this problem is only going to get harder to steer out of as more people put their money into one storage medium or another.

[Grey Wolf]

Good luck with that.

[vyper]

Compact Flash FTW.

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Kalfireth
In my opinion they (Digital Camera companies such as Sony, Canon, Nikon and Minolta) should force everyone into just one single form of data storage before it's too late. The division only causes problems for compatability and as time goes by this problem is only going to get harder to steer out of as more people put their money into one storage medium or another.

Won't happen. To quote the yellow book, "Standards are great. There are so many to choose from." There's no real problem with compatibility because the formats exist--for most people--to get the data from a portable device to a PC. The only compatibility problem is when my PDA can't use the same memory device as my camera and that's only a problem for me, not the maker of my camera or my PDA. Sony builds its entire consumer electronics strategy around exactly that sort of lock in. That's why everything from the Vaio laptop to Sony's DV cameras to Sony's digital snapshot cameras to their MP3 players uses Memory Stick/Magic Gate instead of one of the more universally accepted formats. Even so, media readers are painfully cheap: you can get an 10-in-1 reader that covers pretty much every format for under $25.

Even considering all that, I still won't buy a device that is built around the idea of lock in.

[Gortef]

Ach the LCD screen on the first post of this topic looks fantastic. Only thing is that if one starts to use such a camera I wonder how many thumb-marks will that screen contain after a while

[Sandwich]

There's a tipping point reached when the size of any given device is no longer limited by the technology, but by the human interface. In this example, cameras used to be built around the lens and the roll of film. With current technology, I think we're at the point where such elements (lens and sensor in digicams) are no longer the deciding factor in the size of the camera - the screen and buttons are. Until those are made to be collapsible somehow, I don't see cameras getting any smaller.

[Flipside]

Or at least until we get holographics cameras that project little 3D images of what it is about to photograph

[Sandwich]

Eventually, it'll get to the point where it will project a glowing border on the objects themselves in the photo.