World's Fastest Flash Memory Card?

ResQuad writes "Digital Photography Review has an article about what is claimed as the fastest MMC Memory Flash Card. Not only is this new card 200% faster than any current SD card (rating it at about 22.5MB/s read), its also 2GB. Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?"

Comments

Media Playing

[anamexis]

Both these speeds and large capacities will become more and more important as we see better video capabilities come to the PDA market.

Re:Media Playing

[bn557]

Both these speeds and large capacities will become more and more important as we see better video capabilities come to the PDA market.

Are you in a writing class in college right now? that reads just like a well done thesis statement.

[end somone complimenting someone about grammar on slashdot]

Re:Media Playing

[Lord_Dweomer]

Exactly. I have quite a large anime collection in divX and I'm waiting until I can get a handheld with decent battery life and decent screen that can actually deal with me needing to constantly install updated codecs *cough*xvid*cough*. Anybody have any suggestions? I know Archos makes a video player, but I don't know how well it would do with needing to have constantly updated divx codecs and such.

Re:Media Playing

[Anonymous Coward]

The poster asked if anyone needs 2GB on a PDA ... obviously not a big live audio fan :)

Core Sound offers a PDA based digital audio recording system, with studio-quality 24/192 recording capability, based on CF. It basically plugs right into your IPAQ ... and it supports Linux!

Check it out! An excellent tool for capturing any kind of audio, really. Includes optical inputs and all that!

Like a western movie

[Izanagi]

1. Read
2. Store
3. Draw

BANG!!

Re:Like a western movie

[irokitt]

4. ????
5. Profit!

Good News...

[Piranhaa]

This is really good news for mini- formfactor systems. Some people just want to have a quiet PC without the noise and failure rate of a hard drive. The main thing holding people back is the performance of these cards, on top of the pricing. I wonder when entire computers will start switching to the fast access times of solid-state media like these!

Re:Good News...

[rodgerd]

What's wrong with a diskless client booting off a server? Especially in this day and age of NZ$300 gigabit switches...

Re:Good News...

[Piranhaa]

I mean the average Joe who just wants to setup a really small router (say a VIA Epia), or gets someone to set one up for him. He doesn't want some Linksys one, he wants to get say OpenBSD on there with AltQ. Joe isn't going to have the desire to setup multiple computers on his network to have one boot off of... That's all I'm trying to say :)

Re:Good News...

[bestguruever]

I'll buy the noise aspect, but flash is only good for a limitted number of writes so the failure rate is much worse.

Re:Good News...

[poot_rootbeer]

flash is only good for a limitted number of writes so the failure rate is much worse.

As opposed to Bernoulli hard drives, which have a MTBF of a million billion years...

Re:Good News...

[rodgerd]

I think you'll find Joes that average aren't muching about with OpenBSD and building bitty-boxen with CF hard drives. BICBW.

Flash Memory

[ctwxman]

Ask any digital photographer. Memory is like closet space. One can never have enough - never

Re:Flash Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why there will be a 12Gb version

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0405/04052601pretec 12 gb.asp

Re:Flash Memory

[slutdot]

My wife is a freelance photographer. On any given shoot, She'll go through at least 5 GB of pitcures and this is just for shots of homes that people are looking to sell. I followed her along on one of these this weekend and in about 15 minutes, she went through two 2 GB cards. This was just the interior of an empty 1500 sq. foot home. I couldn't believe it. She said it's much worse when she's shooting portraits. But like you said, there's never enough memory. This is especially true if you choose to shoot RAW images instead of JPEG or some other format.

In order to resolve this lack of space problem, she carries her laptop with her so she can clear the cards by dropping the pics on the laptop. It's a much cheaper (and safer in my opinion) solution than buying a single large card.

Re:Flash Memory

[Silver222]

A large RAW file on a Canon D10 is about 7 megabytes. She shot almost 600 images in 15 minutes?

Re:Flash Memory

[ashot]

yea, I think she is shooting waaaay to many pictures.. who the hell is going to look through all those photos? I have a 10D and I generally take the attitude, well if I just burst away, there will definately be some in there that are good pictures, but I have never taken 600 in 15 minutes..

Re:Flash Memory

[squaretorus]

I'm not meaning to question your wifes abilities, but taking hundreds (maybe 500 if my maths is right) photographs of an empty home seems to smack of a 'shoot now think later' mindset. And the 500 assumes you are taking relatively high res shots - something I can't imagine being important on 'sell my house' shoots.

Much better to spend those 15 minutes working out which 6 photos to take, then taking a small burst of each than to simply walk around being Miss Snap Happy.

Portrait shoots are similar - spend a bit of time working out what your going to aim for - and then take aim. Don't just shoot until you explode.

The Austin Powers piss-take of David Bailey isn't too far off the mark - apart from he misses the part where Bailey interviews and observes his subject for an hour before his 5 minute burst of 'yeah baby yeah'.

Re:Flash Memory

[Silver222]

A 10D takes more than 5 seconds to flush an image to the CF card...

Assuming 5 seconds (which is faster than I'd expect to get in real conditions) and shooting without pause, it would take about an hour for the camera to shoot that many RAW files. I know photographers that shoot action sports with a 10D, they don't shoot RAW because the camera just can't keep up.

Something just doesn't add up.

Re:Flash Memory

[Hittite Creosote]

Much better to spend those 15 minutes working out which 6 photos to take, then taking a small burst of each than to simply walk around being Miss Snap Happy.

How do you know she doesn't spend an hour going around the house and gardens before a 15 minute burst of taking photos? And I doubt six photos are enough to be sure you've got a good idea of a house - that'd be, what, one from the front, one from the back, one of the garden and only three from inside?

Re:Flash Memory

[Graff]

My wife is a freelance photographer. On any given shoot, She'll go through at least 5 GB of pitcures and this is just for shots of homes that people are looking to sell.
...
In order to resolve this lack of space problem, she carries her laptop with her so she can clear the cards by dropping the pics on the laptop.

She should get the 40 GB iPod and one of the Belkin accessories that allow you to transfer photos to an iPod without a computer. There's a media reader and one that connects through USB.

This combination would be much less bulky and awkward than having to lug around a laptop and overall it will save you money that you would normally spend on a ton of flash cards. Not to mention that juggling a laptop and a camera is just asking for something to fall and get damaged. Another benefit is that you can keep 5 MB or so of music on the iPod to use it as a music player and still have plenty of room for photos.

Re:Flash Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he meant 5MB, and his wife is doanloading the pics to a 386PC with a 40MB HD?

Re:Flash Memory

[Richard_at_work]

Where in the GPs post did he say she was using a 10D? The camera she owns may be able to keep up, the 10D isnt the be all and end all of cameras (despite what my work collegue would have you think).

Re:Flash Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, that's a 4.55MB photo every second for 15 minutes straight. I don't think so.

Re:Flash Memory

[jonhuang]

Look it up on the web---the ipod combo has horrid transfer speeds and user interface. Better to get a dedicated solution!

Re:Flash Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

She'll go through at least 5 GB of pitcures and this is just for shots of homes that people are looking to sell.

That is insane. if her photos are for the listing printouts, web or even TV ad's then she is shooting at way too high of resolution.. even a Canon D10 can reduce the image size to 1 megapixel equiliviant allowing you to shoot thousands of photos in a single 2gig CF card.

coming from someone that works with the people that have to deal with the photos taken of houses to be sold... the number one complaint is "why do these photographers feel that we need a 8 megapixel photo of something that we are going to scale down to less than 640X480?? it wastes time and bandwidth!"

I reccomend your wife talking to the people that actually have to deal with those photos, a much much lower res shot is more desireable than a 20megapixel behmoth.

finally there are CF card downloaders out there for around $300-$500US pop in the memory card, and it downloads the card to the internal 20 gig drive and erases the card. the photographer needs only 2, 512 meg cards to shoot like a lunatic all day long.

Re:Flash Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

It certianly is the baseline...

I am betting she is not shooting with a hassleblad or another extremely high end camera.

and anythign less than the digital rebel is a toy that will be laughed at.

I certianly hope she is not using any of the toys from sony or the other toymakers....

the digital rebel is the LOWEST end digital camera to be even considered for professional photography.

Re:Flash Memory

[thaddjuice]

Your wife should consider getting an iPod and either this or this. The first thing lets you hook your digital camera directly to the iPod and store your photos on it (since iPod works as a portable hard drive). The second one is a CompactFlash card reader that does the same thing.

2GB cards aren't cheap and $500 for a 40GB iPod plus one of these addons would make a lot of sense. I use the card reader one when I travel so that I don't have to lug my laptop with me.

Re:Flash Memory

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I know an application programmer that said that the data needed on the PDA came close to filling up a 1GB stick.

The latest developments are rarely for consumers. There are always some people that have a business need to get the latest and greatest, and can justify paying twice as much for 10% faster, or five times as much for twice as much space.

Sure, there are PDAs with multiple memory slots, but if the first slot is used by GPS for example, a two-slot PDA doesn't exactly leave much left for memory.

Re:Flash Memory

[squaretorus]

Having worked on property details production and publishing for over a dozen real estate agencies I'd be delighted to have 6 well thought out photographs for each property rather than a couple of CDs full of identicrap.

She can spend all day there if she wants - just dont send the fucking images to me until shes sorted out the crap from the usable.

Trust me - thats how the industry operates!

Re:Flash Memory

[gnireenigne]

Digital Rebel : Better known as the Canon 300D outside of USA.

Re:Flash Memory

[Cecil]

First of all, as a realtor it is quite likely that she is doing 360-panorama shots of each room to do a virtual tour. Realtors around here are doing it all the time. This requires a lot of pictures if you want to be able to stitch them together easily.

Secondly, shoot now think later is a valid photography mindset. Especially if you're on a fixed timeframe. A not-100%-perfect snapshot is better than not having had a chance to take a picture at all. With film, this was an expensive mindset but some did it anyway. With digital, there is no reason *not* to do so.

Re:Flash Memory

[minus9]

Presumably your suggesting that using film instead of digital you still need to take those 500 photographs to get any decent shots. At least now we have digital you no longer have to follow your wife around on holiday with the wheelbarrow full of film.

Re:Flash Memory

[Antihero77]

Now I won't have to get out of my neighbor's tree for hours!

Re:Flash Memory

[Graff]

the ipod combo has horrid transfer speeds and user interface. Better to get a dedicated solution!

Hmm, it does look like the solution is not as good as I assumed. I don't personally have the Belkin devices but they sounded like a good deal on paper.

I do know from personal experience that the iPod itself is wonderful but according to some of the user reports I just Googled for it looks like the Belkin devices fall short. Oh well, it was an idea...

Re:Flash Memory

[Cruciform]

As someone who worked in the darkroom of a newspaper, I can tell you that some photographers blew through film like there was no tomorrow.

It was less important to hunt for the "perfect shot" while out in the field, than to get the appropriate lighting and f-stop. Once you know the lighting and depth are good, going snap happy means you can look at the pics afterwards and choose the best images then.

Even if you're just shooting static images, every shot should be "bracketed" which means shooting above and below the target aperture setting, adding at least two images per shot. Might not matter if you're at the beach hanging out, but if it's for work, might as well do it right the first time.

