Mike S wrote:

Is Amazon better? What do you recommend as far as reputable SD card
sources? Thanks.

Just about every online seller, allows third-party sellers to sell
through their site. Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Staples and so on,
do that sort of thing.

Going to your local computer store and buying, still doesn't
guarantee a thing, because counterfeits have been foisted
on commercial buyers too. In fact, one manufacturer in Japan,
warns customers to deal directly with it, because the level
of "Chinese knockoffs" is so high. The Chinese knockoff rate
was so high, it was ruining the company financially.

If Newegg can accept a shipment of Intel processors, where
the box contained an item other than a processor, just about
any major corporation can be tricked on this stuff. You
rely on distributors to not buy from dodgy sources, but
all it takes is one slip-up for this sort of thing to happen.

Summary: use a Brick and mortar store, talk to the store staff
regarding whether they've ever had counterfeits
on the shelf. If it did happen, there's a very good
chance a disti did it, and not anyone on store staff.
It was likely beyond store control (the buyer at some
point, has to trust the distributor). The Newegg Intel
CPU incident, is a case in point. Still, that's
my best source. Using Ebay on the other hand, there
is zero effort to stop the practice - you expect a
screwing. An Ebay seller would take great pride in
shipping you a 1TB flash device, which actually has
an 8GB flash inside and the whole thing sells for $20.

I have only one computer store in town, with a good enough
product selection for this sort of impulse buy. The rest
sell schlock in any case. If you attempt to buy SD from
a camera store, expect to pay a premium price.

On SD, you should have a good idea before you go shopping,
of what "class" the application needs. I was shopping for
"Class 10" for my digital camera, when I bought an SD for it.
The camera cannot generate data that fast, so Class 10
ensures the Flash is never a bottleneck. More modern
devices (4K or higher cameras), might require some of the higher
end flash-based storage products.

On a laptop, you have the same considerations. Is the built-in
controller pure **** ? If so, then a proper Class 10 (not
a fake), might be all it can profit from. If the machine really
has a whizzy controller, then you'd shop for a better flash,
to take advantage of the I/O rate possible. You pay for I/O rate,
but there's no point in going overboard, if no device in
your house will even remotely approach that rate.

Paul