What Is The Most You Have Spent Per MB on Flash Memory?

[Ed Hansberry]

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.<br /><br />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

[Frankie1]

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?
:)

[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. 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.

[Craig Horlacher]

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.

[Ed Hansberry]

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.
flash memory is way slower than hard drives, both for read and write operations. HDD's have multiple heads and superfast cache memory.

[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.
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.

[jmulder]

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.

[Mark Kenepp]

I think I paid around $200 for my 6MB PCMCIA flash card.

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.

[daS]

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:

[Craig Horlacher]

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.
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.

[daS]

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.
The problem with the OmniGo 100/120 was the display. HP wanted the device to sell at a low price and the display is the most expensive component, so they used a cheap display with so little contrast that it was almost unreadable in any light. For the 120 they tried a special overlay to increase contrast, but it only helped a little. It's a shame that HP didn't try a model with a better display at a higher price instead of killing the product line.

I agree that the software (using the Geoworks GUI OS) was a bargain. And the folding design - like today's Tablet PCs was WAY ahead of its time!

I still have a new OmniGo 120 in the box that was unsold inventory. Since the 120 was cancelled within a few months of its introduction, it may be worth something someday - but not today. An eBay search showed only one ended auctions which had a single bid of $1, with the seller's reserve not met. :cry: )

My Palmtop/PDA collection also includes quite a few other HPs as well as an Atari Portfolio (cir. 1989).

[TOCA]

Just brought back horrible memorys of the shopping arround I did, for my first 16MB CF card, it costed me all I could afford for one month 8O

This summer I played the big spender, and got me a 2GB highspeed SD card, for a lower amount, than that old CF card costed me back then 8)

3 years ago I got my first PPC, and spend the better part of 2 weeks to find the cheapest 64MB SD card for it, one year later, I got a 256MB one for the exact same price :roll:

To day they will throw a 512MB card after you, if you don't leave the store fast enough :wink:

[SkyBoy]

I purchased a 4MB (that's right I said MB and not GB) PCMCIA flash-memory card for my Newton 110 (or was it the 2000?) waaaay back in the day. Can't remember exactly what I paid, but I think it was $150-200.
I guess that I win for now 8) :roll:

[cmailliard]

$.57 per MB in 2004. Paid $300 for a 512MB CF Card at Johanesburg Airport. After spending a week in Greece and arriving in South Africa for a 4 week trip I only had 1 512 card left (I used 3 in Greece). I had planned on using my iPod to transfer photos, but dumb me I didn't realize I had to update my iPod so that didn't work. Next I bought online hard drive space, but the Internet Cafes didn't allow uploads. So plan C spend $1000 on 3 more CF Cards. It hurt, but not as bad as leaving Southern Africa with very little pictures. Just for info I was using a Canon SLR and each picture is around 5MB (I wanted the highest quality). So I came home $1000 poorer but with 400 awesome pictures.

One more thing, they were not even high speed cards either, just plain jane CF Cards.

[ScottC]

About GBP180 for a 32KB pak for my Psion LZ64 back in 1987. Which according to the inflation calculator is:

$350 in 1987 would cost $588.37 in 2005.

Funny thing was that these ram paks had a real eeprom in them, you could hear the Psion clicking when it was writing to it :) To erase it you of course needed the Psion UV lamp unit :D

[Cybrid]

$64+CDN for 8Mb. Way back when...1999?

[Menneisyys]

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

Well, higg prices were pretty common even in early 1997, when I bought a 8M (!) PCMCIA (!) card for my HP 320LX and Velo 1 for, AFAIK, around $300 :)

[Menneisyys]

I purchased a 4MB (that's right I said MB and not GB) PCMCIA flash-memory card for my Newton 110 (or was it the 2000?) waaaay back in the day. Can't remember exactly what I paid, but I think it was $150-200.


Well, if you remember which model it was, then, we can tell you which year it should have been (at least) as the 2000 is a much later model :)

[Timothy Rapson]

My first removable solid state memory was a 128 KB (yes, there were kilobytes Virginia) for my amazing Atari Portfolio. It ran it's own clone version of DOS, had 64 (or was it 128?) kb of RAM and the kind of NVRAM described above. I remember reading the directions and carefully replacing the watch/pancake style battery while the card was in the Portfolio to ensure than the files/bytes were not lost. What the manual failed to say was that the Atari had to remain ON to keep the memory alive, and of course it was set to automatically shut off every three minutes to save energy. Lost all the files.

