Altec Lansing Compact Flash CF 8 8 MB > Reviews > A useful little CF card

Author's product rating:   

Reliability	Good
Ease of use	Very easy
Value For Money	Good

Advantages:	Small, handy size, good for a few photos, or important data
Disadvantages:	Low capacity for modern cameras

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

CF cards have to be one of the most boring things to write about, and they are all much of a muchness in terms of manufacturing quality and durability, so I'll be brief.

Altec have a good reputation, as far as I am aware, for products like these - and of the dozen or so of the memory cards I have, none have had any problems.

An 8MB card will hold approx 8 hi-res photos from a decent digital camera. This is obviously not a lot, but if you were doing portraits of people, or a few quick shots of certain places, keeping them on distinct cards could have its advantages.

Furthermore, just because you mostly see these being used by cameras, doesn't mean you can't use them for other things. I carry some important data - encryption keys, email address books, and important documents on one. You can use readily available (and cheap) adapters to allow them to connect to laptops (PCMCIA ports) and USB ports.

8MB is also a good size for embedded applications - where you use a CF card to hold an operating system for an electronics project, micro sized computer, or similar. I don't get into that sort of thing myself, but know plenty of people who do.

I'd recommend Altec as a brand to people, and I'd certainly recommend the 8MB card, which is simply a very handy way of transferring files that are too large for a floppy disk, but way too small to make it worth writing a CD around.