Re:Flash Memory

[Sabalon]

Makes me think of the movie "The Paper" where they send some klutzy photographer out to get a picture of the two boys. She can't get through cause everyone else is getting shots and she ends up falling on the ground in front of them, they look at her and she either took the shot or the camera went off by accident - ended up being a great shot.

Just never know what you're gonna get and what will be good. Such as this classic

Re:Flash Memory

[nule.org]

I don't know if Canon makes one, but Nikon has a portable hard-drive device with a nice color LCD that can hold many gigs of images and let you preview them. One problem may be that the various RAW formats (Nikon's is called NEF) is incompatible between manufactures and even between cameras! (It's closely tied to the CCD or CMOS sensor used, from what I understand.) Anyway, for the previewing capability alone, something like this would be tremendous for someone that takes this quantity of pictures (though I'm guessing the author overstates exactly how much is being shot - my 6MP Nikon d70 could put at least 352 raw pictures in 4GB of flash, and I'd have a hell of a time shooting that many in 15 minutes (unless she was really cute)).

Re:Flash Memory

[Threni]

> Presumably your suggesting that using film instead of digital you still need to take those
> 500 photographs to get any decent shots. At least now we have digital you no longer
> have to follow your wife around on holiday with the wheelbarrow full of film.

Digital photography is different to conventional photography, so whereas using lots of expensive film would be hard to justify, there's no such problem with 500 pics on a digital camera. I can get over 500 pics out of my 256MB card if i lower the quality a little (around 120 on the highest setting), and if you're out and about you might not have the time to delete them as you go, or maybe the sun is too strong to check out the picture properly on the little LCD display. Photography is about luck as well as skill and you never know which of those 500 pics would be a classic. If you just take 10 or 20 you're reducing the odds hugely.

of corse not

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?

Does anyone need more than 64k of memory?

Re:of corse not

[Xii]

No, but 640k might be ;)

Re:of corse not

[zhenlin]

The standard joke is 640k, FYI.

However, 64k is the limit of addressable memory with 16 address lines. (Without brain-damaged crufty segmentation a la 286 (and some earlier x86))

What's interesting...

[ne0nex]

.. is the fact that the article says that it is backwards compatible with older MMC devices. I don't think this will be the case, I have a cheapo mp3 player for my phone (Sony Ericsson mp3 hands-free, the OLD one not the bluetooth one) and the device came with a 32 meg MMC, when i tried to get a 128 meg MMC card, it didn't work. Sony Ericsson said that the device is so old, that 128 meg MMC cards weren't even thought of. I doubt this 2 GIG MMC would work with this "older MMC device". Anyone else have the same experience?

Re:What's interesting...

[FRiC]

MMC and SD cards are not always compatible with all devices. You need to actually test the card in your device before buying the card or find a detailed compatibility list that lists the card compatibility by serial number. I have two phones that use MMC cards, one phone that uses SD cards, and a Pocket PC that uses SD cards, and due to compatibility problems, each one of those devices has its own memory card. The two SD cards are even the same brand, but are made by different manufacturers.

So much for using a single memory card across multiple devices.

Re:What's interesting...

[MJOverkill]

What they usually mean is that you will be able to use the card in older MMC devices, just not at full speed. You will be able to use the card at whatever speed your older device can attain. In your case though, it may have been a defect in that particular device. I have used newer memory cards with my older cameras and slot readers without any trouble.

Re:What's interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

What you're coming across is an addressing problem... the older devices just don't have the address space to talk to 2Gb of card. Some will fall back and operate with what they can address, some won't talk at all.

ie, my ancient mp3 player won't talk to a 64Mb card, but my Pioneer CDJ-1000 will quite happily use only 16Mb of it.

Re:What's interesting...

[kwalker]

Personally, I want to know if it's actually the thickness of an MMC card, or the thickness of an SD card. I've also got an MP3 phone, but it only handles the thinner MMC cards, I can't even get an SD card into the slot.

Re:What's interesting...

[Ark42]

Honestly, this is why I stick to CF. Recently bought a new digital camera and my method of picking the camera out was to just walk in to circuit city and eliminate all the non-CF cameras. Ended up with the Canon Powershot G5. My very old 1 megapixel camera takes CF and it has no problem seeing any CF cards I have, even the brand new ones. Isn't the pin-out for CF the same as IDE, and the file system just a basic FAT16? Sure it might run into a limit at 2.1G if the device doesn't support FAT32, but I think most CF devices will use FAT32.

Re:What's interesting...

[fbjon]

That's a particularly stupid way of selecting a camera, but luckily the powershots aren't bad. Anyhow, SD and XD cards seem to get more common than CF these days, so you better think again next time.
For reference, my Panasonic FZ-10 takes SD cards, even though it's quite a big camera. The Really Huge cameras that I've taken a look at use both CF and SD.

Re:What's interesting...

[Vengeful weenie]

Well, I'd be interested in two things:

1. Does compatable mean that older devices can transfer at the full speed fo the card, since it says it can transfer 4 bits in parallel) ?
2. If so, can my Palm Tungsten C's processor transfer data to the port fast enough?

Re:What's interesting...

[Ark42]

Whats stupid about it when I have a stack of CF cards, CF readers, and use CF like large floppy disks? I didn't just randomly pick from the CF cameras, but I didn't even consider any non-CF ones.

Re:What's interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

CF memory cards can be put into a mode known as "TrueIDE" where they can be directly hooked to an IDE controller, but it's not always operating like that.

However, CF is really PCMCIA which is really ISA...and IDE was meant to be "AT attachable" via the ISA bus...so they're pretty closely related. A CF memory card typically responds to commands which are basically IDE commands too.

The file system on the card is of course dependant on the camera...

Re:What's interesting...

[fbjon]

Ah, but that's a different case. If you already have the equipment there's no reason to make a costly switch. The point was, you said that since SD cards have this wearout problem, it's exactly the reason why you use CF cards, and didn't consider SD. No? Anyway, the original point was that CF cards have wearout problems too, don't they?

Re:What's interesting...

[Lord Kano]

I remember when the original Playstation was at the top of its game there was a memory card maker who made an ENORMOUS card for them. It tricked the PS into thinking that it was 8 different cards. Maybe these MMC cards will do something similar for older devices. Something along the lines of a dip switch come to mind.

LK

Re:What's interesting...

[FRiC]

MMC and SD have different pinouts and thicknesses, plus SD cards have a write-protect switch. SD devices can read MMC but not vice versa. If your device only supports MMC, then it won't do SD.

Re:What's interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

limited filesystem sizes can affect any media type, including CF. it depends on how the controller/interface/whatever is implemented. I have a VGA resolution camera that can only support up to 32 meg CF cards. I cant recall what happened when I tried a 128 meg card. it either complained about an invalid card or just recognized 32 meg of it. The limit is probably caused by not including enough address bits for the controller.

Re:What's interesting...

[Phillup]

I use CF cards because of what they don't offer... Secure Data/Digital capabilities.

I don't want someone telling me I can't copy stuff to or from the card because it is "secured" due to copyright.

If I want my data "secured"... then I'll use the "appropriate" level of encryption.

But, it will be my choice... not some multimedia conglomerate's.

Re:What's interesting...

[Mr.Sharpy]

The good thing about CF is that if companies stop advancing the format, its so large an adapter can easily be made to use your SD card in a CF slot. Sometimes bigger is better.

Re:What's interesting...

[glesga_kiss]

SD cards do not have this limitation. The addressing system takes place entirely on the card IIRC. All the device does is says "give me this file" and the card sends it the bytes. In theory any device made today (software bugs withstanding) should be able to take any size of card.

There are bound to be some hard limits on things like directory listing sizes, file system depths and max individual file size, but don't quote me on these!

DNA

[Yonkeltron]

Good! I am glad we have 2GB available. I am sick of carying a copy of the Human Genome on my Ipod.

Re:DNA

[dnahelix]

I carry billions of copies of mine.

i would love 2 GB

[SKPhoton]

I run Familiar linux on my iPaq. My ipaq has a mere 32 megs of flash ram. While this is enough for familiar, X, and a few applications, it gets filled up quickly. Once you start adding lots of packages, that 32 megs gets filled up very quickly. In order to get more space, I move all the binaries to an SD card.

Having 2 gigs available to store packages, not to mention music and even movies would be fantastic, especially for long trips.

Re:i would love 2 GB

[fpga_guy]

I run Familiar linux on my iPaq

Can you point me to a good summary of the status of Linux on iPAQ? WiFi support, all that? I'm drooling over a Linux PDA, but iPAQ hardware is more available - and I'll be damned if I use WinCE under any circumstances.

I am an embedded linux developer, so am not afraid of hacking, just want a decent base to work from. Have one kernel port up my sleeve, not ready to start another one yet! :-)

Travelling to USA in just over a week will be a good opportunity to pick up a good Linux-capable iPAQ at a fraction of the cost buying it here in Oz.

Thanks,

Re:i would love 2 GB

[SKPhoton]

Can you point me to a good summary of the status of Linux on iPAQ?

Sure, check out the FAQ's on handhelds.org. There's plenty of good sites out there to keep you reading.

About WiFi support, I've had good success using a compact flash prism2-based 802.11b card. One of my roommates uses an orinoco gold pc card for wifi on his linux ipaq.

Re:i would love 2 GB

[torpor]

Whatever you do, before you buy an iPaq, check out the Sharp Zaurus first. You might find a C860 or so, in the U.S., pretty cheap ... and there is nothing quite so cool as running something like Pocket Workstation or Open Embedded, or any of the other various distro's for Zaurus that are available...

iPaq is nice. But with the Zaurus you have a lot more hacking potential, and a wider range of distro styles to choose from ... so at least check the Zaurus before you go iPaq...

Re:i would love 2 GB

[Anonymous Coward]

and dont forgot this, you dont have to pay the Microsoft tax when you get a Zaurus (dont get my wrong tho, i like my Ipaq 3870, just felt a bit raped because it came with windows)

Re:i would love 2 GB

[SkjeggApe]

I have a Zaurus SL-5500 w/ a CF wifi card running the OpenZaurus/Opie firmware, and I can say it's pretty damn solid for me. I'm currently in the process of turning it into a "Universal" remote for my HTPC also running Linux, and at some point try doing VOIP, etc, etc on it in addition to other "traditional" PDA functions.

memory drives

[penguinoid]

I liked the idea of using memory instead of a hard drive (esp. for a laptop), except that now I started using several Gb of hard drive :-( Although I suppose a system would work out that almost never uses the disk.

Too bad they aren't cheaper.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's nice to see the flash memory go up in size. II want a computer with solid state HDs and flash memory. But then again, I don't want to pay $25,000 for it either.

Re:Too bad they aren't cheaper.

[MoonBuggy]

If you're looking to put flash memory into a full size box then it won't matter if you use 2GB cards or a whole lot of 128MB cards. By my calculations it's about $400 for 1GB of SD memory (assuming you buy it in 128MB blocks). That's $4800 for 12GB of solid-state memory, about 1/3 of the price of a 12GB CF card (or less when buying in bulk).

A system could easily be run on 12GB total, and assuming bulk discounts that's $5000 for a decent machine running without a HD.

Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?