I never did get the serial port/cable working to transfer files to my desktop. The ports and cables for connecting it cost as much as the computer itself ($500 altogether) and I think the 128kb memory card was about $125.

It never was workable. Too big, battery life to low, no software, poor connectivity. My Psion RevoPlus was my first real workable PDA.

[Dyvim]

I only started buying flash in April 2004 - not quite 3 years ago, but even in that time period flash prices have dropped dramatically. I started with a 256 MB SD card for $60. Since then I've bought CF cards up to 8 GB and SD cards up to 4 GB with every card costing less per MB.

[mmidgley]

Well, this was an excuse to do some interesting research on my techno purchases--usually it is best forgotten, but here's the pain 8O :

(note that I did the math based on the MB's reported by the device, darn those manufacturers that can't divide by 1024!)

Date, Brand, Card, Device, MB, Price, Price/MB
Oct-99, Kingmax, 16MB PC card Linear flash, Apple Newton, 15, $165, $11.00
Jul-00, Kingston, 128MB CF card, iPAQ 3650, 115, $280, $2.435
Jun-03, Sandisk, 256MB SD, iPAQ 5555, 247, $69, $0.279
Jul-03, Sandisk, 256MB SD, iPAQ 5555, 247, $69, $0.279
Dec-03, Sandisk, 512MB SD, iPAQ 5555, 490, $50, $0.102
Dec-05, Kingston, 1GB SD, iPAQ 5555, 997, $44 , $0.044
Mar-06, Kingston, 2GB SD, i-mate JAMin, 1970, $62 , $0.031
Jun-06, RiDATA, 2GB SD, Optio A10, 1970, $62 , $0.031
Dec-06, Transcend, 4GB SD, i-mate JAMin, 3822, $55 , $0.014

That's a total of $856.00 :oops: After that $280 CF128 I told myself I'd never buy into storage cards early in the game again. Seems to have worked out ok, but my total spending is still a surprise.

m.

[daS]

My first removable solid state memory was a 128 KB (yes, there were kilobytes Virginia) for my amazing Atari Portfolio.
You got me beat that's for sure! I have a Portfolio that I bought from EduCalc as "new old stock" when they closed. My first "real" PDA was an HP 95LX.

Although it doesn't count here, the most expensive memory I ever purchased (but not with my own money) was 4KByte "core" memory for PDP-11s that cost more than $16,000 in the late '70s. That's a whopping $4,000,000 per Meg, or more than the current Federal Budget for a current SD card. 8O

At that time, 14 inch disk platters held 2.5MB and 8 inch floppies stored 128K (256K for double sided ones that you would turn over to use the other side.)

Most likely the most expensive removable memory I ever bought would have been for my HP-41C calculator. I think the memory modules were 4K and probably in the $60 price range. ($15,000/MB).

[kiwi]

yes, in 1998 for myself, 2 x 8meg SMARTMEDIA (remember those cards?) were close to 100 UK Pounds!! I had this amazing Fuji 1.3 megapixel camera that was worth a fortune! ha ha!

[guinness]

Spent about $75 for a 128 MB Smartmedia card, back in late 2001, a few months after that, got another for about $35, and when Smartmedia cards were on closeout at Best Buy, a third card for about $15.

A few weeks ago, I bought a 2 GB SD card for $15 after rebate. :lol:

[bnycastro]

I started using flash memory pretty late... 2001 I suppose. The most I've spent on flash memory is 5,800 PhP [about 120 USD at that time] for a 128Mb unbranded SD card that's about 1USD per Mb. Midway into this year I got myself a Transcend 150x 4Gb SD Card for 3,500 PhP [about 66 USD] sadly I changed PocketPCs and the Transcend card is left to my IXUS which I barely use anymore. :?

[pdantic]

In 1995 I purchased a 2MB card (CF, I think...) for a Motorola Envoy PDA. That was my first wireless PDA (my connectivity bills ran about $100 a month for a few emails...) and it ran the MagicCap OS. How much did I pay for that 2MB card? The receipt I'm holding here (yes, I hold onto this stuff) shows $234.95, or about $117.47 per MB.

Just the other day I purchased a 2GB SD for my digital recorder for $34.99, right about $0.017 per MB.

The most I've ever paid for RAM was about $500 for 512K of chips to populate a 640K memory card in a first generation IBM PC in 1983. It wasn't flash RAM, but that works out to about $1,000 per MB!

Steve