Memory stick pro duo

ultraviolent

Please could anyone advise me of the difference between a memory stick pro duo for gaming (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0007LZGF6/qid=1142365804/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/026-3944873-8351612) and a normal memory stick pro duo?

Also, what is the cheapest anyone can find the 1gig card for?

Thanks,

Hammer_Slammer

No noticeable difference in performance, just a more funky colour and that price looks pretty good to me.

kawanakya

Please be very careful when buying Sony memory sticks / duo pro and don't believe those extremely low prices from private sellers. The counterfeits are being sold right now on both Ebay and Amazon Marketplace. The market is flooded with counterfeits bearing the Sony logo, imported from Taiwan and Malaysia, which are very hard to spot. They even come with gold holograms, warranty cards, etc. Previously, the counterfeits weren't sold with holograms, but now the manufacturers have cottoned on. When a trained Sony technician has difficulties in spotting the difference, the average customer stands no chance!

At first sight, a 1GB memory stick for less than £40 may seem like a good deal. It's not, because what you'll receive isn't actually a device with 1GB of genuine storage space...

The counterfeit packaging says "1GB", and when you put the memory stick into your PSP (or mobile phone, camera, etc), the device will also show 1GB of space. The trick here is very simple. What the counterfeit memory sticks actually contain is a smaller generic chip (lets say 256MB or less) which has had a higher number (512MB, 1GB, etc) hardcoded into its circuitry. As you can imagine, it's not very difficult to do these days.

Counterfeit memory sticks will store smaller files without any problems. However, if you're wanting to store something such as a large movie file (600MB+), that is when you'll start to run into file corruption problems (because that much space doesn't REALLY exist on a counterfeit memory stick).

I've included some links below which give more details & explain how to spot counterfeit Sony memory sticks (photographs included).

The safest thing to do would be to buy directly from Amazon, Play.com, Dixons, Comet, etc. You'd be paying more than you would be with a private seller, but at least you'd be getting a real memory stick with a real amount of storage space on it!

Oh, and don't be fooled by those Amazon Marketplace sellers with fancy logos for their usernames. It means nothing! They're no better than the sellers with the text usernames. I bought a Sony duo pro memory stick from a (fancy logo) seller on Amazon just before Christmas. I thought the price was reasonable, not too low... and the merchandise still turned out to be counterfeit! I guess the only thing to do is to leave negative feedback (for Ebay sellers) or '1 out of 5' feedback (for Amazon sellers) with a comment like 'sold me a counterfeit sony memory stick - reported to Sony UK and Amazon' in all capital letters. And whatever you do, don't be coaxed into removing the feedback!!

Here are those links:

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Electronics-photography/Memory-cards/Memory-Stick/auction-47863575.htm (has photos)

http://www.forum.renoraine.com.my/viewtopic.php?t=43 (has photos)

http://www.mxphone.com/show.php?no=913 (has photos)

I hope that helps!

Marks

Thanks for that was wondering why they were goin so cheep on ebay, was about 2 big n a 2gig aswell.

NastyMatt

Just to add a bit of info, SanDisks are faster than the Sony disks. SanDisk created the standard/hardware for this stick and Sony bought the rights from them.

I have seen a file read/write test comparison and the SanDisk was way better.. if I can find the link I will post it here.

Hillfly

I must say this fakle card stuff is news to me - i just recently bought a 2gig card from Ebay - shipped from Hong Kong - so chances are mine is a fake also. Sadly i think i have thrown the packaging so i can't tell if it's fake or not (will check tonight).

However what i can say is that it's fast and really does hold 2 gig's of data. I have 3 large files on mine and all work fine (using a 1.5 to run game backups).
So I can conlcude that if it is fake i am still happy with my purchase as it does everything it should. Cost me £55 delivered.

Who is the ripoff merchant - the guy selling working fakes for a decent price or Sony selling branded cards for a ripoff price?

Of course if the cards don't really hold the stated amount of data them you are stuffed.

YBNB

Kawanakya is mostly right - that lots of the cards on Ebay are NOT genuine Sony products, so in that, they are fakes.

HOWEVER there is an alternative viewpoint. Many people, particularly in the Far East, view these as "Third Party" cards. There are also instances of people having problems with the Sony ones.

I bought a 2 Gigabyte one off Ebay for use on my PSP, paid £33 plus postage for it. The cheapest retail price I can find for the genuine Sony is £97 plus postage. I had my suspicions when I bought it but I knew that if it wouldn't hold data, I could give it back to the retailer, who had a large, 99% positive feedback rating and a stated returns policy.

My card transfers data at the high end of the stated speed for Sony OR Sandisk.

Hillfly puts it brilliantly when he/she says:

hillfly wrote:

Who is the ripoff merchant - the guy selling working fakes for a decent price or Sony selling branded cards for a ripoff price?

There's always an alternative viewpoint.

toontastic

I can help with cheap prices. I use Sandisk cards for my sony ericsson phone (1gb) and my PSP (also 1gb soon to be 2gb) https://www.mobymemory.com never had any problems with anything on there.

Woby_Tide

likewise just paid £43 on Ebay for a 2GB card, it stores 1.94GB (around same as most of the genuine ones) cost less than half the price of an official one, but because it is fake, it allegedly transfers data at 60mbps rather than 80mbps...oh woe is me.....I think I'll survive waiting a third longer for data to transfer over. It plays fine so I can't fault it(this is in a W800 phone).

kawanakya

Woby_Tide wrote:

likewise just paid £43 on Ebay for a 2GB card, it stores 1.94GB (around same as most of the genuine ones) cost less than half the price of an official one, but because it is fake, it allegedly transfers data at 60mbps rather than 80mbps...oh woe is me.....I think I'll survive waiting a third longer for data to transfer over. It plays fine so I can't fault it(this is in a W800 phone).

If you suspect the card to be a fake, you probably have a smaller generic chip which has been hardcoded to present itself as having 1.94GB to any device it is inserted into. It's not difficult to fool a camera/mobile phone/psp, if you know the technology. If you try to fill the memory stick with 1.94GB of actual information, then attempt to access it after a short period of time, you'll probably find that there are all kinds of file corruption errors... because the gadget was fooled into thinking that there was more free space on the memory stick, than there actually was.

This doesn't always happen, but there's a good chance that it will. It's hit & miss.

Hillfly

Has anyone actually been sold a 'fake' card that will not hold the amount of data it claims to hold?

I haven't come across anyone as yet - could it be a 'hoax' to boost sales of genuine cards from genuine stores?