While the capacities of CompactFlash, SD, and SmartMedia cards grow,
Sony seems to be slow to go beyond 128 Mb.

When should we expect 256 Mb or larger Sony Memory Sticks to be
released in the United States?

excelguru,

What a great question!  However, the answer is imprecise.

The release date for the 256 MB Sony Memory Stick, per Sony , is 2002!
 There remain just over two months in the year 2002, so, if their
dates are accurate, you have just a few months to wait! I have noticed
that electronic/computer companies like to release new products around
the holidays, so perhaps we will see the 256 memory sticks in stores
around Christmas. Don’t forget to check!

From the Sony site itself: The  256 MB memory stick should be
available in 2002, and the 1 gigabyte stick should be available in
2003 !
http://www.sonysemiconductor.co.uk/show_news.asp?NewsType=4&NewsItem=59

This site states the sticks will appear within 2 years.

http://www.steves-digicams.com/flash_memory.html


According to this Memory Stick chart, they should be available this
year!

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0208/02082801memorysticknews.asp

About the memory stick:
http://www.ita.sel.sony.com/memorystick/magicgate.html

Good luck!

If any part of my answer is not clear, please ask for an Answer
Clarification before rating.
Regards,
crabcakes

---

Clarification of Answer by crabcakes-ga on 08 Nov 2002 09:09 PST

Thank you excelguru. Since some of my co-workers also use this form of
memory, I will be open to continue looking....if I ever see it, I'll
try to post the website here.
crabcakes

Thanks for the prompt and thorough answer.  It sounds like a very
unimportant question, but I needed the information to help me decide
if I should buy more sticks or wait for larger ones to come out. 
Based on your findings - I went for it and purchased two more 128 Mb
sticks.  Maybe I can get myself a 256 Mb stick for Christmas?

I have definitely seen a US based company's website selling 128 and
256 mb sony-compatible(but not sony)memory sticks.Sorry cannot
remember where.

katan,

  I too have seen a company _advertising_ 256 Mb memory sticks.  I was
very excited and went to visit their web site.  It turned out that
they were actually just selling TWO 128 Mb sticks.  It was very
deceptive!

-Ken

I hate to have to break the bad news, but it looks like 128 Mb is the
most we'll ever see for exisiting devices.  This article says that
Sony will support higher capacity sticks ONLY on newer devices:

http://news.com.com/2100-1040-977004.html?tag=fd_lede2_hed

I'm very disappointed.

The new format was just announced:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,817354,00.asp
http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=4837
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2003Jan/bpd20030110018101.htm

I'm still disappointed that the high capacities aren't compatible with
older devices but I understand why they did this.  Their news sticks
will offer much better performance.  Making them backwards compatible
might have reduced their capabilities.  Based on the spec these will
be able to max out at 32GB so it's not likely we'll be complaining
about incompatibilities for quite a long time.

And fortunately they also announced a dual stick (compatible with
existing devices) that will hold 256MB within two partitions of 128MB
each - selectable with a switch on the back of the card.  This will be
inconvenient but still better than having to carry two sticks.