Memory stick vs. memory stick pro on nx70?

[martin5kh]

should the pro will run faster on nx70? is it worth to go for pro?

[Eddy]

NX70 isn't MS Pro native, you'll need the MS Pro update patch, & plus speed isn't really at all that much different, just very minor, in my humble opinion. :)

Being NX70 owner myself, I've a 256MB MS Pro + 1G SanDisk CompactFlash Card. I keep all my movies/ MP3s in CF Card for playback, & finds that actually I could have lived with a regular 128MB MS rather than the MS Pro 256MB.

Since the NX70 isn't MS Pro natively, I mean after a hard-reset, you would need a regular MS to recover the data back to the CLIE. Then NX70 will see the MS Pro. I always carry an extra regular MS to backup data, otherwise I can't recover the lost data on the spot. :(

[patrickl]

File reading on a MS Pro stick is about 60% faster than with a standard stick (VFSMark file read index =132 vs 203, I just watch the File Read index and not all the others or the VFSMark itself ). That's quite substantial. Writing is indeed almost the same.

Thing is, you don't use that speed advantage very often. Only when starting apps and since PalmOS apps are small anyway you might save at most a few seconds at startup of an app from stick.

CF cards are even faster. I use the free peleca hacked drivers and with a PQI F1 I get a VFSMark File Read of 311. Actually even an MSPro is faster when put in the CF slot (in a MSPro compatible 4-in-1 CF adapter). Then mine is twice as fast as a regular stick (VFSMark File Read 263)

The European NX70 is native MSPro compatible btw. (just thought I'd mention it since you don't state your location)

[ultraman]

My UK NX70V isn't MSPro native.

[patrickl]

I doubt it. You only need the new drivers to enable it to play MP3's. But it will work straight away i.e. you can recover from a hard reset.

[n2ifp]

None of the Clies are native pro! Some like the NX73/80 or the UX40/50 have the MS Pro driver in ROM, they are still NOT native Pro. Native Pro has a throughput theoretical of 160mbps!

Sony does not claim any speed difference between the regular and Pro sticks. There is, but never enough to really notice.

[patrickl]

As I already explained: the european NX70 can work with MS Pro straight out of the box. It does need a patch to fix some mediaplaying library problems yes, but it does work with it without any patches. I call that native support.

I don't see how the fact that it does not use the full potential of the format contradicts that. It works thus it supports it. Otherwise, are some Palm PDA's not SD native because they use only 1 or 2 out of 4 bits? Again, following your line of thought, the Clie's don't even support native MS since they get nowhere near the possible bandwidth of the media. The current crop of Clie's manages (at best) a rate of 430kB/s instead of around 2.5MB/s which it should be.

Anyway ... we can start nitpicking over the meaning of native, but I was only referring to the remark about restoring after a hard reset. You do not have that problem with an NX70 from europe. It reads MS Pro just fine (even after a hard reset). So you can restore from the MS Pro without needing a spare (blue) MS stick.

What really baffles me is that people are inable to spot a 60% to 100% (for better optimized programs reading bigger blocks)speed increase. I sure notice that PicselViewer starts about twice as fast. On the other hand I do agree that PalmOS programs make poor use of VFS and thus there hardly is any benefit from the extra speed besides an occasional app startup. The only programs I know that benefit are ZLauncher, PowerRUN, MapViewer, Digi-Map and maybe something like bDicty or PalmReader.

[Eddy]

wow, sorry guys for bring up the word "Native". :D

Anyway, from what I know, like Patrickl mentioned the Euro. version NX70 can use MS Pro right out of the box. (forgot about that. :p)
Because the NX70/V I'm using don't have MS Pro support out of the box. (Japanese version.... :()