12-26-2006, 10:00 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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What Is The Most You Have Spent Per MB on Flash Memory?
Ok, you are going to have to go back into your personal way-back machine to figure this out. I was looking for an extra 2GB card today - you can never have too much flash memory - and the store was out, but they had a 1GB SD card for $32.99. That translates into roughly 3 cents per MB. I immediately thought of my first flash card. It was a 15MB Sandisk Compact Flash card. That's right, 15MB! I don't know when they started selling them in in factors of 2, but in 1998, they didn't. It was $76.43, including tax and shipping. That works out to $5.09 per MB! And at the time, I thought it was worth every penny. It immediately enabled me to remove almost all apps from my Nino 320's RAM and put them on the storage card. In 1998, 15MB on a PDA was huge. This was when other PDAs had no storage card slots and came with 1-2MB of RAM. I still hae that card somewhere in my gadget collection.
It is hard to believe who much the cost has come down. I thought paying $120 for a 128MB CF card a few years ago was a good deal. 8O
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12-26-2006, 10:24 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 116
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Yeah
The first time I bought a flash card it was about $100 for a 2GB card which translates into about 5 cents per mb. I was like boy-o-boy thats a good deal there must be some kind of catch. I was the happiest person on the planet, all of my media and my document fit on the card just perfectly, I was the man.
But the first thing I noticed today on this website was a 2GB SD card for about $25 I refuse to do the math (1.25 cents per MB I could not refuse). that's dirt f*****g cheap. I mean can it get any cheaper (I'm sure it can). I can only imagine what it'll be a year or even two years from now. Or even more mind-blowing is what will our grand kids pay?
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12-26-2006, 10:34 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 116
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Flash Memory
One other thing to think about is Solid State Memory. I don't know too much about the technology. What I do know is that it is considerably faster that today's hardrives (rapid spinning plates) and it consume less energy. They achive these results by using flash technology. The only downside that I am aware of is that Solid State memory is still quite expensive. But as the price for flash memory goes down, this technology will be more readily available, and in the not so distant future we might have PPCs with 30GB hardrives for the same price as we pay now, which will consume less power, and respond more rapidly. I'm sure that there's many key things that I'm not aware of, but I just could'nt resist.
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12-26-2006, 10:50 PM
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Contributing Editor
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 524
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PCMCIA flash card!!!
I think I paid around $200 for my 6MB PCMCIA flash card. This was for my HP OmniGo 120. That's right, there were no compact flash or sd slots. It took a huge card and it was expensive and only 6MB!!! I think that was around 1997.
This was a high end device in a way since most similar memory cards at the time still required an on-board battery to maintain the data. Mine was actually flash memory so it didn't require power to maintain the data.
Ahhh, the OmniGo. I still have never seen a portable come with as much software that was as useful as the OmniGo. It pretty much got ignored though since the palm marketing was so good I guess.
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12-26-2006, 10:58 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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Re: Flash Memory
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Originally Posted by Frankie1
One other thing to think about is Solid State Memory. I don't know too much about the technology. What I do know is that it is considerably faster that today's hardrives (rapid spinning plates) and it consume less energy.
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flash memory is way slower than hard drives, both for read and write operations. HDD's have multiple heads and superfast cache memory.
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12-26-2006, 11:12 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 116
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Re: Flash Memory
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Originally Posted by Ed Hansberry
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Originally Posted by Frankie1
One other thing to think about is Solid State Memory. I don't know too much about the technology. What I do know is that it is considerably faster that today's hardrives (rapid spinning plates) and it consume less energy.
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flash memory is way slower than hard drives, both for read and write operations. HDD's have multiple heads and superfast cache memory. |
I'll definately have to get back to you on that one, I have come to believe the contrary. I knew it would come to this, but I have to do some research.
Till next time.
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12-26-2006, 11:35 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Oct 2003
Posts: 153
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Granted, it's not NVRAM, but I remember buying my first computer in '93 when RAM prices were $65/megabyte.
That's right, I paid $260 for 4MB of RAM...about what I expect to pay for an extra 1GB in my MacBook Pro.
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12-26-2006, 11:36 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 444
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Re: PCMCIA flash card!!!
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Originally Posted by vector
I think I paid around $200 for my 6MB PCMCIA flash card.
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Wow, to bad this isn't a contest.
My first flash memory purchase was for a 32MB CF card from New World Technologies, o Psion reseller out of New York. I think it was just under $200 at the time.
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12-26-2006, 11:48 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 484
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Re: What Is The Most You Have Spent Per MB on Flash Memory?
You might want to read Hal Goldstein's Fall '93 Comdex Review: http://www.palmtoppaper.com/PTPHTML/13/pt13001b.htm
Among other interesting stuff (like the $35 modem cables I used to sell :wink, it talks about 10MB (yes that's MB not GB) cards costing $540-$740! Yes, more than $50/MB, which of course would mean that today's 2GB cards that cost less than $50, would have cost more than $100,000 about 13 years ago. 8O
I still have one of those early 10MB PCMCIA cards.
I also have a 512KB static RAM card that has a coin cell battery to maintain memory when outside the PDA. So while not "flash" memory, it served the same purpose for the HP 95/LX. I don't remember the price of that card, but I know it around $100.
Maybe if I hold on to all that stuff long enough I can get my money back selling them on eBay. :roll:
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12-26-2006, 11:55 PM
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Contributing Editor
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 524
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Re: Flash Memory
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Originally Posted by Ed Hansberry
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Originally Posted by Frankie1
One other thing to think about is Solid State Memory. I don't know too much about the technology. What I do know is that it is considerably faster that today's hardrives (rapid spinning plates) and it consume less energy.
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flash memory is way slower than hard drives, both for read and write operations. HDD's have multiple heads and superfast cache memory. |
I think that while hard drives have much higher transfer rates than flash storage, flash storage has lower access times. So transferring a large file with a hard drive should be faster than with flash memory but transfering many small files scattered all over the drive is faster with flash then with a hard drive.
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