It's come to this: 9-in-1 card readers.
The new EDGE Tech 9-in-1 Card Reader w/ xD Slot (US$24.95) uses a USB v1.x or v2 connection, and supports:
* xD-Picture Cards
* SD [secure digital] and MultiMedia Cards (MMC)
* Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, Memory Stick Duo
* SmartMedia
* CompactFlash Type I and Type II
But that's not good enough. Sony just announced a fourth and fifth standard for its Memory Sticks:
* Memory Stick PRO High Speed with a capacity of up to 2GB (US$700)
* Memory Stick PRO Duo High Speed with capacity of up to 1GB (US$350)
And then there is that memory card standard, the μcard [microcard] invented in Taiwan.
So, stand-by for the 12-in-1 card reader! In reality, several cards share pacakge and electrical characteristics, so the number of slots is just five.
As someone once wrote, "The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from."
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