[saha]

Not yet, but people are ripping out the 4GB Microdrive from the iPod minis for their digital cameras. One of the biggest bottleneck for digital photography is the write speed. The XD standard is an attempt to address this issue. This new fast memory is a step in the right direction. I'd like to see 25MB RAW images generated by a camera shooting 4fps writing without delay onto memory. Thats when I'll sell my Nikon 90s and fully convert to digital.

Re:Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?

[grendel_x86]

They arnt doing this w/ iPod minis, they are using CL muvos. The iPods HDs are modified physically to prevent this, the muvo's on the other hand, is not.

So can buy a $400 mp3 player, for the $500+ hd for your DSLR, and then ebay off the mp3 shell for $50.

If somebody has figured out how to rewire the iPod, it hasnt been on any of the photo forums, unlike the muvo guides.

Re:Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the same company is also going to offer a 12GB CF card, and even that's not big enough for some of us (although the $14,000 pricetag is definitely too much).

Re: Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?

[Anonymous Coward]

How great will that be, if a PDA could finally have a dictionary and encyclopedia built-in!!!

And how about an informaton please alamanac and other reference material???

I think that would be the bomb, it would be so useful during big games of scrabble, to avoid having to get up and page through a dictionary.

Yes.

[rodgerd]

Unless, of course, you want to tote your PDA, iPod, PSP, and some sort of mobile video player.

PDAs are no longer just about taking notes (and, indeed, haven't been for some time). They're general purpose computers.

ALso note that you can now get 12 GB GF cards.

Re:Yes.

[hdd]

You meant CF, right?

Re:Yes.

[rodgerd]

Ayuh.

Re:Yes.

[Zardus]

ALso note that you can now get 12 GB GF cards.

Do these cards require a Blade Server-style plugin deal? If so, which way to they plug in, and what "ports" are on the open side?

Re:Good News... (or not)

[attemptedgoalie]

Aren't there a set number of accesses that a flash memory device can handle before they're toast?

I think that's what is holding back adoption of flash based PCs. Screw the expense, if the thing can't have a drive failure, some industries will buy it.

More tech info needed

[hdd]

Move on guys, this is nothing more than a press release. Unless someone one can provide more info on exactly whis is inside that is making it faster or some REAL benchmark results.

fast, large flash cards

[belmolis]

Large, fast flash cards like this are good for high-quality (no lossy compression) portable audio recording too. Right now the larger capacity devices are PCMCIA hard drives, but they have a larger form factor and are less convenient and probably more subject to mechanical shock too.

I need this!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?"

pr0n, sweet, glorious, mobile pr0n.

"Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?"

[Trogre]

Sure, I do.

That way I could happily carry around over 500 high-quality oggs wherever I go, as opposed to the 60 or so I get with my current 256MB card.

Great for those long car rides.

Oh yes, I want it

[orthogonal]

Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?

I don't need, but i want it.

Since my Archos broke down, and the "repair shop" "fixed" it -- "fixed" it so it will never work again -- I've been using my Zaurus PDA as an MP3 player.

I can get about six or seven albums*, in MP3 format, on the 512 MB SD card, so the 2 GB would give me room for about 24 albums.

And I see that this new card is faster, which will be nice: getting all those MP3s on the card does take a while.

Any idea how much the 2GB card will retail for?

*
./Opera/D'Oyly Carte Opera Company/H.M.S. Pinafore (1930) (update)
./Opera/D'Oyly Carte Opera Company/The Very Best of Gilbert and Sullivan (2 CD set)
./Opera/D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
./Opera
./Classical/Ludwig van Beethoven/Symphony no 3 in E flat major, Op. 55 Eroica
./Classical/Ludwig van Beethoven/Symphony no 9 in D minor, Op. 125 Choral
./Classical/Ludwig van Beethoven
./Classical/Brightest Heaven of Invention Flemish Polyphony of the High Renaissance (New London Chamber Choir)
./Classical/Aston Magna/J.S. Bach_ A Musical Offering
./Classical/Aston Magna
./Classical

Re:Oh yes, I want it

[.com b4 .storm]

P> Since my Archos broke down [...] Any idea how much the 2GB card will retail for?

Probably more than a replacement Archos.

Re:Oh yes, I want it

[Anonymous Coward]

1.5 more gigs, and you can get the rest of the Time-Life "I Love Classical Music" series on your PDA!

one giant leap for PDA media

[antimatt]

In five years, when everyone has a PDA with 50GB of solid state storage space, we'll look back at this and wonder why we ever wondered about it. Yes, we WILL eventually need (or at least perceive that we need) this much space.

As things stand, it frustrates me that I can only store approximately one movie trailer on my PDA. This is just the expected step forward. There will be more to come; I anticipate it all with great anticipation.

Re:one giant leap for PDA media

[Anonymous Coward]

>As things stand, it frustrates me that I can only store approximately one movie trailer on my PDA

Man, you need to get out more. So what? Is the inability to store a movie trailer ruining your life? What is the matter with people these days?

Re:one giant leap for PDA media

[Lumpy]

and yet tens of thousands of people get work done fine with their old palm PDA's with 4-16 meg of storage.

oh and they will still be able to do the same thing in 10 years.

Applications do not, contrary to popular belief, need to do everything plus have full DVD quality mpeg movie help files as well as play system sounds in 96Kbps DVDAusio quality in 8.1 surround sound from your PDA!

My zaurus is the most powerful PDA you can buy, and the limiting factor is NOT the data I am carrying, but the battery life and the limitation to the amound of Video and Audio I can carry around.

1 64meg CF card carries all of my technical files, my timesheets from the past year, tons of reference photos at SANE resolutions (only a moron carries a 8meg photo on a display with 640X480 resolution.. take a good refrence photo and other shots for detail and save 80% of that space.)

Hell I use it for my daily travel diary... I have transferred over 3 years worth of diary entries into there.

no you will never NEED gobs of space in your PDA. Want it? sure... I'd love to carry a few episodes of Futurama or other shows off my mythbox when I travel.... but it certianly is not a need. I can do my work great with 1/10th the PDA I currently have.

quick cards

[SKPhoton]

Is there a need for speedy memory cards? Absolutely!

Think about sports photographers. They definitely need quick cards to save the last picture and be ready for the next play. Never underestimate the importance of timing in digital photography.

Re:quick cards

[hdd]

Most high end digi camera can already store large of pics in its frame buffer, so unless if you take more than 30 pics (which is most than enough for sport event etc.), fast memory card like this one would give you any signifcant performence boost.

Re:quick cards

[nick0909]

Except from what I understand those buffers take a ton of battery power and if you could go right to the card fast enough it would eliminate some of the parts inside. Smaller, lighter, faster. It can be better.

Re:quick cards

[thisissilly]

I think your 30 pics is optimistic. Cameras like the Canon D60 only do 8 frames before slowing down because they are writing to the card. Having a faster memory card is better for those situations. I shoot dance, not sports, but I'd still like for the frame buffer to empty faster.

Re:quick cards

[rgmoore]

Having a big cache is nice, but it's not a substitute for fast write speed. Your picture taking speed is ultimately limited to how fast you can write the pictures to your memory card. If it takes 2 seconds to write one picture, your average speed can't be faster than 30 pictures per minute. A cache might let you take those 30 pictures in a single 4 second burst, but then you'll have to wait to write the cache out to your memory card before you can take another one. Fast write speed is still very important.

Re:quick cards

[tupps]

The Canon EOS 1D Mark 2 is probably the fastest camera I have heard of for continous shooting. It can burst 40 jpeg shots (20 Raw) before it needs to write them to the memory card. While this is impressive it is also capable of 8.5 frames a second so it could be all gone in just under 5 seconds. This is also a 8.2 mega pixel camera as well so there must be a fair bit of ram in the thing.

http://web.canon.jp/Imaging/eos1dm2/html/specifi ca tions.html

Re:Wonder how much it costs

[cbreaker]

What happens to anything if you lose it?

What kind of question is that?

Music?

[moberry]

Mot only video, but with 2GB or more of storage. a PDA will make a fully featured music player. Windows Media player is fine for this. Quite possibly in the near future manufacturers will market PDA's not only for office, and email use but for portable auido.

Re:Music?

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows Media? Don't support proprietary formats. If not OGG, MP3.

Re:Music?

[irokitt]

If it costs less than the iPod, I know I would probably bite. Flash cards are inconvenient compared to a hard drive based player, but the niche is there. Right now, the chioce is between flash-based players like the Muvo (at 64-512 MB) and the iPod (more than 2 gigs but expensive). Something in the 2 GB range would close the gap. Make it 802.11 capable, and you could shop for online music right from the player.

Of course, I'd assume it will play Ogg Vorbis, right?

Re:Music?

[kbranch]

Flash cards are inconvenient compared to a hard drive based player, but the niche is there.

How can a flash card possibly be more inconvenient than a hard drive based player? Is drawing more power and breaking after a fairly minor fall now convenient?

Are you referring to the need to insert the card after you buy it as opposed to the iPod where it comes with the hard drive already installed? If so, how can the ability to easily upgrade the storage compare to the minimal effort of putting the card in for the first time?

Re:Music?

[chgros]

Of course, I'd assume it will play Ogg Vorbis, right?
I actually play music on my Zaurus (it's mostly ogg), since my computer (though a laptop) is VERY noisy. I only have a 128MB card though, so I make a playlist (using Gjay) every night and have a script copy the files to the card. It works nicely (though the opie media player is buggy, notably it has what is probably a nasty memory leak, and is always killed when I turn the thing back on the next day. Also when it has a problem with a file, it stops instead of just skipping)

Re:Music?

[irokitt]

The "inconvenience" stems from the fact that 2 GB is nowhere hear large enough to hold much of my music collection (upwards of 10 GB, and some of my friends have more than twice that much on their computers). A hard drive player can hold your entire library. Since most transfer methods for PC-to-flash have yet to realize the full potential of the USB 2.0 or Firewire interfaces, I would have to spend quite a bit of time swapping that flash card in and out of my computer and waiting for files to transfer.

That said, the ability to shop for music at the local wireless hotspot and then play directly from a device would be sweet, and it's a capability the iPod/iTunes service can't match yet (if it ever will).

Re:Music?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's talking about the available storage, jaskass. Despite what your girly says, size does matter ;) A 128meg player may be able to run for 50 hours on a pair of AA's (grabbin' figures out of the air here), but who care's if you have only 1 hour's music on it!?

Re:Music?

[HybridJeff]

You mean Im not the only one with a Zaurus :) It does work great as an audio player (video too), but I tend to use mp3s alot more than ogg's mainly because thats the format all my music is already in.

My only gripe with it as an audio player is the size, its great if your sitting, or not moving around much, but try to take it on a run and the size becomes a bit cumbersome. Although I guess its not any worse than the portable CD player I used to carry around. I guess as portable devices have kept getting smaller over the years, ive came to expect better.

Re:Music?

[Snarph]

Of course, I'd assume it will play Ogg Vorbis, right?

Depends on the application. I think the not-so-free version of PocketMusic will play Ogg Vorbis files.

PocketMVP will definitely play them (I'm listening to one right now)

Re:Music?

[dekeji]

Quite possibly in the near future manufacturers will market PDA's not only for office, and email use but for portable auido.

Manufacturers already have, for several years. That was one big selling point of Sony's Clie line. Sony even offers a digital VCR that can record television shows onto memory stick, for your viewing pleasure on your PDA.

Re:Music?

