As Gizmodo says, “swindled“Â That’s what we are all feeling when Tom’s Hardware determined solid state drives don’t save power, they slurp it up like a 64oz soda from 7-11.
The theory behind SSD (Solid State Drives) would be no moving parts, thus a big power savings. This thought process seemed particularely promessing for portable laptops. However, it seems the “moving parts” cousin – our traditional disk drives – do a better job at power management.
Tom’s Hardware is drawing some conclusions from their experiment. Since SSD has an “On or Off” mode this means when your laptop is on, that Solid State Drive is always drawing power; whereas, the old fashion disk drive only draws power when it’s searching for data and thus doesn’t always draw a certain level of power…in fact, these drives are optomized to only pull power at peak search times.
Not sure how much water this theory holds, as the disk drives always need power just to know when a request is being made, but hey, Tom’s Hardware has more resources [for both testing and experience] so I’ll take their word at face value for the moment.
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Despite many industry players believing both the memory card and USB drive markets are saturated, Kingston Technology company president John Tu recently said substantial business potential still exists.
Citing average monthly shipments of 20 million units for both memory cards and USB drives, Tu said the huge shipments imply that these markets are still growing. He thinks memory cards and USB drives serve as a “platform” for consumers to interact with different kinds of content.
While many people think memory device makers should pay digital content providers in order to add content to their products, Tu said it should be the providers paying Kingston to distribute content via its well-established sales network, brand and market share. He added in saying that shipments of both memory cards and USB drives are set to expand further in the future.
However, Kingston remains cautious about solid-state drives (SSDs). Tu stressed that the company will only tap into segments it is certain will grow, but once it extends a presence, it will produce in big volumes in order to grab a large share of the market quickly. Kingston believes this is the business strategy it is good at. He recalled the deployment in NAND flash as an example, saying that Kingston only made its decision when the market proved to have substantial potential.
Source + Photo: Digital Times.
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Sans Digital is delivering a dual Compact Flash design that might rival some solid state drives at half the cost and with significant benefits. What Sans Digital has come up with is putting two Compact Flash cards into a 2.5″ enclosure to make it look and feel like a SSD drive. Using two 16GB cards and some RAID configuration the dual flash memory becomes a 32GB hard drive. Although this isn’t the biggest drive size, it does rival entry level SSD storage devices.
So here’s the kicker; putting two high performance Sandisk Extreme III Compact Flash cards together would only cost a user about $360. Compare that cost outlay with a $860 SSD drive [of about the same storage size] and you’ve got yourself a clear winner on what direction to take.
“Unlike existing RAID units that employs hard drives for storage space, the CompactSTOR CS1T utilizes pocket-sized lightweight Compact Flash cards as storage memory for data safekeeping. Designed with the same size and connectors as a 2.5†SATA hard drive, the CS1T is compatible with the hard drive slot of laptops, industrial PCs (IPC), small form factor computers, and 2.5†hard drive enclosures.”
In addition, the Compact Flash configuration has lower power consumption and less noise and heat output. The only issue we see is the performance difference between the two. The entry level SSD storage units average [according to spec] about 90Mbytes/s write whereby the Sans Digital solution is about a 3rd less at 30Mbytes/s write speed.
The Sans Digital product is called the CompactSTOR and retails for about $45 for the dual bay Compact Flash base and enclosure, memory, of course, is sold seperately.
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Yes, you read it correctly. Ricky Martin and Kingston Technology have teamed together to bring one of the first music albums to the microSD format.
The Ricky Martin microSD card comes with exclusive preloaded music is a 1GB size that features 2 free songs, a video clip and photos from Ricky Martin’s Black & White tour.
The microSD card includes a USB reader so users can instantly access the card from a host computer or laptop, or connect the microSD card directly into their MP3 compatible phone or PDA.
Comment from Ricky Martin:
“I am very excited by the new avenues for sharing music that technology continues to provide,†said Ricky Martin. “I enthusiastically embrace these new formats. They mean global growth for not only my music — but for all music — and that’s why I’m very happy to form this alliance with Kingston.â€
Comment from Kingston rep:
“The microSD Ricky Martin Live Card from Kingston is an innovative way for savvy consumers to enjoy Ricky Martin’s music,†said Seth A. Schachner, Vice President, Digital Business Latin America, Sony BMG Music Entertainment. “It’s also a terrific, versatile product to boot.â€
Transcend continues their effort into the embedded systems applications with their most recent announcement of the SATA Flash Module. The high-speed SATA flash modules specifically designed for use in thin clients, blade servers, ultra-compact sub-notebooks and space-limited industrial installations allows Transcend to offer up their lightweight and compact SATA flash memory modules.
