For my Sony A350 I got this SanDisk Extreme III 2GB Card.

And it was working out great for me. As for the card reader, well I was just using this old thing which I bought a few months ago.

It worked out great... until my card was almost filled with pictures, then Windows Explorer began to act unresponsive when browsing the card's image folder. After some digging around I realized what was happening, Explorer was trying to load the image's thumbnail and EXIF information in order to display. But due to the fact that we're talking about hundreds of image files whose file size is 5MB, the cheap ass card reader just couldn't take it. That's when my friend told me to pick up the San Disk Extreme USB Reader.

I was skeptical at first but since hey... he's a pro and I'm just a noob in photography so... Anyway, to me I always thought that it didn't really matter how much faster a card reader is. But then again I wasn't dealing with large quantity of large images. The reader costs about twice as much as a chapalang reader.

But... it works.. fantastically. Explorer is able to retrieve and display the thumbnails and EXIF data without hitting any speed bumps!

Who knew there was an actual reason for getting a branded card reader? :P

edit : On a side note, the kit lens of the A350 doesn't seem to be well suited for product Macro shots. So I guess I'll have to keep the Sony H1 for that duty!