[nametaken]

I think the mp3 / pda hybrid concept isn't being worked like it should. It's a great idea that isn't getting pushed hard enough. On the email and browsing front however.. I think we need better, faster, cheaper connectivity options. I'll buy a new pda when pdas become small palmtops with fast, CHEAP wireless and tons of storage for my music. The storage part looks feasible now... so we just need way better connectivity. Seeing as you can't FIND a good cellphone company as it is, I don't see a serious wireless access option coming along any time soon. C'mon, streaming internet radio and complete mp3 library in one device would be pretty wicked if I don't have to mortgage my house to pay the wireless bill.

Re:Music?

[pimpin apollo]

That or running an entire system off of an embeded card. Does anyone have any experience with systems that run off of flash media? How do they compare speed wise?

Re:Music?

[nihilogos]

Windows Media player is fine for this

Bloody windows users. I'll be using xine and xmms on my OpenZaurus PDA thankyou very much.

Re:Music?

[orthogonal]

It works nicely (though the opie media player is buggy, notably it has what is probably a nasty memory leak, and is always killed when I turn the thing back on the next day. Also when it has a problem with a file, it stops instead of just skipping)

I use xmms on my Zaurus, mostly because the whole display isn't the damned buttons -- I can actually see a decent ten lines of the playlist.

xmms version 0.00005pre1 (yes, it's ridiculous to use ten-thousandths in versioning) works on the 5600 Sharp ROMs, but will abend on files it has problems with -- I've been able to fix some files by re-writing the ID3 tags. Streams can be played (assuming you've got a way to connect to the stream source, like networking over WiFi) if the stream's url is suffixed with :mp3 (and assuming it's an MP3 stream, of course). Another problem is that xmms will wait nearly forever, blocking user input to the app, if the network connection goes down; a SIGABORT to wake it or a SIGKILL and restart are required. Playback is something of a strain on the CPU, enough to notice on some realtime games; although doom/prboom doesn't doesn't noticeably slow down, other SDL-based games do.

xmms version 0.00007 will work on Sharp ROM 5600s too, but with a lot of Qtopia GUI stupidity -- I removed it after I discovered that launching it required a script, and thus the Qtopia GUI didn't correctly "register" the GUI instance, creating all sorts of permissions problems and the running multiple instances.

If you do use xmms, I suggest the apple-look skin (macos-something-or-other), and manually blanking the the screen to conserver power (either using an applet or this script:
#!/bin/sh
sudo -u zaurus qcop QPE/System 'setBlankLCD(int)' 1).

Re:Music?

[anonicon]

Call me silly, but outside of its possible use for video storage due to its high-speed transfer, this 2GB MMC card is completely frigging DUMB when compact flash cards are already available at 4GB and soon 12GB.

Research and development into Compact Flash cards is already kicking any other flash format's butt, with low-cost, under-$200 4GB cards on the shelves today via the Muvo 2, and the recently announced 12GB compact-flash card that's finished testing and will move into the market by late 2004. That's 4GB you can already stick into any Type II compact-flash compatible PDA, and you'll have a "PDA (that) will make a fully featured music player" today.

As far as manufacturers who will market PDAs for portable audio, maybe, but every PDA dealer I've spoken with (over 5 of them) in the last year+ hasn't made that connection between their PDAs and multi-GB CF storage at all. Methinks they know the PDA field well, but have issues thinking outside the PDA field.

Re:Music?

[anonicon]

"Right now, the chioce is between flash-based players like the Muvo (at 64-512 MB) and the iPod (more than 2 gigs but expensive). Something in the 2 GB range would close the gap. Make it 802.11 capable, and you could shop for online music right from the player."

Two words - Creative Labs Muvo 2. 4GB compact flash mp3 player, $199, drag-and-drop support without "music management software," and very high ratings from the people who've bought it.

As for shopping online, everything sold online except for eMusic comes with DRM, and only the iPod supports AAC. If you're not happy with the prospect of buying iTunes music, *then* transcoding it to MP3 so that any non-iPod player can play it, you should just buy an Ipod. Just don't forget to buy that $59 Apple Care for three years of coverage, or else when your iPod battery dies after twelve months, you'll need to shell out $99 to have it replaced.

Re:Music?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most embedded telecom equipment runs from FLASH based media. The image is generally copied to RAM for execution (as it would from a disk). Generally, the read times on FLASH media can be very very quick do to zero seek times and no wait for sectors to rotate under the heads. I worked on a distributed telecom application (five to forty processors) that went from power on to carrying traffic in about one minute thirty seconds. The kernel on most of the processors was up and loading apps in about seven seconds. So yes, FLASH based media can be quite useful. Write times, and in particular, erase times, are the problem. Depending on your usage profile you can choose to use NAND technology or NOR technology. Each has very different erase and write behavior. Neither is purely superior in all applications, so choosing based on usage is important.

Re:Music?

[Da_Weasel]

Ack! I freaking hate Qt! I can't wait to finish working on a gtk+2 based image. I was thinking the modular version of X at freedesktop.org would be good also and maybe waimea as the window manager. It gonna take some time to learn more about embedded environments though, since i've only be a PDA user for 2 weeks.

Re:Music?

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

I purchased a Kingston 5GB Datapak PCMCIA hard drive for my iPAQ and it makes a great music player AND movie player and still has room left for pr0n!

I put it in a black leather case from the fine folks at Vaja Cases and although it's a lot bulkier than an iPod, it's much more useful to me.

Re:Music?

[Anonymous Coward]

The "inconvenience" stems from the fact that 2 GB is nowhere hear large enough to hold much of my music collection (upwards of 10 GB, and some of my friends have more than twice that much on their computers).

Amateurs.

Come back and post when you have 100GB (plus a few binders full of DVD-Rs).

Re:Music?

[glesga_kiss]

upwards of 10 GB, and some of my friends have more than twice that much on their computers

Twice that? I'm pushing 70 GB now, too big for even an ipod. Choosing what to convert to my 256MB SD-card is a major pain!!

Of course, I only carry one device with me, that acts as a PDA, organiser, mobile phone and internet device. Despite being a complete gadget geek, I like to travel light and combining everything into my phone, which I've carried everywhere for 10 years anyway, makes perfect sense.

I genuinely believe devices like ipods are a passing fad. Not that there won't be devices like them in future, just that they'll converge with other things. Lets face it, there's a lot of common functionality between your phone, PDA and ipod. Each has a battery, processor and memory. The cost of including new features will always be preferable to separate devices. Once you have the hardware to do this, all it takes is the right software to do different things. Carrying all this including a laptop hard-drive just to play music seems insane to me.

Re:Music?

[acroyear]

its the "no moving parts" thing that makes me prefer my 256 (total) nomad2 over any of the hard drive or cdrom based players.

in walking around or riding on planes, cars, the subway, etc, things bump around a LOT, and eventually one of those bumps will kill the hard drive, just like one of those bumps is all it takes to destroy a cd playing in your car (hence the reason many of us make copies of cds strictly for auto use).

so even though i have the disadvantage of having to plan out what i might want to hear in the next 4 hours, the safety of knowing i'm not going to lose a $150 hard drive because of one stupid pothole is more than enough for me to keep what i've got.

Re:Music?

[carlos_benj]

Call me silly, but outside of its possible use for video storage due to its high-speed transfer, this 2GB MMC card is completely frigging DUMB when compact flash cards are already available at 4GB and soon 12GB.

OK Silly. Stop thinking "PDA", especially when the original post mentions photography. One of the bottlenecks in digital photography is the speed at which the card can be written to. In some cameras each shot can be stored both as a Jpeg and RAW image. Burst rates, which are useful for action shots/photojounalism, are effected by the slow transfer speeds.

Re:Music?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, there are probably all kinds of uses for this kind of storage, you just need to think them up. As a photographer, I know that these cards are very valuable to any serious photographer.

Take the new Canon digital SLR the 1D Mark II. It shoots 8 megapixal frames at a rate of 8.5 frames per second. Raw images from this camera can be upwards of 10 Megabytes per image (actually usually larger) so that is 85 megabytes per second. Now most photographers shoot for more than one second, so you can see that these massive storage cards are absolutely necessary.

Also the speed at which these cards operate is very important. The 1d Mark II has a buffer that stores images before they are written to the card so it can shoot faster (and write during and after shooting) now faster cards means that the buffer clears more quickly allowing photographers to shoot frames more quickly after filling the buffer.

Aside from photography there are probably tons of other uses for cards like these. The uses are just beyond imagination right now.

Re:Music?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know where you people buy your hard drives, but I've dropped my 40G drive (with USB adapter attached but no case) a dozen times at least. There's even a small surface dent in the case in one plcae where it landed on something hard. I can't imagine an MP3 player with less than 20G+ ever actually being used seriously (their users are the equivalent of people with factory stereo systems in their cars). Also, for $150, you can buy at least 3 40GB 2.5" drives, so if you're paying $150 please contact me offline, I have so drives I'd like to sell you......

Memory card as computer storage

[fembots]

Recently I have been pondering about using my 512MB SD card as a permanent storage for my computer, so that I can install applications and games and run off it.

However, after further investigation, and the stats from this article, memory card is still too slow for day-to-day computing usage.

USB2.0 is about 480mbps (~60MB/s), so the bottleneck is now with the memory card.

So I guess the fastest is still not fast enough.

Re:Memory card as computer storage

[esilva]

Actually perhaps games is not the right application for this but think of embedded systems. Still the maximum read/write limitation is yet to be overcome but one day it will...

Re:Wonder how much it costs

[hdd]

I suppose you can get insurance for it as well. BTW, it's fairly safe as long as you keep it with your device (camera, ppc, etc), unless someone want to steal it purposly or you tend to loss things regardless of their sizes.

Ext3 journal

[j1m 5n0w]

That thing's almost as fast as a hard drive. I wonder if it would be possible to use it to store the journal file for ext3, to avoid writing data out to the hard drive twice. Or maybe it could be used to hold the swap partition (no seek time == fast page faults), though buying more ram would no doubt be cheaper.

-jim

Re:Ext3 journal

[tepples]

I remember that some servers store a filesystem journal on flash memory. However, flash memory does wear out eventually, and if you accumulate enough journal over the life of a flash card to fill the card 100,000 times over (rather likely if you're doing data journaling such as in a database application), you'll need a new flash card. How fast do typical file systems accumulate journal data?

Re:Ext3 journal

[smcavoy]

well afaik the journal is updated before and after each write operation. that would equal a lot. I believe most flash memory is usable for 1m writes in total.

Re:Ext3 journal

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather buy more RAM than a FLASH-based swap drive.

Re:Ext3 journal

[David Gould]

My answer to Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA? was going to be, "No, not really (not yet, anyway), but I wouldn't mind a laptop with an array of maybe a dozen of these cards instead of a hard drive."

Let's all pause for a collective *drool* over the thought of a laptop with no HD. Mmmmm... silent. Mmmmm... longer battery life. Mmmmm... less heat.

Also, imagine these in a RAID (though I guess neither the "I" nor the "D" is applicable, and maybe not necessarily the "R"). I gather these things are "almost as fast as a hard drive" on throughput, but actually much faster on latency (like you said, no seek time).

