Ten O'Clock Tech: SmartDisk's Flash Media
By Matthew Herper
biz.yahoo.com
Once upon a time, people bought music on vinyl. Then compact discs took over, and beloved record players everywhere gathered dust. A similar thing happened when 5.25-inch floppy disk drives (remember those?) were replaced by 3.5-inch disk drives.
Now, Naples, Fla.-based SmartDisk (Nasdaq: SMDK) (1/12/01 Quote: SMDK 4 3/8 +3/8) is hoping to help you deal as such problems loom anew. Scads of companies are using postage stamp-sized flash memory cards in digital cameras, camcorders, MP3 audio players and cell phones. SmartDisk's clever FlashPath devices that will let you use the memory cards in a 3.5-inch floppy drive, or, for music, an audio cassette player.
Companies like Hitachi (NYSE: HIT - news), Panasonic, Samsung are using the cards. FlashPath supports the three leading flash memory cards with different FlashPath adaptors: the MultiMediaCard made by Sandisk (Nasdaq: SNDK - news), which can hold either 32 megabytes or 64 MB of memory; Toshiba's Smartmedia; and the 8 MB memory sticks made by Sony (NYSE: SNE - news).
What's positively charming about SmartDisk's solutions is that they look and act just like the old-fashioned objects that flash memory cards may someday replace. The company's media readers look and work just like floppy disks; simply insert the multimedia card and shove the adapter into the disk drive. They may cost anywhere between $60 and $100 based on what kind of multimedia card is being used, and are available at the company's Web site.
Likewise, the company's FlashTrax looks just like an audiocassette: Stick in a multimedia card or memory stick, and you can play digital music on a car stereo or boom box. That may make the transition to using smaller memory devices easier.
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