For HDD's I agree with you.  For cards, I can totally see it.  I'd pay
more to not have to switch back and forth to find something while "out in
the field" and/or to avoid switching period.  Those things ARE small and
easy to lose or break.  It's safest when in the camera.

For HDD's I think it's the general public's stupidity responsible there.
They don't know about master/slave settings, channels, and certainly not
RAID (the whole point of doing it IMO).
Plus, if you use up all your IDE channels on the MB you have to get a card
with more to hook the CD/DVD, etc. up to.
Just one of the reasons I HATE IDE.
It's been a sh.t standard ever since it was invented, just like USB.
But whatever's cheapest wins :(  Quality always seems to lose out to
cheap.
That's why we had VHS instead of the better quality Beta (well, Sony
stupidity was in there on that one too).
USB(2) over Firewire, AGP when they should have just done 64bit PCI (which
they finally did now), etc.
Even SCSI 2,3,ultra,lvd, bla bla bla over just friggin going to Firewire.
The standard was around back when SCSI2 just came out.
In fact it's STILL not truly being used in HDD's AFAIK.  They just slap a
Firewire interface on an IDE drive, which screws you out of one of the
main benefits of the bus - multithreading.
Ok, it's making me sick, gotta stop thinking about it now :)

One Q though while on the subject of xD: who made them, why, and are they
proprietary only to Olympus?  That's the only cams I've seen them on.
I really like one model, but it just peeves me so bad to have to get
ANOTHER standard of card (after I've already got CF's and SD) that I dunno
if it's worth it.

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