Taking pics without a memory card.

That's my point, it's so easy and so cheap to do, why would you not want it there? The added flexibility it could offer for such limited cost would be fantastic, and it would be another feather in Pentax's cap that the competitors don't have.

With video likely to be in most DSLRs in the future, it makes even more sense.

You don't have to use it if you don't want to, but you would sing it's praises if you had a memory card failure (like many on here seem to be having recently).

If you look at how devices are designed these days then it is easy to understand why they don't do it.
Sadly for us users the beancounters have the final say in the feature department.
A increase of say €20 for extra built in memory will end up being a €200 price increase easily with all steps in between.

I would like it also to have some extra memory in the camera but then again seeing how long or short SD cards live (personally I haven't had any problems since I switched to Sandisk cards and buy them only from respected dealers). I start wondering how long the internal memory will last.
A memory card failure is one thing but internal memory failure would be a bigger problem to me. I allways carry a couple of extra cards. I use a couple of 4GB SD cards as my main storage and I have a couple of 2GB and 1GB cards as backup as those were the cards I used in my *ist-DS.
In addition I have a 500GB image tank to backup images to.
I will start to replace some memory cards this year as some of them are getting quite old. I see it the same as with VCR tapes, after a while it's better to replcace them instead of waiting them to fail.

I understand that my first memory card, bought to go with my first Pentax dslr, the ds2, still gets used more often than the ds2. There is nothing wrong with the ds2, but the k10's are better for most uses.

It costs more to develop microchips than it costs to mass produce them. That is why computers often go up in processor power, memory, and storage every upgrade, but the prices keep falling. Are Cameras different than computers these days? not really that different, I think.

I also have made the mistake of not replacing the card in my K10 when I had just removed it to download and a woodpecker suddenly came into the garden. 20 shots and not a thing. Now if I had been using my *istD this would not have happened as you can set the *istD in its prog. so that it will not take pics without a card installed. Why was this feature not put into the K10? I presume it is not in the K20 either? You may try a couple of times but you soon know and stick a card in PDQ. Not a lot of good if you don't have a card with you but nontheless a pretty good failsafe. CHEERS Vic

Well, at least the K200D tells you in plain language "No card in the camera" all across the LCD monitor. Good enough for me.

Ditto The K10D does the same btw.

Martin.

I don't believe it would cost anything like that much. You can buy a cheap MP3 player with 4GB built-in memory. I reckon it would cost no more than €5 gross for Pentax to include it in their dSLRs. They don't because they don't think we want it, and to save that €5. Every penny counts.

Think how cheap SD cards are nowdays. All Pentax would have to do is incorporate the tiny chip from one of those in the camera, and have a slightly differently designed main processor to use it.

€3 per camera, gross, is my guess, if it was all incorporated in the design from the beginning.