And the way I figure, putting storage devices in an array can help a lot with throughput but only slightly with latency. RAID gives you a slight probabilistic improvement in latency because the distance to the block you want is random in each drive and you get to send each request to the drive that happens to be closer, but that only goes so far before you hit the general principle that "9 women can make 9 babies in 9 months, but they can't make 1 baby in 1 month".

But since these things are already low-latency, and throughput is the only problem, you could make an unbelievably fast RAID 0+1 with, say, 50-way striping over 2-way mirroring (or any of the fancier schemes like RAID 3 or 5). Let's have another *drool*, shall we?

The poster isn't very creative...

[centralizati0n]

I could imagine plenty of uses.

- Digital movies / replacement iPod
- Complete Linux system for the iPaq or any other linux-capable handheld, including bunch of window managers, web browsers, the full deal...
- uh... pictures?
- Very detailed handheld games
- Portable databases needed for business and whatnot
...

The list goes on.

Re:The poster isn't very creative...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if only they could come up with a 100GB version for my Pr0n ...

Re:The poster isn't very creative...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, the uses you're giving are:

- Digital movies (Pr0n)
- Linux system including web browsers (to find Pr0n)
- Pictures (of Pr0n)
- Very detailed handheld games (Like BukkakeMaster 1.0)
- Databses needed for business (keeping track of your Pr0n subscriptions)

Looks like it'll work!

pda mp3 player

[ctour]

2 gigs would be pretty nice on a pda if you used it to play mp3s.

Re:MOD ME UP, CREATIVE BILL GATES IS DUMB JOKE

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD PARENT DOWN, thou art completely redundant:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=109929&cid=9 33 2148

Try using Pocket PC 2003 SE

[Anonymous Coward]

dumbass

The problem...

[baywulf]

I work at a company that makes flash memory card components. Often the problem is not the card speed but that of the interface it plugs into. That USB 2.0 card reader may say it goes at 480 Mb/s but they never say anything about the media interface which is much slower. We really have to search hard to find a fast card reader.

Re:The problem...

[sakusha]

Read the Pretec website, they also released an MMC 4.0 spec memory card reader. Wouldn't be a very useful memory card if there wasn't a compatible reader.

Re:MOD ME UP, CREATIVE BILL GATES IS DUMB JOKE

[Anonymous Coward]

at least I got the size right, you jackass

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Construction worked called to National Geographic HQ offices to patch holes in walls, made when photographers heard this news and sprang raging hardons that destroyed surrounding drywall.

Hell yes I want that much storage on my pda

[StormyWeather]

My treo 600 is like a lifeline for me. I have it loaded with about 50 mb of applications now, and quite a few pictures. Also I use it to store files and transfer them from computer to computer. I don't even have enough room on a 128 mb stick for more than a few mp3's when I'm done with all the other junk on there.

Flash wear leveling

[tepples]

Aren't there a set number of accesses that a flash memory device can handle before they're toast?

Isn't there a set number of revolutions that a hard drive's bearings can take before it's toast?

An individual sector on a quality flash card will last for 100,000 writes. The competing "multi-level" flash technology, while slightly leading binary flash in capacity, lasts only about 10,000 writes. If you're curious, here's the difference. Don't worry too much: CompactFlash cards perform wear leveling, which uses some spare sectors to make sure that no single sector gets overwritten overly often.

Re:Flash wear leveling

[attemptedgoalie]

So there!

(nice answer) :-)

Re:Flash wear leveling

[Erwos]

I suppose if you're really worried about write limits, you can also use JFFS (I think that's the one!), which also tries to minimize/spread the writing. I really doubt you'll have too much of an issue, especially if you use the CF for the OS and apps, and an ultra-quiet hard drive for data.

-Erwos

Re:Flash wear leveling

[gad_zuki!]

Well, what gets you is swap. (from what I understand) Ideally a flash-based device will have enough RAM so it doesn't swap. Or perhaps a separate "swap/frequent access card" so if you do burn it out your data is still there on the other card.

Re:Flash wear leveling

[vadim_t]

since I'm quite interested in this I've investigated it a bit. Turns out JFFS is useless for CompactFlash, since it does its own wear levelling already. JFFS is something like what CF does internally, and is supposed to be used on raw Flash chips. I think some of the other memory cards are pretty much flash chips with a plastic case, and that's where you'd use JFFS.

Re:Flash wear leveling

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a repost from the ITX story and prob. from before that. A common trolling tactic - build up karma for trolling by using highly moderated posts from previous stories.

Re:Flash wear leveling

[Anonymous Coward]

The other thing that gets you is when the FS updates access times on your files. Ideally, a FLASH based FS does NOT track access times, only modification times. If you have 'trickling' writes do to access time updates, you will silently age out your FLASH memory. I believe that JFFS2 does not update access times. Someone correct me if I am wrong on that....

Re:Flash wear leveling

[srussell]

An individual sector on a quality flash card will last for 100,000 writes.

You're entirely correct. A couple of points, though:

1. The key phrase is "quality". By "quality", you mean SLC (Single Level Cell) NAND based cards, which do have a rating of 100,000. They're also more rare, and about twice as expensive as the most common type, MLC (Multi Level Cell) NAND cards. MLC cards only have a rated life of 10,000 cycles, are slower than SLC, and require larger write block sizes, but the odds are that if you're not specifically looking for SLC, you won't get it.
2. Wear leveling helps, especially in some applications which only use a fraction of any card at a given time, like embedded devices that need to write small amounts of information. In this case, even an MLC card can expect to get millions of write cycles. However, if you're doing a lot of full-card writing, you can exceed the life of the card.

I've had an MLC 256MB SD card for about a year and a half, and I'd consider the amount of use I've given it to be "moderate". It has been used to store MP3s, data files, and photos, with the bulk of the write cycle filling the card to 80% capacity or more, and in the past month it has started to die. If you extrapolate this out with an SLC, that's about 10 years of life for moderate use.

Pfft.

[Noose For A Neck]

Linux is too bloated to work effectively on small, embedded platforms like PDAs (X-Windows, I'm looking at you). Try Microsoft Windows XP Embedded, it runs in a small memory space, has a good GUI and won't randomly crash while starving your other applications of memory like a certain window manager I'm thinking of *cough*X*cough*.

Re:Pfft.

[John Hurliman]

Linux is to bloated, or X? What about QT/Embedded?

Re:Pfft.

[bogie]

Linux is too bloated to work effectively on small embedded platforms like PDAs and you should use embedded XP instead? Man, there are so many things wrong with that statement I don't know where to begin.

Can't wait to metamod this one. Someone needs his modding privileges revoked.

Re:Pfft.

[dekeji]

Qt/Embedded is bigger and slower than a properly configured handheld X11 system (except in the world of Troll Tech marketing and their fans).

Keep in mind that X11 used to run fine on X terminals with 1M of memory or workstations with 4M of memory; Qt/Embedded wouldn't even start up on those. You can distribute an entire X11 server and a couple of clients in a few hundred kbytes (the X11 server that ships with handhelds.org is a bit larger, but it is still much smaller than what you run on your desk).

There are some handheld window systems (even some open source ones) that are more compact than X11, but it's not worth giving up compatibility and functionality to squeeze out a little extra space.

Re:Pfft.

[Phillup]

Windows won't run the programs I want to run.

Linux will.

Re:Wonder how much it costs

[bestguruever]

It depends on the type of item. Ball point pens are a particullarly intersting case. They sneak off to a planet inhabited exclusively by ball points and enjoy a uniquely ball point lifestyle. At least, that's the theory; Nobody has been able to locate such a planet. btw, you should check out www.cheappens.com

Flash cards aren't solely used for audio and fotos

[Anonymous Coward]

We at our company develop mobile solutions. Flash cards are used for a lot more than digital photography and audio at pda's. Yes, we welcome 2GB flash cards in our ruggedized pda's and on-board computers.

Slashdot has changed over the years...

[Anonymous Coward]

I clicked to view this topic, set my Threshold to -1, selected "Nested" as the display style, and immediately hit Ctrl-F and typed "porn".

"The text you have entered was not found."

WTF?! Where is the slashdot I know and love?

MOD PARENT DOWN, VIOLATED GROUPTHINK

[Anonymous Coward]

the thought police will be programming you, errr I mean, meeting with you now.

Zaurus

[dangerz]

"Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?"

apparently you've never used a zaurus.

since when does need...

[riprjak]

...have anything to do with want :)

Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?

I dont need it, Im sure... unless I start loading pr0n as well as ebooks onto my PDA... byt I sure as shite *want* it for high geek factor ;)

Im damn certain my girlfriend wants it for her digital camera... she keeps bitching that 128MB isnt enough and wants to nick my PDA's 512MB; the concept of deleting images seems to be foreign to her :)

err!
jak

lets a smart phone be an iPod free of carriers

[spage]

Indeed. I don't want to carry a phone and an iPod because I don't have three ears for two headsets. But I'd happily pay the money to put some decent storage on my next smartphone so I can listen to music on its hands-free headset.

The division between a high-end phone and a smartphone/PDA is becoming one of expandability. My spouse's excellent Sanyo VM 4500 plays sounds, pictures, and videos, but has no expandability: Sprint doesn't support the phone's built-in Java and PC docking capability because they want you to get media by paying them $15 a month. Meanwhile the promising Samsung SPH-i550 runs PalmOS and has the SD expansion slot and explicit docking. That's what I want.

Another amazing way to get your media on the go is using Rendezvous and Wi-Fi to share it from strangers. No memory card or phone network required.

Flash porn!

[crawdaddy]

Now you see it...*FLASH*...now you don't!
If this isn't the best thing for geeks with nosy significant others, I don't know what is!

Audio needs only "fast"

[tepples]

Large, fast flash cards like this are good for high-quality (no lossy compression) portable audio recording too.

Even at 24/96 stereo, live audio needs less than 600 KB/s sustained write speed. Recording in 3D Ambisonic surround takes only double that. This page claims that a CF-compatible Microdrive cartridge can write at over 4 MB/s, so it should have no problem with data rates typical of live audio capture.

You do still have a point about durability however.

Re:Audio needs only "fast"

[belmolis]

It's true that for audio we don't need speed this high, but the large size is handy. If you're recording hours of audio it adds up.

the only use

[shizke]

i have a 256 MB card on my Axim X5, and i have yet to find good use for it. (i own an ipod, so music isn't a concern). a 2GB flash card would be awesome for a Digital Rebel...all those high-quality pictures stored on a huge memory card, as opposed to the 650 MB card that i currently have on it.

on a related note...

[CobwoyNeal]

what's the best place to get good porn for free?

Re:on a related note...

[Anonymous Coward]

autopr0n.com, of course, unless you want something kinky (in that case, P2P instead)

Re:on a related note...

[CobwoyNeal]

autopr0n sucks because most of the girls on it are not at all good-looking.

Re:Wonder how much it costs

[hdd]

Okey...

The most offtopic post of the day award goes to...bestguruever

Interesting, neverthelesss.

A better question...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is how long will it be before we can "cheat" by plugging in some of the various USB portable cards into USB slots and use them instead of hard drives?
I'm guessing they aren't fast enough now?
The cool part about that is if a crash occurred, you'd have intact content. And you could always put enough memory on the box for virtual drives.

(or is this really silly?)

