I saw this headline and immediately made my “skeptical” face. Rugged flash media? Don’t those things spend all their time jacked into your device? Why not have rugged batteries, too? But then I thought about those poor, fragile SD cards, living sheltered lives in cases, pouches, and so on because we’re too worried that they’ll snap in half or get a drop of water on them at any moment.
I mean, your 7D may be seal-resistant, but what happens when you have to switch cards in a blizzard? A little moisture between those cracks, some sub-zero temperatures, and that sucker is going to rupture like… I don’t know, something that totally ruptures.
Anyway, I’d totally buy these things. They’ll survive a whole day underwater, won’t get busted by bouncing around in your bag, and they’re guaranteed to hold their data for years without letting it degrade. I think a big 16GB one of these will serve for you for all purposes, and last long enough to see its successor take over. They even go faster than regular cards!
SD and CF flavors will be released in Europe before they hit us Yanks and others, but Samsung hasn’t mentioned price yet. Probably because these things are going to cost about twice as much as a regular card the same size.