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Flash Memory and Apple iPods and Laptops

An increasing number of reports are pointing to Apple using more Flash memory in various components in the near future.

Rumors of all flash iPods and flash-booting laptops have been circulating for months. These rumors are reinforced by predictions that Flash memory prices are expected to tumble this year.

Prices for NAND flash memory chips are projected to crater this year, tumbling by a whopping 65 percent and prompting whispers that this once high-margin technology could soon become a nearly free commodity.


Nearly free may be overstating it, but it appears the market is gaining momentum. SanDisk just introduced a 2.5" 32-gigabyte SATA solid state (Flash) drive for $350, and expects prices to drop as consumer adoption increases.

Advantages for consumers include performance and battery life:

Performance wise, SanDisk's new 2.5-inch SSD can move data to and from the SSD more than 100 times faster than a traditional drive, according to the company. It also will have a sustained read rate of 67 megabytes/sec and a random read rate of 7,000 inputs/outputs per second (IOPS) for a 512-byte transfer

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64 months ago
But can't flash only be written a finite number of times? Or is that just fear-mongering? Other than that though, it's much better than HD...(apart from the cost...for now...).
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64 months ago
I'm sure eventually flash will attain a service life equal to or greater than current hard disks. I'm very happy with hard drives now though since they offer excellent lifespans, great capacity for the steadily lowering prices and better durability. My iMac is pushing 7 years and it has the same hard drive since it's acquisition. I have yet to see it lag or even so much as make funny noises. As nice as flash drives may be, until the tech gets better and cheaper I'm very happy with the current standard.
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64 months ago
Sounds like this could really alter the computing landscape.....and open up all sorts of possibilities down the road....

Bob
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64 months ago
yea I think these flash drives can't be written nearly as much as a regular hard drive but i'm not a pro on this so maybe someone else can answer that...I'm curious as to how the system will be setup with this kind of memory...would we have something like a 2.33ghz macbook pro but with 2gb of ram and then 100gb of flash memory as the hdd?



Would this be what apple is placing in their new computers?
What are the benefits? What's the downside? and how much faster is it than a regular 32gb 7200rpm hdd?
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64 months ago
I lik emy HDs @ 25¢/GB. If it's a dollar I guess that's fair to begin with. But I'd still want a big one in my laptop - like 200GB or more.
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64 months ago
I like the idea of no moving parts. I mean, there are no moving parts in flash drives right?
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64 months ago

I like the idea of no moving parts. I mean, there are no moving parts in flash drives right?


Yeah, that's the best part of flash memory in my opinion.
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64 months ago

I like the idea of no moving parts. I mean, there are no moving parts in flash drives right?


correct, if a nano were to be dropped, it would have less chance of being screwed up than an ipod video because it doesn't have a hard drive, it just has flash memory
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64 months ago

I like the idea of no moving parts. I mean, there are no moving parts in flash drives right?


Right
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64 months ago

But can't flash only be written a finite number of times? Or is that just fear-mongering? Other than that though, it's much better than HD...(apart from the cost...for now...).


If its as easy to remove/upgrade as norrmal RAM i don't see a problem.
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