Complications of Flash Memory
I remember about three years ago when TechTV�s The Screensavers was actually a great show. I idolized Patrick Norton and when Pat made a system out of flash memory and it was about 2gigabytes of memory and that costs about a thousand dollars at the time but Patrick installed Windows on this computer and the thing was blazing fast without the seek times of a common hard drive and it required less power than traditional PCs.
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Let�s fast forward and now that memory costs significantly less per gigabyte and with the adoption in flash memory in the iPod shuffle and now iPod nano many media outlets are asking when flash memory is going to make it to our notebook computers. The price has gone from 600 dollars to 50 dollars per gigabyte and is still far from being close in price to magnetic spinning hard drives but many say the size, power consumption and reliability of flash makes it a great alternative in the next few years.
What are the problems with flash memory because everyone is talking about the great factors instead of issues that arise when using this kind of memory one being cost but if you can afford to put 40 gigabytes of flash memory in your laptop then I must remind you that right now when you swap out your batteries in that iBook it won�t be as easy if running flash since that type of memory keeps info only if it is powered. Apple will have to develop an internal battery that is pretty large to keep the flash memory powered.
Right now if my iBook goes down and I get a new one I can stick this hard drive into another device and transfer data but as a good example when the nano turns three years old then those early adopters will be having huge problems charging their batteries and when they put in a new battery themselves, the flash memory is going to forget everything and you will have to resync it with the computer. iPods and handhelds are not a big issue since the data is on the computer with a hard drive and ready to be accessed at any time but if Apple makes a flash based laptop I will buy it since it will carry a better form factor and longer battery life and more silence but I will put the OS on the computer and everything else will be going on my external hard drives cause I just don�t trust flash memory.
Put a solar cell on the lid of my computer to keep that flash memory charged because if I lose the data someone�s gonna feel some pain.