I've got an HP IPAQ 2215

[ranger714]

And i will freely admit to lusting after the cheapie 4 gig microdrives in the nomad mp3 player.... the greatest benefit to my IPAQ and the primary reason that i purchased it was the fact that it has both CompactFlash and SDIO expansion slots...

i had planned to get the 4 gig microdrive for storage of media files (maybe a couple gigs of MP3s, a few hundred megs of ebooks and a few movies) and a SDIO wifi card for wlan. I hadn't thought of movie files, but you can get a 256meg rip of a dvd with stereo sound and full-PDA resolution... pretty nice for travel! I just burn a few to cd/dvd for longer trips and transfer then around when necessary.

So if someone just wanted to gift a 2gig SD card to a poor technician, i sure wouldn't look that gift horse in the mouth... ;-)

Re:I've got an HP IPAQ 2215

[polecat_redux]

Be careful when you go searching for a WiFi card. I've tried a couple of the CF variety, and at least one of them (Socket brand) would drain the battery power even after disabling the radio and turning off the PDA (I also have the 2215). The whole prospect of having to unplug the card each time I put the PDA down, and then having to keep track of the card just seemed a bit more cumbersome than it should be.

Re:I've got an HP IPAQ 2215

[ranger714]

I've heard about this issue with some of the cards... unfortunately i also read a few very disturbing articles about WiFi thruput on CF or SDIO when used with PDA's...

Tom's Hardware and WiFi Planet... somewhat dishartening, i suppose..

Consumer Unawareness?

[Ms.XingTianCai]

So, will this mean that all the people out there who must have the best of the best of the best but have no idea how to use it will rush out and arm themselves with 2GB for a digital camera they never use thus creating a huge spike in sales, eventually driving the cost down and making them more accessible to us money-challenged digital geeks who can and will use 2GB?

Re:Wonder how much it costs

[paulthomas]

How high is the sky? How deep is the sea? Who is John Galt?

Score;5, Profound

[Anonymous Coward]

They'd be an idiot to put it all on one card, what if it fails.

Karma Whore

Re:Score;5, Profound

[paul248]

Your argument will be invalidated by the passage of time, and increasing data size. "A 128MB flash drive? But that's like 100 floppies! What if it fails?"

Re:Score;5, Profound

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a limit to how big a photographers digital images need to be. My 6 megapixel images are about 3 meg, so 660 on this 2 gig card. When you start storing movies fine you want more, but a photographer isn't going to want too many of his pictures on the one card.

Re:Score;5, Profound

[geordie]

There's a limit how big nnnnnnn files need to be.... what seems like a lot of space now, will seem like peanuts tomorrow.
I remember when 1gb in a 6" x 9" x 2" external housing seemed like more storange than anyone would ever need......
Come to think of it, I remember when a double sided floppy seemed like enough storage to store every BBC game......
Come to think of it, I remember when a 16k rampack for a zx81 seemed like 16 times as much memory as you needed...
Come to think of it...........

Re:Score;5, Profound

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, more space is a good thing isn't it, it's obvious, so why the hell is the OP modded 5 Insightful?

Re:Score;5, Profound

[Vitus Wagner]

6 megapixel image ought to be 18 megs, if stored uncompressed. Ask any digital photographer and he would tell you that JPEG compression is evil, and only uncompressed tiff is acceptable for true artist.

Of course there is loseless compression, but it wouldn't give so much space gain.

It is only hundred 18meg tiffs which can be stored on 2Gb flash. Just about three 36-films.

Ask any film photohrapher how much time he need to spend three films. Probably you'll learn that this is less than one day.

So, I expect that professional digital photographer would need 4Gb flash for just one day of work even with 6 megapixels and 24 bits/pixel.

But professionals would want ten megapixels and 48-bit color.

Re:Score;5, Profound

[Anonymous Coward]

so why the hell is the OP modded 5 Insightful?

Because they don't have a "5 Obvious".

Re:Score;5, Profound

[Wally_bear]

Raw formats are better, smaller, and faster for the camera to process. Plus raw can have colour balancing done to it without quality loss or other problems associated with adjusting images after processing. The exposure can also be adjusted for an image better than if it's been processed into TIFF or JPG, however only small adjustments can be made as you can't add or remove light from the raw data. :)

Nobody uses TIFF unless they have no plans of doing any kind of colour balance on the image during processing, or unless their camera doesn't support raw.

just like 640k

[pdamoc]

progress in technology means cheaper stuff so all progress is good and needed. Some people really enjoy 2 years old technology at the price of a popsicle.
Solid state memory combined with superfast networking might make my dream come true:
networked processing and networked storage, one silent computer in my room and a cluster made out of the cheapest CPUs in the basement.

Re:massively offtopic, but important

[runderwo]

That's because you submitted a dupe, not that Slashdot editors usually care about such things.

Re:massively offtopic, but important

[Anonymous Coward]

Save your karma.

Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?

[StenD]

I could envision using that in my Garmin iQue 3600. :)

Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?"

[Hatta]

Does anyone need a PDA? We need food, water, air, and shelter. Anything else is optional.

Gentlement, we have a new one...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahem. Imagine a RAID-0 of these! *Ducks*

Navigation

[Captain_Chaos]

One more use, beside the many already mentioned, would be storing maps for satellite navigation devices such as the many Pocket PC / TomTom combo's, or my Garmin iQue. 2 GB would allow me store the whole of Europe (at street level, with points of interest) on it.

MMC vs. SD vs. etc.

[ChristianBaekkelund]

People are still doing research on MMC and CF and all those others?...I thought they were all considered out dated for SD?

And yet, SD is mentioned here, but I'd like more facts and evidence as to the supposed speed increase, because I was under the impression that SD was supposed to be superior to others in all ways (size, storage space, speed...but not $$$).

Re:MMC vs. SD vs. etc.

[emorphien]

Well, being the newer tech, smaller market, smaller format allows them to charge mucho moola. CF is cheap because it's the most widespread (and I still prefer it). Maybe xD will rule the world.

Re:Wonder how much it costs

[SB5]

Why am I in this handbasket, and where are we going?

Now that you mention it...

[davmoo]

Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?

Actually, yes, as a matter of fact I do.

I use my PDA (a Zire 71) as a portable music device. I do not like moving parts in standard players when I am also in motion. I'd love to be able to have 2 gig of tunes in my pocket with no hard drive or CD required.

FPS doesn't just mean 'first person shooter'

[SethJohnson]

You're exactly right. For action photography, a lot of people like to shoot sequentials. This is especially true in skateboarding. With film cameras, sequentials were expensive, so now that digital is really becoming prevalent, photographers are eager to leverage the cost-benefits and shoot sequentials. Even with the buffer memory, the CF speed is a bottleneck to how many frames per second you can shoot and for how long you can shoot them. The goal is 9 FPS, but I think even the highest-end nikons are stuck at around 6 or 8.

Re:FPS doesn't just mean 'first person shooter'

[fbjon]

eag*r to l*verage the c*st-b*nefits

May I ask you to avoid words like the censored ones above in the future? My eyes are bleeding.

Re:FPS doesn't just mean 'first person shooter'

[emorphien]

Canon's making 8.5 I believe.

I can make 7 on my EOS 3 with PB-E2, not that I use it often.

Re:FPS doesn't just mean 'first person shooter'

[Red Leader.]

Check out the DPReview of the Nikon D70. It apparently had a very good initial and sustained FPS.

Slightly OT: RAW image cameras

[mrchaotica]

Are there any consumer grade cameras out there that shoot uncompressed images, or even losslessly compressed ones?

Re:Slightly OT: RAW image cameras

[emorphien]

Yeah, a ton of them. RAW files are usually compressed, but it's lossless. Just look for RAW in the specs and you've got your answer.

Some may shoot TIFF, but that's less common.

Re:Slightly OT: RAW image cameras

[mrchaotica]

I define consumer grade as $500, pocket size, available at Best Buy or Walmart or wherever, etc.

Must be for the Leica D2

[emorphien]

This must have been developed for the new Leica D2/Panasonic clone. With a fast enough card you might be able to write a raw file in under 10 seconds.

That's a silly argument

[lingqi]

so, your hypothetical 50GB storage PDA of the future (let's assume for a moment that PDA has a future, which I doubt) costs how much in the future? and how much now?

see you can't say "we will need it one day therefore we need it now." That's bullshit because the economics don't come out right. 2GB card costs a (hefty) premium today, and there are not so many conveniences that justifies this premium. After all, if the darn thing was free then we'll all stock up with hundreds! "What would I need this for" is actually a shortened question for "What would I need this for, at this price?"

I think for the price premium, I cannot find any good reason why I would spend so much money for it - SD / MMC card based cameras are mostly storing stuff in JPEG (every camera that assumes to be pro-oriented and stores raw has compact flash for storage, even SONY!), so for cameras it's moot. for PDAs, sure - but like I said, do you really need 2G of storage on the go for the price of another PDA or even a fully funcitonal music player that stores 10x as much?

Re:That's a silly argument

[antimatt]

Remember the days when 2GB hard drives were more than you could imagine using?

The argument is that someday we'll realize how foolishly insufficient 2GB of storage on a PDA really is. Furthermore, someday a PDA with 50GB of storage will be relatively cheap--comparable to the situation we see now: if memory serves, 10GB today costs roughly what 1GB cost five years ago. Better things get more common, and therefore cheaper, as time goes by.

You're absolutely right: currently, most of us (even the most uber-nerdliest) don't honestly need this ridiculous amount of storage, and for most of us, it's silly to buy it. But the fact we've started in the right direction makes the future look bright.

Re Windows media player?

[bain_online]

Windows Media player is fine for this

You must be new here :)

Re:Re Windows media player?

[ConceptJunkie]

I've used WMP for PocketPC, and like all MS software for the PocketPC, it sucks out loud. However, there is WinAmpaq, which works fine and plays OGG files too.

Being a Windows developer for 15 years, I really thought I would prefer a Windows-based PDA, but I have to say that Pocket PC and the MS software for it is incredibly awful, and riddled with bugs. Heck, I can't even reliably transfer large files with ActiveSync... good thing my laptop has a SD slot.

However, it does make a good media player, except I'm currently limited to my 512MB SD card for storage. If I could find a larger storage solution for my Toshiba e355, I'd be livin' large.

Re:Fastest memory flash

[Anonymous Coward]

Today was Mother's day so I took my mom to the mother's day brunch up at SFU in the Diamond University Center. It was pretty good food with a great view once again.

Well, who would have thought.

Well the first weeks over and what an eventful week. I'm now back in the full swing of things, minus the midterms and the loads of projects. I like my schedule. It's pretty nice because i'm not at school too early or too late. Tuesday's really suck though. Roughly 7 hours of engineering classes straight in a row. Oh what fun that is.

I'm glad for you.

I love my ibook.

You are probably just gay; remember: iBooks cost four times the money a bro' spends on ho's.

I just got my 512 MB stick

Hehe, now ur ta'king, muh man!

of ram

Oh, 't wus teh RAM.

in on friday so now this thing is really humming along nicely. No regrets getting an apple of course.

Suck some Jobs cock, do u, bro'?

I recommend it to those who want a good deal and a solid computer. Everything from the hardware to the operating system is extremely well polished, not to mention the power usage! I'm giving this laptop a 9/10. Well, for its price range it was pretty freaking sweet.