With solid-state flash memory being non-volatile and more robust than spinning hard disk solutions, it makes the SATA flash module ideal for harsher environments with more demanding applications, such as embedded systems, medial instruments, factory automation equipment, network infrastructure and other industrial equipment.
What I like most about flash memory modules is the low power consumption, shock and vibration resistance, longer data retention durability and instant access time (no spin up or seek times we traditionally see in HHDs).
Transcend’s SATA flash modules are offered in 1GB and 2GB capacities, in both vertical and horizontal versions to satisfy industrial application requirements.
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Not that a single rack mount unit which can record to CD or CF card is all that ground breaking, the conveninece of taking a live event and dumping to CF instantly is an interesting prospect. Once more, the TASCAM SS-CDR1 will convert CDDA audio from Compact Disc to Compact Flash.
The SS-CDR1 is designed for applications which previously used cassette or MiniDisc recording to transition those digital recordings the CD or Compact Flash cards. The SS-CDR1 records in WAVE or MP3 formats to Compact Flash media. A slot-loading CD transport is provided CD recording, MP3 conversion and audio transfer. The recorder includes balanced and unbalanced audio inputs and outputs, RS-232 and parallel control and a wired remote control.
Price for the SS-CDR1 is set at $599. WOW – that’s some serious hardware cost for a CF recorder.
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SanDisk is going faster than fast with their new Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo product. This new Memory Stick line from SanDisk is the fastest format of it’s kind. So what kind of speed are we talking about? How about 30MBs per second. Yep, MBs not Mbts per second. The sustained transfer speed for both reading and writing is static at 30MBs and it’ll be interesting to see if the spec is the same as the street [experience].
To put this figure in perspective, the non-HG Extreme III Memory Stick from SanDisk is only able to achieve an 18MBps transfer speed. This new memory card represents an increase of over 50%.
If you want to put that into perspective, check out a dated benchmark from a couple years ago. Boy how times have changed.
The SanDisk Sony Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo is expected to become available late next month with 4GB and 8GB sizes at prices between $90 and $150 respectively.
Source:Â MobileMag.com.
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Ya, that’s right…sometimes you need to crack your own flash memory. In this case, what if you have a password protected SD card? Well, the crafty fellows at USBFever have a solution which requires a USB port and a card reader adapter.
The USB Fever memory card unlocker is designed to crack your code and get back that flash memory you’ve been locked out from. The draw back, which I believe is appropriate punishment on forgetting your password, is the unlocker wipes your card clean of any data. If the data is that important you can send the flash card out to be serviced – but are pictures of your mother-in-law that important? Doubt it.
USB Fever memory card unlocker product page.
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I wrote about the differences of xD cards a while back, and today I found the end-all, be-all xD chart of compatibility. I wanted to pass this along as it seems many have questions about:
“What is the difference of xD cards?”
“What is Type M and Type H xD cards?”
Well, aside from my previous article, you can cross reference what xD card you’d like to buy with the camera you have to make sure there is 100% compatibility. Book mark the chart page (or book mark my page with the link) so you have a quick reference on xD card sizes and their difference.
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GFM posted about the Open Source Openmoko NEO phone which created a lot of buzz with our readers. Today I received an email stating you can now download the CAD files for the NEO phone industrial design.
What does this mean? Industrial design artists now have the same freedeom as software engineers in developing this great product. Now, by publishing mechanical CAD files, Openmoko frees industrial designers to fundamentally redesign
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Despite many industry players believing both the memory card and USB drive markets are saturated, Kingston Technology company president John Tu recently said substantial business potential still exists.
Citing average monthly shipments of 20 million units for both memory cards and USB drives, Tu said the huge shipments imply that these markets are still growing. He thinks memory cards and USB drives serve as a “platform” for consumers to interact with different kinds of content.
While many people think memory device makers should pay digital content providers in order to add content to their products, Tu said it should be the providers paying Kingston to distribute content via its well-established sales network, brand and market share. He added in saying that shipments of both memory cards and USB drives are set to expand further in the future.
However, Kingston remains cautious about solid-state drives (SSDs). Tu stressed that the company will only tap into segments it is certain will grow, but once it extends a presence, it will produce in big volumes in order to grab a large share of the market quickly. Kingston believes this is the business strategy it is good at. He recalled the deployment in NAND flash as an example, saying that Kingston only made its decision when the market proved to have substantial potential.
Source + Photo: Digital Times.
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