Earlier this year Mark Briggeman reported about the SanDisk 32GB microSDHC memorycard and the fact that SanDisk was the first vendor to ship a memorycard of this storage size. In this article I will have a thorough look at the SanDisk Mobile Ultra 16GB microSDHC card with reader !
Unboxing the SanDisk Mobile Ultra 16GB microSDHC card
The picture above shows you the retail package of the SanDisk Mobile Ultra 16GB microSDHC card with reader. On the left you can see the SanDisk Mobile Ultra microSDHC card in the plastic box, while on the right you can see the MobileMate micro card reader.
Furthermore you can see an eye-catching yellow sticker in the top right corner of the retail package.
The picture above shows the yellow stick in close-up. You can see that the sticker is advertising the included SanDisk Media Manager software, that allows you to transfer media files from your mobile phone to your pc and visa versa (which is perfectly described in the schematic overview on the yellow sticker).
I will have a closer look at the SanDisk Media Manager software in the second half of this article.
On the SanDisk website you can read the following description about the SanDisk Mobile Ultra microSDHC cards:
“The SanDisk Mobile Ultra microSDHC card gives you amazingly quick transfer rates from your phone to your PC and back again. Go ahead, download all the songs, pics, videos, games, and ring tones you want – you’ve got the room. And the MobileMate Micro card reader makes switching devices simple.”
The picture above shows you the SanDisk Mobile Ultra microSDHC card and the MobileMate Micro card reader side-by-side.
In order to test the SanDisk Mobile Ultra 16GB microSDHC card I started the HP Mini 1000 netbook. I inserted the SanDisk MobileMate micro card reader in one of the USB ports.
Furthermore I downloaded a 1000 MB iso-file to test the transfer speed from the harddisk of the HP Mini 1000 to the SanDisk Mobile Ultra microSDHC card. The screenshot above shows two Windows 7 Explorer windows, in which I copy the 1000 MB from the left to the right (which is the SanDisk memory card).
As you can see the in the screenshot above the 1000 MB is transfered onto the SanDisk Mobile Ultra 16GB microSDHC card with a speed of about 8.5 MB per second. This means that the 1000 MB is copied onto the SanDisk Mobile Ultra 16GB microSDHC card in less than 2 minutes.
SanDisk Media Manager – Valuable or not ?
In the second half of this article I would like to focus on the SanDisk Media Manager software, of which the installer is pre-loaded on the SanDisk Mobile Ultra 16GB microSDHC card. Via the link on the yellow sticker on the retail package you can read the following description of the SanDisk Media Manager:
“SanDisk Media Manager PC software transports MP3 songs and photos from your PC to your SanDisk memory card for quick and easy installation into your mobile phone. This software automatically organizes any music and photos transferred to your card into the folders required by your phone for immediate playback.”
Installing SanDisk Media Manager
When you double click on the SanDisk Media Manager installer, you will get a setup wizard that guides you throught the installation process of the SanDisk Media Manager software. After you get the welcome screen, which is shown in the screenshot above you click the next button.
The second step consists of configuring the installation location, and the locations of the shortcuts for SanDisk Media Manager. If you would like to use a different location than the default one, you simple click the change button and browse to the preferred location. With the checkboxes you can choose to included a SanDisk Media Manager shortcut on your Windows Desktop or Windows Quick Launch (or both or none).
After all the necessary installation information (location + shortcuts) is gathered, you need to manually begin the installation by clicking the install button.
The screenshot above shows the installation progress of the SanDisk Media Manager installation.
The last step in the SanDisk Media Manager installation process is the “successfully completed installation notice”, which is shown in the screenshot above. By default is the option checked “launch SanDisk Media Manager”, that launches the software as soon as you complete the setup wizard by clicking on the finish button.
SanDisk Media Manager – Post installation config
After the setup wizard is completed and SanDisk Media Manager is launched for the first time, you need to complete a simple post-installation configuration. The first step of this configuration process is selecting the language from a pull down menu. In the example screenshot above the preferred language is set to English. Click Next.
You can see in the screenshot above the end user license agreement (EULA) that needs to be confirmed, while you can see that the “select language” part is checked as completed. After you have carefully read the EULA you can agree with the agreement by clicking the accept button.
The last actual step in the post-install configuration process is setting the folders you would like SanDisk Media Manager to scan on the harddisk of your Windows powered notebook. As you can see in the screenshot above it are mainly the /Music and /Pictures folders within my Windows 7 user account.
The screenshot above provides an idea of the SanDisk Media Manager scanning process of media files on the HP Mini 1000 netbook. SanDisk Media Manager found 34 photo’s and no songs in the particular music folder. Via the settings menu you can always change these preferred folders later.
Furthermore you can choose to optimize the memory card content for a specific type of phone. You can select both the manufacturer and model of your smartphone from a pull down menu. You can see that I initially selected the HTC HD2 (however it is greyed out). I checked the option don’t optimized my card content for e specific phone, mainly because I regularly change phones.
You could also argue what kind of optimization is done. Whille photo’s be resized for a specific screen resolution, or will the pictures be saved in a lower quality ?
SanDisk Media Manager also scans the SanDisk Mobile Ultra 16GB microSDHC card for files that are not the HP Mini 1000 netbook. As demonstrated in the screenshot above there are three items on the SanDisk Mobile Ultra 16GB microSDHC card that I can copy to my pc or ignore the message by chosing the option not now.
The overall graphical user interface (GUI) of SanDisk Media Manager is shown in the screenshot above. It is relative simple and straight forward to use. However the HP Mini 1000 has a 10.1″ screen that features a resolution of 1024 x 576. Althought it doesn’t heavily impact the usability, I don’t think the SanDisk Media Manager is 100% optimized for use on netbooks. Remark also the more… option from the list above.
Furthermore you can see that SanDiks Media Manager has a buildin media player, to listen to music directly from within the software. The buttons show a lot of similarities with Windows Media Player.
Overall conclusions and wrap-up
SanDisk is one of the leading manufacturers of flash-memory-cards for a wide range of devices. The ultra range (both for mobile and for camera) is characterized by its higher transferspeeds compared to the “normal” cards.
The result of transfering a 1000 MB file from the HP Mini 1000 harddisk to the SanDisk Mobile Ultra 16GB microSDHC card in less than 2 minutes isn’t a bad at all (given the fact that the harddisk is a 5400 rpm HDD, the 1.60 GHz Intel Atom Processor N270 isn’t that powerfull, and the RAM memory is just 2 GB). Also the size of 16GB is really sufficient to store a music, video’s or pictures.
SanDisk Media Manager valuable or not ?
Nowadays there are great tools, for example the highly versatile SugarSync, that connect (1) the web/could, (2) the pc & (3) a smartphone. The underlying idea is to keep files synchronized accross these screens.
For transfering small files I would prefer a client like SugarSync, DropBox or Live Mesh, simply because you don’t need to remove the storage card. For transfering large files the SanDisk MobileMate micro card reader and SanDisk Media Manager are helpful to transfer files.
If you would use the SanDisk Mobile Ultra 16GB microSDHC card in combination with a SDHC adapter for a Canon Ixus digital camera, the SanDisk Media Manager becomes a really helpful tool to transfer photographs to your notebook.
Overall I really like the SanDisk Mobile Ultra 16GB microSDHC card in terms of speed and storage capacity. The SanDisk Media Manager is a great tool optimized for specific usage scenario’s. SanDisk adds value by including software to help users and not just a simple focus on storage capacity.
