Price drop SOON on CF cards

I was asking the Canon rep at B&H today for CF card recommendations. He suggested waiting a few more weeks. He said Lexar is coming out with an 80x which should (once again) bring the costs of the others down quite a bit. So I can wait! ;)

Liz

Is CF a commodity like RAM? I know ram prices fluxuate daily due to the commodity value and the import costs and stuff... never sure exactly how it worked.

Liz that might be correct, but there are signs that the other cards are getting scarce as well, so might be chasing the tail on that, like not being able to find the cheaper Lexar cards when the 80x's are released. Have noticed some cards like 512meg and 256meg cards not appearing on some of the sites I visit to look at prices.

B&H currently has Lexar 40X 512MB cards for $99. I bought two last summer at about $180 each and one a couple of months ago for about $150 so this is a great price. These cards have a lifetime warranty (maybe all do) but also come with Image Rescue Software and a CF reader (that works only with these CF cards). If you're looking for a deal, this is a good time to get some. I don't need any more at the moment, and overall the prices tend to drop anyway so I'll wait until I need more. The first card I bought was a 24X 256MB Lexar about a year and a half ago - that was about $170 at the time!

Reason for the price cuts is that the 80x cards are coming out - Calumet lists the 80X 512MB card for about $190, but it writes twice as fast (in some cameras) and has the new version of Image Rescue. I don't think they're shipping yet though, but soon.

CF cards are not quite commodities like RAM, etc - but like anything electronic, the prices will go down when a new model is released.