*gobble gobble*

Good point. lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Profit, so true.
[Violin start]
$15,000 USD for a piece of silicon smaller than my pinky fingernail...hmmm
Either development and research will get a boost or its someone sitting on a personal beach sucking rum out of a coconut.

I'm just salivating over these products, but good god what a way to torture someone wanting to buy but can't take on the financial burden.

I'll pick it up in 5 years from Classifieds.
[Violin stop]

Memory?

[azatht]

No one will ever need more that 640 KB memory!

I wonder...

[pb]

As flash memory speeds and capacities increase, maybe we could start using them for swap partitions or something. As long as it's faster than a hard drive and cheaper than RAM, I think they'd be quite useful.

Re:I wonder...

[aXis100]

Flash has limited read/write cycles. At this point they are more expensive than RAM, and slower than HDD, so I dont see the point.

Re:I wonder...

[Mad Marlin]

22 MB/sec = 176 Mbit/sec, so faster than any IDE/ATA/"whatever they are calling them now" hard drive, but slower than modern SCSI drives.

Re:I wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

IDE/ATA is 133MB/sec, not 133Mbit/sec.
SATA is 150MB/sec.
The current SCSI is 160MB/sec.
These current HD interfaces run 6-7 times as fast as the MMC card described.
Of course, the drives themselves are MUCH slower than the interface, the fastest drives have a sustained rate of around 30MB/sec, with burst up to 150MB/sec, depending on their internal cache.

Re:I wonder...

[Mad Marlin]

I stand corrected. I should have known this though, since even on a direct 100 Mbit ethernet an NFS mount seems horribly slow, even compared to IDE.

Obvious Spelling Error

[Anonymous Coward]

"Digital Photography Review has an article about what is claimed as the fastest MMC Memory Flash Card. Not only is this new card 200% faster than any current SD card (rating it at about 22.5MB/s read), its also 2GB. Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?"

I think you ment "it's", not its. Please fix, k thx.

Perfect Device

[ballwall]

You know what I'd love to see?
A laptop/pda hybrid. It would run a full featured desktop OS, with that OS's palm version running as an app or emulated.

PDA's are getting to be pretty powerful these days, really all that's keeping them from being a laptop is the input device and display. So why not sell it with a docking station that has USB ports and a VGA port. When not in the dock you use it as a palm, with the palm versions of your main apps inside the emulated PDA OS. (Obviously they would share data with the full featured versions).

The new Zaurus already has USB Host capabilities, all that would be needed is to beef up the storage (which can be done either built in or with expansion ports) and provide a more robust video solution (I think the Zaurus is just a framebuffer).

I was happily using a 400MHz processor only a couple of years ago, and the only reason for upgrading were a speed boost (and that was windows). Aren't the new Zauri 400Mhz?

Hell, AFAIK CF cards are just mini PCMCIA cards, so you could have full PCMCIA card slots on the dock. Add an ethernet chipset into the dock (Similar to the Rio Karma) and make sure the unit itself does wireless and you'd have the best of both worlds.

Re:Perfect Device

[ballwall]

Another thing it would need to have are seperate on buttons for different functions.

For example? What's an Ipod? It's some storage with a nice UI, right? You turn it on, it plays music. Very simple.

The reason I don't use my Zaurus as a media device is it's too involved to be worth my while. Power on, navigate to apps tab, launch opieplayer, load a playlist, press play, hope I don't press the screen in the wrong place and close the app. All of which has to be done with the stylus. It'd be nice if you could press the 'Music' button on the device and it would powerup directly into the Music app (That isn't a clone of a desktop app, but one designed for a PDA, like the IPOD interface). Until is was turned off or some magical key combination pressed it would behave exactly as an IPOD/Karma/Whatever clone.

Re:Perfect Device

[rodgerd]

Sure, but there's a point where a general purpose interface which does many things not terribly well will overtake a bunch of specialised devices that do an excellent job, and that's generally when you have so many single purpose devices that you look like a Christmas tree.

I love press releases!

[johnnyringo]

Please... Please! Enough with posting press releases on slashdot.

And another thing, I am sick of all the b$stards out there saying "do we really need blah blah blah." We'll all wayd need more you fools! Faster and more I say!

ARG!!!!!

Re:Good News... (or not)

[dekeji]

I think that's what is holding back adoption of flash based PCs. Screw the expense, if the thing can't have a drive failure, some industries will buy it.

No, what's holding them back is the expense and size. There is no way you can put enough flash into a PC to hold Windows and a decent set of applications.

Embedded PCs use flash drives all the time, with no problems.

They need write speed, not read speed

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

The important part of this announcement for a sports photographer is the 18 MBps write speed.

Question?

[Big Nothing]

"Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?"

Muahahahahahaaaa

You're new here at /., aren't you?

Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?

[Mike Markley]

Yes.

12GB Compact Flash card

[danormsby]

I don't know how much this card will retail for and anyway it is MMC. I don't think the Zaurus takes MMC. Why not get a 12GB compact flash card? A snip at $14,999.

Re:12GB Compact Flash card

[orthogonal]

I don't know how much this card will retail for and anyway it is MMC. I don't think the Zaurus takes MMC. Why not get a 12GB compact flash card? A snip at $14,999.

Zaurus takes SD or MMC (and can't use the SD "security features" anyway); I got the (slower) SD card because I was in a hurry, as I wanted to have my music along on a ski vacation.

Not only is 15 grand way out of my price range, I use the Zaurus's CF slot for the WiFi card anyway. But since I have a lot of fans on Slashdot, I'd put the 12GB CF card on my Amazon.com "wish list", but like a good Slashdotter, I don't want to encourage business with companies holding fatuous "1-click" patents. :)

Let's see 14,999 dollars / 334 fans, yeah, only $50 each. I mean, there's the woman who put up a web site and got random strangers to pay off her credit cards. And the woman who with the BuyMeImlpants site.... Yes, e-ebegging works -- if only I were a cute woman!

absolutely!

[BlueJay465]

As soon as FL Studio decides to release their Pocket PC version of the software, 2GB would be quite sufficient to be able to hold a sizeable sample collection for when you are on extended journeys and want to pound out some tunes.

No, but I need it for my iPOD

[iamacat]

"Nano-iPOD" with two of those cards and small enough to fit in a pair of cute white headphones with a sports ear band. Yum!

Re:Good News... (or not)

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a set limit to Flash memory, but that limit is rapidly expanding. Some of the latest chips support 1,000,000 read/erase/write cycles before oxide failure (that's how flash "dies"), and with wear-leveling, that becomes similar in character to the MTBF rates for magnetic hard drives.

If you really want something to replace magnetic storage, look into MRAM (Motorola's new spinoff Freescale is doing a lot in this area). It's supposed to have the durability and speed of DRAM with the data retention of flash. They're still limited to pretty low densities, but it's improving rather quickly.

Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?

[PetroniusTheYounger]

Does anyone need more than 640K for their OS?

something

[Anonymous Coward]

Like something or something

Obvious AC Error

[Garridan]

Actually, "its" was spelled just fine. The error was not one of spelling, but of grammar. Don't go around correcting people unless you're 100% sure you're correct yourself.

k thx.

2G???

[dcw3]

Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?"

I can't imagine why anyone would need more than 640k!?!

Re:2G???

[dcw3]

Sorry...I was redundent...that's what I get for only reading at +4 today.

Yes

[Cackmobile]

I am about to embark ona 3 month backpacking tour of europe so one of these cards would be great. I would never have to empty my card. Unfortunately I have a sony whose memory card only goes to 256

MMC vs SD cards

[Moderation abuser]

SecureDigital cards have SDMI built in. MMC are completely digital rights management free. You can use MMC cards in devices which can read SD cards.

need for 2gb pda

[romulet]

He's checking his list, he's checking it twice , he gona fine out who is naughty or nice .... Thats the only person would would need such a size on a pda I think.

Go flash memory!

[TwistedSpring]

I love this stuff. 2Gb at 22.5mb/s is incredible - you could easilly do a high-res movie on that.

I'm yearning for the absence of all of the moving parts in my machine except for possibly CD/DVD drives. I can't bear the fact that my hard disk has spinning platters and incredibly fine-precision moving heads which could fail at any time (I leave my machine on all the time and consequently I'm now terrified to turn it off in case it'll fail when I power it up again). I want peltier coolers instead of fans, and I want solid state memory instead of hard disks. Once this happens, not only will my machine be ultra-silent, it'll also be much more robust.

It's a shame flash memory still costs so much, but the prices are pretty much where similar sized hard disks were several years ago, so I'm confident that we'll get 40gb flash memory in the next four or five years. God knows where hard disks will be then.

The world really needs a new storage paradigm. Mechanical magnetic storage is the oldest concept still alive in home computing, and is as archaic as the system BIOS. Intel are busy with getting rid of the currently outdated and rubbish BIOS and replacing it with something fancy and new, I just ooze over the same thing happening to data storage. For gods sake, the HDD is the biggest bottleneck in any modern home computer.

Re:Go flash memory!

[Hektor_Troy]

I want peltier coolers instead of fans

I see. And how do you propose to cool the peltier cooler? It's not some magic mumbo jumbo, that'll make the heat go away. In fact it generates more heat, than it removes, needing more cooling than you would otherwise. If you want it to be quiet and robust, you could go for an external water cooling system, but then you wouldn't be able to move your computer.

If you read more carefully...

[Anonymous Coward]

...you would see that this was not his question. Given that the thing has the name 'MMC' and that it explicitly states that it is compatible with both MMC and SD devices, I'd be pretty sure that this new card is indeed a thin MMC rather than a thick SD card.

MMC4 spec press release here.

Handheld porn

[thepoch]

Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?

I can imagine it already... handheld porn. Wherever I go and need it, I have porn. Handy porn.

Re:Handheld porn

[t_allardyce]

Or you could just scope out honeys on the street, as big daddy 'o would have playfully put it in one of his great musical works, which incidently you could perhaps store on your PDA?

That would be cool

[deconvolution]

Then it is possible to make a uniform portable linux live distro for both PDA or PC. And Internet cafe wouldnt have to offer any software but boardband connection....

Why hasn't anyone said RAID yet?

[Phoenixhunter]

With the small size, you could put together a very small yet fast RAID setup. Three of them into a RAID 5 and you've got speed and reliability.

CF is not PDA/DigiCam only. I use it as IDE device

[amix]

Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?

No, since I don't have one.

But CF is not a PDA/DigiCam only storage.
I use it as IDE harddisk on generic ATX motherboards for both my media- and lan-server.

For the media-server (512MB Kingston CF) it stores, read-only, all the system and applications. This means, that when I listen to internet-radio, CD, watch a movie (TV or DVD) I do not need to spin up the storage disks. Similar for my 24/ server (also 512MB Kingston), which only spins up the disks, when some action happens (fetchmail, logfile). When I am abroad the system is mostly idle, except for the fetchmail every six hours and my own SSH access.

Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

> Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA? Yes. How stupid are you?

Pocket Digital Library, Read or Die!

[monopole]

Project Gutenberg recently released a 4.7 GB DVD Image containing the 10,000 books scanned so far so i figure I should be able to squeeze at least 3,500 books on a 2 GB SD. i.e. 97 yards of books. A good start! Put this on a next generation e-ink unit like the sony libre and you have a "read or die" level bibliophiles dream.

Re:Pocket Digital Library, Read or Die!

