Another noob question......Since it is a 200 mile round trip to the nearest camera store on $3.25 gas I'll just ask here to see what is meant by a 'high quality' memory disc. Are they referring to high capacity ie. 1-2 gigs or is there an actual difference in the quality of the media disc out there? I intend to get a 2 gig SD model but is there one that is clearly superior to the others? I see 2 gig models anywhere from 9$ to $42 and wonder what I should be shopping for.
I would personally go with Lexar or Sandisk (Sandisk is my preference), though it seems that a lot of people use Kingston as well. I shoot mostly CF cards (and one SD card), and I've just never had a Sandisk card corrupt on me (can't say the same about lexar ;-). These things are solid-state devices...if they're made correctly they they should always work correctly, etc. So I'm not sure how the quailty factors in here, but I will say you don't want a card corrupting!
Another thing that you pay for in a card is the "speed" of it--how fast it can read and write. Compacts can't write that fast, so it's not usually a big a deal for them (you don't need to buy the fastest card made, IOW). The gist is that you don't want your camera waiting on your card, you want it the other way around. Likewise, if you're transfering over a USB 2 or Firewire port, which can handle roughly 35-40 MB a second, a card that can only read at 10 MB is obviously going to be the bottleneck.
You'll notice that sandisk has several series of cards, with each one having faster read and write speeds. (The extremem series migh be a little "tougher," made to take more physical abuse, but I don't know that for a fact.) I think right now Sandisk makes the Sandisk series, the Ultra-II, the Extreme III, IV, and IV LE. Maybe they still make the Extreme II. Anyway, I'd recommend the Ultra-II. It's got a roughly 10 MB read/write speed which is probably about as fast as your camera's going to be able to write. A high-speed reader (USB 2.0 or Firewire) would be able to read considerably faster than that, but that's waiting _after_ the shooting, not while you're trying to shoot.
I recommend an external card reader. It's not necessary...but: 1) saves camera battery life considerably 2) keeps internal heat generation in the camera to a minimum 3) usually much faster than reading images from the camera. Some cameras don't even ship with USB 2.0, and most don't utililze it even when they're compatible (they'll work w/ 2.0, but they're not necessarily using 2.0 speeds!). I've had good luck with sandisk readers too.
Sandisk has a new series of cards out with a built-in USB jack (called the + series), but I've no idea how well they do or don't work.
I really don't work for sandisk.
I've just had very good luck with their products. And to be honest my Lexar problems have been minimal. But for similar pricing, I'll take "no problems" over "minimal" any time....