Consumers want personal data on visible removable media with a tactile confirmation of security,...
What consumers would you be referring to? Most of my data is stored on a 'non-removable' hard-drive, and whether or not I can hold it in my hand does not attest to the security of its contents. In fact, I contend that it will be much easier to lose the data if it resides on a postage-stamp sized card (e.g., have you ever misplaced a floppy?).
...not in some "black box" embedded chip with a tempermental wireless connection.
I wish to make it clear that I have not suggested any such scenario. For example, you can see from this post, messages.yahoo.com that I refer to devices with an I/O port built into them....there is nothing "temperamental" about it. Nonetheless, improved high bandwidth wireless in the future will likely be an alternative and popular means of moving data back and forth between the portable appliance and a network based hard-drive. (I found out today that NSM is planning to put the new Metricom Ricochet2 modem functions [128 kps] onto an embeddable chip.)
Embedded applications will increase OEM costs and decrease consumer purchasing power and interest.
This is not at all necessarily true, and certainly, the type of consumer device will likely determine whether or not the cost & space requirements of a flashcard slot and the attendant external flashcard packaging are warranted. For example, as more and more functions are crammed into a form-factor such as shown here etown.com, it may very well make sense to do away with the flashcard slot altogether.
And it is just not cost & space advantages where embedded memory may have the edge, but it might also be in performance, whereby logic embedded with the memory (rather than relying upon removable memory) might have significant speed advantages.
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