Re: Digital Memory Formats
I have used trhe Olympus waterproof cameras a ton and I'm not a fan of the xD Picture Card format. However, in the camera it works fine. It's when I'm reformatting or transferring to the computer that I notice the speed difference. When its in the camera, the camera speed is the limitation, not the card. By the way, in January, Olympus announced a new Stylus Tough model that uses SD memory cards. The new camera has 720p HD video and they had to go to SD memory to support the higher file sizes and speed required for HD video capture. All of their new point-and-shoots now use the SD cards so I think xD will be a thing of the past.
Re: Digital Memory Formats
See the table at the end of this Wikipedia entry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_memory_cards
The XD card is easily outperformed by any SD card. I used Xd cards for a while in a Fuji camera. I found it was really slow to copy back onto hard drive.