I wrote a while back about the Concord Eye-Q 4060 4.0 Megapixel Digital Camera I bought over the Web. Today's Office Max ad in the paper shows the price even less than what I paid for it.

Oh, no!

But wait ... The past five months of use is worth $20 isn't it?

Prepping for the trip I've been weighing whether to take my usual 25-30 rolls of film -- and the costs of developing the film when I get back -- or taking the Concord. If I take the Concord, I need some SD memory to make up 25-30 rolls of film, which will be pricey itself.

What to do.

What to do.

The younger younger nibs worked at Wolf Camera the summer before last and had tales of people buying memory for their digital cameras that was the right sort and fit in the right slot but which wouldn't work with the digital camera they'd bought it for. To forestall that mistake, I hied myself over to Wolf Camera to see what they recommended for the Concord. Wolf recommended a 128MB or a 256MB card, so I decided to go 256MB max.

Knowing there was no time to send off for something over the Web, I nevertheless checked out prices to see what 256MB would cost and what the options were. Checking the WebKB and feeding in the amount of pictures I'd taken in Yunnan, I figured I'd need at least three 256MB cards, even factoring in that I'd be ditching pictures that didn't turn out as expected.

When I was at Costco on Thursday, I checked. Costco carried a SanDisk 256MB memory card priced at $46 -- loads more than other cards I'd seen FS over the Web. I ducked over to BestBuy next, where the SanDisk and PNY 256MB SD cards were both priced $54.99.

Yikes.

Take those $$$ times three.

Yikes. Yikes. Yikes.

The geeks were out of bed by then so it was too late in the day to hie over to Fry's Electronics and do battle. Instead, bright and early Friday I went to Fry's, stood in the obligatory line to talk to a sales staffer who checked the inventory to make sure my card was in and walked out with a Kingston 256MB SD card for something a bit less than $30 plus tax.

Brought it home. Figured I'd find the User Manual for the camera if I needed it. Figured the SD slot must be somewhere ... say maybe in where the batteries are kept. Popped open the battery station. There was the SD slot with a picture showing a square with a corner nipped off. Slipped in the SD card (with its nipped off corner) in the fashion indicated and voila! Alzasudden, instead of a possible n pictures to shoot, I had a possible nnn pictures to shoot, according to my camera. Took a handful. Deleted a couple.

Plug & Play. Can't get much simpler than that.

Next up ... going back to Fry's to get a couple more Kingstons.

Being a belt and suspenders sort, I'll also pack a couple disposable cameras on the off chance that something horrid happens to the camera or cards. Still rue the day that my camera battery faded out when I was at Carthage.

I'll also be packing extra rechargeable batteries, the battery recharger and the voltage converter setups and hope that we hit steady power often enough to keep the sets of batteries charged.

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:17 PM|| |