Olympus Offers 32MB Upgrade

Not long ago the Imaging-Resource seemed to owe quite a few news story credits to us so I guess this is payback time. Thanks to my friends at IR for the following two news items.


Olympus offers upgrade to 32MB SmartMedia capability! Some time ago, when the 16MB SmartMedia cards were first announced, Olympus took the unprecedented step of offering an upgrade program to their users, letting them upgrade the cameras to 16MB compatibility. (Olympus and a number of other camera manufacturers were caught by a problem not of their own making, in that the standards committee for SmartMedia elected to change the standard to provide for 16MB capacity. To our knowledge, Olympus was the only SmartMedia-based camera company which rose to the challenge and offered their users an upgrade path.) Now, come the 32MB SmartMedia cards!

Olympus is offering an upgrade program to make their older camera models compatible with the new 32MB SmartMedia cards. The new program begins April 1, 1999, and replaces the earlier program which provided for upgrade to compatibility with 16MB SmartMedia cards. The new upgrade program costs .95 for D-340L/D-340R cameras, or .95 for D-500L and D-600L units. D-320L owners can upgrade to 16MB compatibility for .95, but the '320 can't be upgraded to handle the 32 MB cards. If you previously upgraded a camera to 16MB capability, and now want to go to 32MB, the upgrade is offered for free if you purchase a 32 MB SmartMedia card from Olympus at the same time for .95. If you don't want the 32MB card, the upgrade can be purchased for the .95 amount. Owners of the P-330 printer can also get them upgraded to 32MB compatibility, although the information we received did not indicate a price for that service.

The following table comes from the Olympus literature, showing what Olympus products are compatible with 16 and 32MB media:

 Product

16MB Compatible

32MB Compatible

D-220L

No

No

D-320L

Yes*

No

D-340L

Yes

Yes*

D-340R

Yes

Yes*

 D-400Zoom

Yes

Yes

D-500L

Yes*

Yes*

D-600L

Yes*

Yes*

D-620L

Yes

Yes

P-330

 Yes

Yes*