[Karth]

Exactly. I have a franklin Ebookman, and it takes only MMC, not SD, (the sd lock thing makes it too big for the slot.... *growl*) and with this, I could easily take 3000-4000 plain text books anywhere in the world. I thought the 256mb mmc was wonderfull... this is love.

Please Stop

[esme]

Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?

Please stop asking this question. The answer is yes. Until I can carry every version of every document/song/movie/computer program ever made in the history of mankind in my pocket, in lossless formats, no amount of storage on any device will ever be too much.

And even then, I want a larger one to come out so the prices will come down.

-Esme

You'd be better off...

[blorg]

...buying something like this. The FlashTrax is probably the nicest portable hard disk card reader but you can also get cheaper ones without the screen; for example I got a USB2 X-Drive 20gb, which reads all memory formats but xD card, for around €150. Which is a lot cheaper than 20gb in memory cards.

2Gigs of Memory for my PDA.

[torpor]

Hell yeah. This means I can load up not only all my favourite utils, but the source as well.

There is nothing quite so useful as the Sharp Zaurus PDA's, well set up, well configured, and running in your pocket.

Having a complete Linux install, source and all, wherever I go, for any particular practical reason I have it, gives me what I've wanted since the day I unwrapped my first MIPS Magnum pizzabox and plonked it on my desktop: a portable, power Linux workstation.

So yeah, please. I'll be getting a 2GIG SD card for my Zaurus as soon as I can find one locally ... looking forward to it.

In short: Sonic Screwdriver!

Yes, but...

[delirium28]

...does it support a RAID 0 configuration?

640K

[canoe_head]

"Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?"

640K ought to be enough for anybody

Yes, absolutely

[bokmann]

> Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?

Yes, absolutely.

This weekend I was at Hershey Park, and practically filled a 4GB flash drive with photos from my Nikon D100 (photos in raw mode, shooting 3 a second of some action shots eats storage space fast).

With my current camera, 16GB would be comfortable.

I can remember, the year was 1984, and I was walking down a hallway in high school talking to a friend of mine about 'Apple's new Macintosh', which came in two flavors - 128k and the 512k 'Fat Mac'. I remeber, clear as anything, saying "Why would you need 512k? You can only fit 400k on one of its floppies...". I will never, ever make that mistake again. I can remember staring, dropjaw, at the first 400Mhz Pentium II we got in my office, thinking it was amazing. No matter how high I (realistically at the time) raise my expectations, they are always beaten.

Your keyboard is broken dude....

[twoslice]

./Classical/Ludwig van Beethoven/Symphony no 3 in E flat major, Op. 55 Eroica

Your 't' does not always work.

I require more

[FreeUser]

Until I can carry every version of every document/song/movie/computer program ever made in the history of mankind in my pocket, in lossless formats, no amount of storage on any device will ever be too much.

Indeed. I require a device so small it will fit between the molecular strands of my spinal column near the base of my skull, and be able to make the world's knowledge (as well as natural language skills, mathematical intuition, and the aggregate creativity of humankind) available in response to a single, unspoken, thought-driven command.

I require that the device expand in capacity as needed, offer limitless (and instant) transportation capabilities (the "teleportation" module), as well as imparting upon me perfect health, immortality, and eternal youth.

I'm sure I've missed a few features (non-crackability, the "self defense feature that outperforms national militaries" module, and whatnot), but those specs should do for starters.

[ The sad thing is, I say this only party in gest. I really do want such a device. ]

Uses for 2GB cards...

[MacBorg]

Well, I've got a use for them - data collection! Anything that uses PDAs to gather data needs capacity above and beyond taht of teh onboard ram - therefore sign me up!

Good for SPI microcontrollers

[Onnimikki]

From what I understand, MMC cards are SPI compatible. The serial peripheral interface (SPI) is available on all sorts of microcontrollers, from the 8-bit HC11 to the 32-bit MPC565. A 2GB MMC card could be great for data-logging in an embedded system, a robot, etc.

My only question is whether this MMC-4 standard the article talk about sticks to the SPI standard.

2gb for a pda?

[ricog69]

"640K ought to be enough for anybody," - Bill Gates, 1981
_______
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.

I'll wait for the true test

[Anonymous Coward]

First off 2GB cards have been out for a while in fact 3GB cards exist. Granted the big thing is the speed increase but I still haven't seen a standard test for how they test these speeds. dpreview also has speed tests and of cards to see how fast they can read and write data and I would believe these tests before I would trust the number on the packaging.

Another site that tests each card in the camera is http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/index.asp this is good for those looking to be able to take pictures without having to wait for the camera to write.

Hell yeah!

[AC5398]

If the sucker works in my Tungsten E, in a small mp3 player, in the camera, and the computer can access it through my current SD card slot, I'm interested. Hell, I'm more than interested, what's the price?

High Res Audio Recording

[Anonymous Coward]

No one seems to have mentioned that live high-resolution 24bit audio can now be recorded with an iPaq, A/D converter, and some larger memory cards. There is a wealth of information below regarding this.

http://www.core-sound.com/

Need?

[pbrinich]

Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?"

Since when does it have anything to with *need*, now want on the other hand ... :)

hmmm...faster than a microdrive's access time with similar capacity...digital camera storage

sounds like something useful

robot data logging

[feelyoda]

I could use this...

video and laser data can get very large very fast.
a robot can move in ways that a mechanical drive can't handle.

I just spent $500 on a 2gig CF card for such a dynamic legged robot, and I would love this drive. My main concern was max write speed, as a single camera, at 30fps, 640x480 moncrome yields almost 10Mb of sustained data.

Anyone interested in some charity?

Nope

[AbbyNormal]

"Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?".

Nope, but it would be handy to have as a thumbdrive storage backup/extra harddrive.

Music is just the beginning

[yog]

A Palm with multimedia features (Tungsten, Zire 72, etc.) works nicely. I have a 512MB card in my T|T that is good for a few CDs' worth of MP3 music, but I have a few other things that I like to keep on the card that take up a bit of space: my entire wedding photo album viewable with Acid Image, BackupMan backup images, a few documents, dictionaries, Voice Memo recordings of various events.

I would love to put a few more CDs on the card. Actually, even 2G seems a bit small and I hope they bump it up to 4G in a year or so. That would start to be a serious library of music.

Flash storage is a synergistic part of a PDA and can grow arbitrarily large as you think of more ways to virtualize your life onto the card. For example, physicians are already loading upwards of a dozen large medical references and databases. Lawyers are carrying electronic law libraries around, and I could see real estate agents putting hundreds of houses with images and stats into a nice handheld database that they sync with a desktop every day.

Now combine this monster with an email-enabled phone and you have an all purpose personal information device. Bring it on!

Re:Music is just the beginning

[nule.org]

I have a 512MB card in my T|T

Wow - media ready mammaries! Reminds me of a certain Playstation 2 Accessory. (Sorry - no link right to Ping...)

Does anyone need 2GB in their PDA?

[gandalf724u]

64k ought to be enough for anybody.

Re:Does anyone need 2GB in their PDA?

[gandalf724u]

OOPS. Misquote and already done. Good Job /.ers

Infinity Plus One

[handy_vandal]

Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?

But of course -- !

If my PDA had "Infinity Plus One" memory, I could store the entire state of the universe.

Also, I wish my amps went to eleven.

-kgj

Anyone hear of a CF version???

[AWHITEMAN]

My current project with PC104 systems will be using CF storage. *

640K ought to be enough...

[dfex]

I mean - 2GB of storage ought to be enough for anyone

Maps for GPS software!

[PeterChenoweth]

a 2GB SD card would let me keep roadmaps for my GPS mapping/routing software for the entire US in non-zipped format. And that high speed card would mean for quick searches and route planning. Sweet.

Re:OT: Sig

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that wasn't a direct quote.

Sure it is.

2GB = a good start

[dazedNconfuzed]

Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?

A truly silly question on /. ! With PDAs playing MP3s and recording videos, 2GB amounts to a good start.

MOD UP!

[Nafai7]

"Who needs n amount of space?"

I'm sick of that question. Your post is the perfect answer.

Digital Photogrpahy - Yes; PDA - Maybe!

[jordandeamattson]

This is perfect for the digital photography. Fast, high capacity. This is perfect.

Yours,

Jordan

Missed the point

[magefile]

Yeah, eventually (maybe even soon) we'll need 2GB or larger cards for PDAs ... but right now we need larger sizes for digital cameras.

Remote Logging

[Simonetta]

A large ultra-low-power memory bank is another large step into the development of a new class of computers that record and store data for background monitoring applications.

The next big step is to get the price down significantly. The CPU component of a super-cheap data logger is now available with ATMEL's recent decision to lower the price of their low-end microcontroller, the Tiny 11, to $0.42 in quantity 25 (at www.Digikey.com). Now we need to get the sensors and the power supply to be less than a dollar each, and get the Flash RAM/EEPROM to a dollar a megabyte and we will have real high quality data logging tools.

An example of a application for this device would be when you are looking for a new apartment and you want someplace quiet with no surprises (like neighbors that work all day and come home at 3AM and turn on the stereo and the television).
You would leave a data monitor in the apartment for 48 hrs that monitors sound decibel levels. Every jump in the noise level is recorded along with its time, level, and duration. That way you could be reasonably assured that there would be no nasty surprises before signing a long-term lease.

Another application (currently available from Dallas Semiconductor) is a temperature logger that records when a temperature level goes outside of a programmable range. Say you're shipping perishable food or medical products and the temp can not go below 5 degrees C (40 F) or above 35 C (@100 F). Set the monitor to these levels and when the shipment arrives check if the limits were triggered. The internal real-time clock logs the time the levels were surpassed and the period of time out of range. That way you know who to sue when the illiterate teamsters left the shipment out in the hot sun for five hours in the middle of the shipment.

MultiGig Flash storage is a good thing, but it needs to be cheap to be of any real value.

Is it Nokia Compatible?

[ftzdomino]

Having only 132 mb of memory is painful.

Sheesh

[2names]

Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?

Do I _really_ have to ask you 2 more times?

Does anyone need 2 GB for their PDA?

[blair1q]

Does anyone want a 4 GB mp3 player just because it's narrower, thinner, and lighter than its 20-GB predecessor?

Get me a 10-GB mp3-playing PalmOS-running am/fm-radio tuning cell phone that doesn't need Sprint service (which sucks no matter what the guy in the raincoat says), and I'll buy it before lunch today even if it's a thousand bucks with a 2-year contract.

Yes.

[X86Daddy]

Does anyone need 2GB of memory for their PDA?"

Yes.

Dual boot your 2GB MMC on your PDA

[OrangeTide]

Why settle for only having one OS installed, when now you have the space for MULTIPLE? Dual boot your iPaq with a couple distros of Linux and NetBSD. And still have space left over for Windows CE if you ever have a burning desire to fall back to that.

Smartphones

[techefnet]

Ofcourse would we need those big flash cards, think about what they could be used for. Storing movies, storing mp3s, its the perfect portable multimedia player. I would like to see some enchangement in smartphones. I already got a Nokia 6600, its pretty nice but id like to see a cell phone thats more like a PDA.

What about old PDAs

[Eternauta3k]

Could come in handy for my 95LX
Although I'd have to get through the 2MB limit, then the 32MB limit...