More capacity and fast transfer speeds are the chief benefits of the SanDisk Extreme® III 8-gigabyte (GB) SDHC™ (SD High-Capacity) flash memory card, which was introduced today by SanDisk Corporation.

The 8GB SDHC card will be packaged with a SanDisk MicroMate™ USB 2.0 Reader so that users have a one-stop solution for capturing, storing and transferring their images. The bundled card and reader are expected to ship within the next 30 days to U.S. retailers at a suggested price of $179.99. It will also be available in Europe.

An 8GB SanDisk Extreme III SDHC card can store more than 4,000 high-resolution pictures or up to 16 hours of MPEG 4 video. The card has a read/write speed of 20 megabytes per second, thus providing rapid downloads to a personal computer.

The SDHC format is designed to allow for capacities greater than 2GB, but devices must be SDHC compatible in order to work with SDHC memory cards. For video applications, SanDisk Extreme III SDHC cards have a speed rating of Class 6, the highest available SDA speed class, meaning that they have a minimum continuous data transfer rate of 6MB/second.

All SanDisk Extreme III cards offer ESP Technology to streamline data transfer, RescuePRO® software to recover accidentally deleted files and images, a dedicated technical support telephone hotline and a limited lifetime warranty. The cards are designed for shooting in extreme temperatures (-13 to 185 degrees Fahrenheit or -25 to 85 degrees Celsius), high altitudes and other demanding situations.

SanDisk’s ultra-portable, high-performance MicroMate SDHC Reader can rapidly move images from an SDHC card to a personal computer. It also reads standard SD as well as SDHC flash memory cards. The reader is being bundled with the 8GB SanDisk Extreme III SDHC card at no extra cost.

Press Release source: SanDisk.