CompactFlash Prices, 2001-Feb-20

Home sick today, and I was wondering about the prices of CompactFlash cards (for storing images on digital cameras). Specifically, which is the better deal--to buy one 64MB card or two 32MB cards?

I grabbed a bunch of prices from shopper.cnet.com (121 prices to be exact) for cards ranging from 16Mb to 256MB, and plotted them (just to get a feel of what the ranges were), and also plotted the best prices and the price per megabyte for those. [I love Excel!]

The graphs are attached. The results are:

• The best deal right now, at $1.25/MB, is a 128MB CompactFlash card.
• It's cheaper to by 1 large card than two smaller ones, up until 128MB. (Buying two 128MB cards instead of one 256MB card would save you $160!)
• Shop wisely--there was a $70 difference between the cheapest 64MB card and the most expensive, an 80% difference! (And $200 difference in the range of 160MB cards.)