A big attraction with Smart Media is its physical dimensions; this thing is four times thinner than CompactFlash which automatically makes it an ideal solution for extremely small devices. On the console level, think of it this way: going from a cartridge (N64) to a CD (Playstation). With 1,000,000 program/erase cycles, SM has over three times the endurance of CF. The operating temperature is slightly less, but no one really uses it in a 60°C environment anyway. But the main point (in my opinion) is power consumption. Although somewhat against the specs, in real life SM can use approximately 5 times less power than CF when reading/writing data and up to 1000 times less when in standby.