Considerations and Consequences of P2 technology

A lot of people are anticipating the release of Panasonic's new P2 camera, myself included.
But, there has been a lot of negativity thrown at Panasonic over the use of a P2 only camera.

The issues seem to revolve mainly around the cost of P2 cards.

While we won't know the details for a few weeks, there are a few things I wanted to post here to clear up what seem to be some common misrepresentations.

P2 cards require a shift in thinking.
They are not 'media' in the way we think of tapes today, instead they should be viewed as 'memory,' the way we view hard drives today. P2 cards are an investment, not an expendable. Taking that into consideration the cost of P2 cards cannot be expected to be anywhere near that of DV tape. Panasonic has rated the P2 cards for use up to roughly 100,000 times. That's the equivalent of 1667 60 minute DV tapes. So to compare the price of one P2 card to one tape seems to be missing the point completely.

A 4gb P2 card DOES NOT COST $4,000.
I've seen this number thrown around quite a bit. This was the roughly the cost of P2 memory when it was first introduced. The current price of a 4GB P2 card is about $1700, and the 2GB P2 card is now under $1000. Prices are expected to drop again soon (possibly in conjunction with the announcement of the new camera at NAB).

The point here is that many seem to be bashing this new camera based on the cost of P2 memory a year ago. Keep in mind, this camera has yet to be officially announed. The cost of P2 memory a year ago is irrelevant, the cost of P2 memory today is irrelevant, what matters is where the cost of P2 memory will be when the camera is available for purchase.

A 4GB card will hold more than 5 minutes of DVCProHD footage if shot at 24fps.
DVCProHD runs at 100mb/s at all times on the Varicam. That is because the Varicam records 60fps at all times. When you shoot 24fps, the Varicam flags frames as 'active,' and the records duplicate frames to continually record 60fps on tape. This is one of the limitations of using a tape transport. By moving to solid state recording, panasonic has gotten rid of this limitation. That means that there is no reason for the new camera to record duplicate frames. So, the datarate of DVCProHD at 24fps is actually 40mb/s, not 100mb/s.
At that datarate, a 4GB card will hold roughly 13 minutes of 720P 24fps footage.
The 8GB card to be announced at NAB will hold roughly 26 minutes of the same footage.

Lastly, I just want to point out that I think it would be ridiculous to expect P2 technology to be the solution for everything. I've seen posts where people seem to be putting this technology down because they need to shoot 15 hours of footage in one day in the middle of the desert with no power source. Well, guess what? If that's the case then P2 isn't meant for you. Keep using tape.
No format and no 'media' will be the answer to all production flows.
P2 is the answer for many, but it's unfair to shoot it down for the few situations it is not best suited for.

Just my 2 cents.