Panasonic and Imation are muscling in on the Sony Mavica's turf with the introduction of the PV-SD4090 SuperDisk PalmCam. The $900 digital camera can not only capture its megapixel images on standard 1.44MB floppy disks but accepts Imation's 120MB SuperDisks as well.

Thanks to the built-in SuperDisk drive, the camera can snap close to 450 shots at its highest resolution without running out of digital film.

That's nearly four times as much as a typical 32MB CompactFlash or SmartMedia cards at much lower media cost. And, it is nice to know that you can fall back to easily available floppies in a pinch.

The camera's other notable features include a decent optical zoom, a extra large LCD viewfinder, movie recording in QuickTime format, and the ability to attach audio clips to each picture.

But, let's say you don't already own a SuperDisk. What then? You simply plug the camera into your PC's USB port and it appears as a disk drive visible in File Explorer. This makes it easy for you to download your latest snapshots of course, but also turns the camera into a fully-functional, 120MB SuperDisk drive you can use for everyday backup or file transfer.

All this storage versatility could make the Panasonic PalmCam and Imation SuperDisk combination a unique challenger to the rest of the digital shoot and store crowd.

Features:

- 1.3 megapixels (1,280 x 960)
- Zoom: 3x Optical / 2x Digital
- Viewfinder: Large, 2.5" Color LCD
- Built-in flash
- Audio recording: up to 5 secs per picture
- Movie recording: QuickTime (10 fps)
- Burst mode: Shoots 16 shots in 8 seconds
- Interface: USB
- Price: $900

Copyright © 2006 Stephen Jones All rights reserved.