Viking 256 MB Secure Digital Flash Card (SD256M)

by Viking

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.1 x 1.4 inches ; 1.3 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00007IFMJ
• Item model number: SD256M
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (67 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: December 5, 2002

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Viking InterWorks' SD cards can be used in any device that requires the robust security features that this standard offers. The SD form factor represents the smallest,secure flash memory card in the consumer market today and is flexible for applications ranging from MP3 players to PDAs to digital cameras. Combined with low power draw and the highest capacities available, Viking SD cards are the best option available for taking your digital files with you anywhere.

Product Description

Five year replacement warranty and 30-day money-back guaranteeOptimized for use in PDAs MP3 players or digital camerasFast read and write speeds gives you the best performance from your PDA MP3 player or digital cameraHigh quality components guarantee steady performance and durabilityIndividually tested to ensure each product works the first time every time

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

313 of 329 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This card is ... just a card, October 16, 2003

By 

Julian Nam (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Viking 256 MB Secure Digital Flash Card (SD256M) (Personal Computers)

Some have complained that this is not a true 256 MB card because their equipment reads it as 230-240 MB. All 256 MB cards will show as less than 256 MB since part of the 256 MB is needed to store information so that the card will be readable. The same goes for hard drives in computers where a 40 GB drive will show as 38.9 GB or something like that.

Also, some cameras and PDAs have been known to have problems with certain SD cards. If this is the case, then a firmware upgrade to the equipment will often solve this problem.

As for this Viking card, it is a bit of a disappointment. Viking makes great Compact Flash cards so I tried this Secure Digital card, but as many have noted, it is an average performer at best. The sad thing is that most of the cheaper SD cards don't perform so hot. :( I've tried Lexar, Sandisk, and SimpleTech, and they all perform ... slow.

However, they now make high speed SD cards. You'll be much happier buying one that has at least an 8MB/sec transfer speed instead of this one which only has 2 MB/sec transfer speed. If the transfer speed isn't listed, look for terms like "High Speed" or "32x" or "Ultra II" which all indicate that they are high speed SD cards.

59 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Afraid it's true, March 19, 2003

By 

Sue Doe-Nim (Naperville, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Viking 256 MB Secure Digital Flash Card (SD256M) (Personal Computers)

I was not deterred by the previous reviewers' comments here; they mostly referred to shipping times being poor, not on the quality of the unit itself. The other critique was that it wasn't a full 256MB, which is true, but is also the case with all "256MB" SD cards.

Having had good experiences with Viking CF cards, I decided to chance it. Got my card quickly (from another reseller); unfortunately, the card was DOA (defective on arrival). Writing data to the card was extremely slow, and would generate many, MANY write errors when sending it large files. What's the point of getting a 256MB card if you can't write large files to it? So, I returned the Viking card and got a Lexar 256MB SD card instead & it works great.

Maybe I just got a rare, defective card, but I'm not brave enough to waste anymore time on it. So, though, I didn't agree with the previous reviewers' reasons for rating this card so low, they did get the ranking right.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not the fastest, but works reliably and well, February 1, 2005

By 

James M. Fitzwilliam "Pianist/Composer" (Staatsburg, NY, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Viking 256 MB Secure Digital Flash Card (SD256M) (Personal Computers)

I bought the Viking SD256 in November of 2003. It works perfectly with my Palm m500 and has been reliable all that time. (Speaking of the Palm, I have found that a utility such as Handmark's SuperUtility is very useful for manipulating files and folders on the external memory card, and copying items back and forth. The Palm's supplied software is, I think, a bit lacking in these functions.)

I bought my memory card to store eTexts to have with me as a portable reading library for my Palm. I currently have the complete works of Dickens, Poe, and Shakespeare, the complete poems of Dickinson, plus some Jane Austen, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, Lewis Carroll, Robert Louis Stevenson... etc. etc., and I still have plenty of room for more!

For reading eText files, the speed of this card is perfectly fine. Sometimes if I am loading a particularly large file -- such as David Copperfield or the King James Bible -- which was last left scrolled a good way through the document, it takes 5-10 seconds for Teal Doc to load the document and find the right location, but this is tolerable. Once the file is loaded, single-paging through while reading is not noticeably slower than with docs in the Palm's memory.

If I were doing it over again, I would probably get an Ultra II or other "fast" SD card just so the files would open a bit faster, but for my purposes I am quite satisfied with this Viking. You, dear reader, might wish to spend more for a faster SD card if you are going to be frequently transferring files to and from the card, or if you need more speed for your device (i.e. if your camera will have to wait longer between exposures if it is held up by a slower memory card, etc.)