How quickly memory-card readers go out of style!

Two of my computing devices have built-in card readers, and that’s great.

My Fujitsu LifeBook T4010 tablet computer has a built-in SD Card reader, which is handy when I’m using my Canon S2 IS digital camera.

My big 30″ Dell monitor not only has a very handy USB hub, but also has an multi-port card reader which supports SD, SM, MS and MMC cards in one slot, and CompactFlash cards in a second slot.

I use the CompactFlash port for the memory cards that drive my big Canon EOS 10D digital SLR and also my wife’s Nikon CoolPix 3200 camera.

In addition, I have a nice external multi-port card reader that I use with my Mac notebook while traveling. The four-slot reader works with CompactFlash, MD, MS, MS Pro, MS Duo, SD, MMC and SM cards, and so it supported all of my family’s cameras.

Think I have it all covered? Think again.

Two weeks weeks ago, my son and I bought a new pocket-sized camera, a Nikon CoolPix L18. Wonderful camera, I’m going to write more about it shortly. Needless to say, the 4GB card I bought for it was a new type: SDHC.

Which none of my card readers could read.

Which meant for the first few days, we couldn’t do anything with the photos that we’d taken with the new camera.

Which caused a special trip to the store to buy an SDHC card reader. (I got a SanDisk MicroMate.)

Isn’t that annoying?