Sandisk Releases Extreme III 8 Gigabyte Compact Flash Card

SanDisk Doubles Capacity Of Its SanDisk Extreme III Cards - Its Fastest Digital Film Cards For Professional Photographers

Sandisk Press Release Summary:
ORLANDO, FL, Feb. 26, 2006 - SanDisk® Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK) today announced the addition of new card capacities to its Extreme III line of flash cards for professional digital cameras that are double the highest capacity points currently available. The new cards include the 8-gigabyte (GB)1 CompactFlash®, 2GB SD™ and 2GB Memory Stick PRO Duo™ digital film cards. The announcement was made at the Photo Marketing Association trade show where SanDisk is demonstrating products in booth #2741.

SanDisk Extreme III CompactFlash and SD cards have minimum write and read speeds of 20 megabytes per second (MB/sec.) Memory Stick PRO Duo cards have minimum write and read speeds of 18 MB/sec. 2 The SanDisk Extreme III cards, which range in capacity between 1- and 8GB are among the world’s fastest working cards in many of today’s leading digital single lens reflex (SLR) cameras. 3

SanDisk Extreme III cards are targeted primarily at professional photographers who require high-speed flash memory storage cards for their high-performance digital SLRs. The cards will start shipping worldwide in March to photo retailers.

“Many photographers are wary of using cards that are larger than 1GB because they don’t want to ‘put all their eggs in one basket,’ so to speak,” said Jonathan Torgovnik, contract photographer for Newsweek magazine. “While that’s a valid concern, I shoot RAW so using large capacity cards is a must. It also lets me concentrate on taking pictures rather than worrying about a pocket full of lower capacity cards that can easily be lost or misplaced.”

Tanya Chuang, SanDisk retail product marketing manager, said, “The SanDisk Extreme III line offers professional photographers an ideal combination of reliability, performance and capacity to match their shooting and workflow requirements. These are the highest performance cards you can get in CompactFlash, Memory Stick PRO Duo and SD card formats.”

SanDisk Extreme III cards use SanDisk-developed ESP (Enhanced Super-Parallel Processing) technology that combines advanced NAND flash memory chips and controller designs, 32-bit RISC processing and leading edge algorithms for an architecture that streamlines every aspect of read and write data transfer operations. In addition, SanDisk works closely with major camera manufacturers to ensure speed and compatibility. The ESP architecture effectively removes the card as the bottleneck in data storage applications.

SanDisk Extreme III cards are designed to withstand the industry’s widest guaranteed operating temperature range from a freezing minus 13F (minus 25C) to a scorching 185F (plus 85C). The cards also include RescuePRO® software that allows photographers to easily recover accidentally deleted images, lost digital images or data.

Pricing and Availability
SanDisk Extreme III cards are available in CompactFlash, Memory Stick PRO Duo and SD formats. Suggested retail prices and availability are as follows:

Extreme III CF

1 to 4GB $99.99 - $279.99 Available Now

8GB $559.99 Available in March

Extreme III Memory Stick PRO Duo

1 to 2GB $109.99- $209.99 Available Now

4GB $419.99 Available in March

Extreme III SD

1GB $99.99 Available Now

2GB $199.99 Available in March

SanDisk Extreme III cards carry a 10-year warranty in Europe, the Middle East and Africa but will have a lifetime limited warranty in the rest of the world. Photographers who purchase the cards also will have access to a dedicated toll-free number for technical support questions. The RescuePRO image recovery software on the cards is compatible with both Windows and Mac and requires no driver download or special card reader.

SanDisk is the original inventor of flash storage cards and is the world’s largest supplier of flash data storage card products using its patented, high-density flash memory and controller technology. SanDisk is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA and has operations worldwide, with more than half its sales outside the U.S.