I was looking around for a new memory stick (and possibly an SD card too) and obviously these days there are a number of "High-Speed" options, such as Sandisk Ultra II, Lexar 80x, Sony's "Red" sticks.

The price premium depends very much on the memory type, but generally not outrageous -although not so small that I am willing to spend the extra without doing some research first.

So my question is, do these High-Speed Flash products have any significant impact on the usage experience? For example, I'm sure my Sony V1 digicam doens't have a high enough throughput to take advantage of the Sandisk Ultra II's extra speed, but would it be much faster when I copy the contents to my computer using a card reader? I would have thought that the flush times (ie, time it takes for the file to be written to the memory from the buffer) would be better... but by how much?

PS. The Sony "Red" Hi-speed sticks mention "4-bit Parallel Transfer" - does it require any specific hardware for the increased speed, or does most hardware that supports MS Pro take advantage of the increased speed?

Yes, they do make a difference. And, until last week, I didn't even know they had achieved such speeds till I read it in another post here.

So, for CF at least, I did some checking and ordered a Kingston Elite Pro 1GB. The transfer/dump times are indeed faster as you guessed. It's a function of the controller inside the chip itself.

A great analysis here: Legit Reviews

Speed makes a definite difference if you have a digital camera that can take TV-quality video. Slow cards will only record for 10 to 45 seconds before stopping, while high-speed (60x) cards will record until they are full.

In TV mode, my camera will record for over 12 minutes onto a high-speed 1GB card.

I highly recommend reading this Site's extensive testing of multiple CF cards in various higher-end digital cameras as well as card to computer tests of CF and SD.

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/mul...e.asp?cid=6007

All CF cards are not created equal. Some are a lot faster than others and the differences are quite big at times. The pricing for the faster cards is a lot closer than in the past and I think it is worth the nominal price difference. It pays to shop around online. I just bought a 1GB Kingston Ultra CF for $59.99 (after rebate) at Buy.com, which blows away the standard Sandisk 1GB that I saw advertised for $69.99 (after rebate) online and in ads.

There can be a definite and noticeable difference in the user experience. I have two SD cards -- one from Lexar and one from Viking. Neither is labeled as "high-speed" and yet the Lexar card is noticeable faster than the Viking card. The recycle time between taking pictures is a few seconds longer when using the slower of the two cards, and I get annoyed at it every time.