From today's WSJ> So Many Megabytes, So Little Space:
Goal Is Gizmo to Store All Digital Data
By EVAN RAMSTAD
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Digital pack rats, take heart: Your storage problems have high priority.
Big names like Sony Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. and smaller fry like Lexar Media Corp. and SanDisk Corp. are trying to create a single digital storage medium that is as cheap, convenient and clear as compact disks, film, videotape and floppy disks. Such a product would allow people to move digital pictures and songs between computers, printers, camcorders, PalmPilots, stereos, portable players, televisions and even picture frames.
Manufacturers aren't close to the ideal yet, but they are moving in that direction with various digital-storage devices, including higher-capacity floppy disks, ultra-tiny hard drives and plastic-coated memory chips that look like sticks of gum. But these devices aren't applicable to all types of digital output, and users complain the sound and picture quality of the products isn't up to the standards of older technology. What's more, the digital-storage devices on the market are, at least for now, quite expensive, with a single digital gum-stick chip costing more than $100.
An IBM Microdrive can hold up to 340 megabytes
Many of the new storage devices are built around "flash memory" -- a type of computer memory chip that retains data even when power isn't flowing to it. Because it's as wafer-thin as any computer chip, flash memory can be melded into various shapes and packages.
Cameras generally use Compact Flash, a square about half the size of a business card. Digital-music storage devices and phones are using a flash product dubbed Multimedia Card or one called a SmartMedia card, both of which are smaller in size and data capacity than Compact Flash. All are too small for the standard openings in PCs, though there are adapters that make them fit.
Meanwhile, Sony has created its own flash-memory product, Memory Stick, and has built input slots for it in some of the company's desktop and notebook PCs, three digital cameras and a digital audio-video camcorder. Sony is also selling a $1,000 digital photo frame called CyberFrame Viewer, which has a 5 1/2-inch screen that rotates a selection of images from a Memory Stick inserted in its side. Currently, only Sony products use its Memory Stick, although the company may license it to others.
IBM has stepped in with a "microdrive," a computer hard drive that is just slightly larger and thicker than a Compact Flash card. Its current maximum capacity is 340 megabytes, far more than the 160-megabyte current maximum of Compact Flash.
IBM boasts that cameras and other devices can also access data faster from a microdrive than from flash memory, saving time when digital information is stored or transferred to other devices.
Putting Off Audiophiles
To date, most digital-camera and audio-device makers have embraced flash-memory products over the microdrive. However, some audio and video perfectionists complain that flash memory's limited capacity compromises sound and picture quality. For instance, while often portrayed as sounding nearly as good as CDs, the compression technique in MP3 files eliminates too much digital information to approach that level of quality. That puts off audiophiles like Gary Wooley, a Dallas business consultant.
Mr. Wooley enjoys searching for new music on the Internet and downloading MP3 files into his home computer, but when he finds something he really likes, he heads to the music store to buy a compact disk. The "old-fashioned" music medium just sounds better, he says.
The SmartMedia Card is currently on the market.
The high cost of today's devices is also a drawback. A 32-megabyte Compact Flash card costs about $100, or about $3.13 a megabyte, and a Multimedia Card sells for about $30 more. The 340-megabyte IBM microdrive is $499, or $1.48 a megabyte.
By contrast, an ordinary computer hard drive costs 2 1/2 cents a megabyte, making it a much less expensive place to store digital information. For instance, at 32 megabytes -- which some makers claim is good enough to hold 60 minutes of low-quality video -- a Compact Flash card costs $100 and a computer hard drive is just 80 cents. But an hour of analog videotape can be even cheaper: 19 cents.
'Only Going to Get Better'
Manufacturers say improvements will come and prices will come down. "It's only going to get better," says Nelson Chan, vice president of marketing at SanDisk, which produces flash-memory products and is based in Sunnyvale, Calif.
Bill Frank, executive director of the Compact Flash Association, a trade group of manufacturers, says flash-memory devices will go down the same declining slope traveled by other computer chips. "The price of these things is going to plummet," he says.
Dataquest analyst Bruce Bonner believes the new storage products must reach 10 cents a megabyte before they threaten conventional hard drives, tapes, film and CDs. A risk to manufacturers is that the cards and sticks of digital memory might be obsolete before the cost gets that low.
Fast-moving improvements in wireless technology and broadband communications may make it easier and more cost-effective to exchange information between devices without any removable stick or card, Mr. Bonner says.
"Universal connectivity may be a more convenient form of storage" than portable media, Mr. Bonner says.
Not everyone believes there has to be a universal standard. Fritz Koenig, chief executive officer of TMH Corp., a Los Angeles audio research and development firm, notes that consumers adjusted to floppy disks, compact disks, Zip drives and tapes in computers.
"Consumers are no longer as prone to confusion as they were," Mr. Koenig says.
Copyright © 1999 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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