Posts: 676
Location: Wisconsin | The industry as a whole is moving towards the smaller MicroSD cards. Either from a hardware or software standpoint, when a company is forecasting building new units or putting software on a card, they see that the trend is going to the small Micro cards. Thus, Lowrance's new unit has the small card reader and Lakemaster and Navionics both went to the small cards. Cost for those readers and cards (on a OEM level) are dropping and the cost for the "old" cards is going up. Phones, Cameras, etc are all going to the small cards. 3 to 5 years ago, that technology was either too expensive or not available to the software firmware developers to include in the units. My phone and camera both will not read my new 4gb MicroSD card. Older computers won't read 2gb SD cards. Everything is moving forward in computers and it is very hard to backward compat something because a new 8gb MicroSD card uses a faster memory type that older motherboards or computers can't read.
Now, if you have an old Lowrance unit or Eagle or Humminbird you might be able to read all the newest cards. You can still ALWAYS find older cards on the market that do work. Some units can be upgraded, some can't. That's computers. And just like a computer, if I want to run Windows 7 and have the latest and newest software, I MUST upgrade my computer. Same with locators. If you want to have the newest and latest, you MUST upgrade. I am sure that someone will buy your old unit, heck, not everyone needs cards to catch fish..... |
