John, I read the N.Y. Times article that you mentioned earlier today (your post #19984) and was amazed at how accurate it was. Unlike previous articles which confused KB and MB, the writers broke with tradition and got most of their facts right. Their concluding statements were profound:
"For most consumers, he said, simply getting more digital storage is much like going from a few television channels to hundreds but still not being able to find anything interesting to watch. What the makers of removable storage devices really need to be able to do, he said, 'is to have something very small, with lots of memory, that is so cheap that you could almost throw it away.' That, even the most ardent believers in Moore's law agree, may take awhile."
Having dealt with removable media for two decades and found that the only common denominator was incompatability over time, I agree with their findings. It may be nifty to have <$10, quarter-sized disks capable of holding 500MB ... but to what end? CD-ROMs at $.50 each can hold 700MB or ~100 CD-quality MP3s. And, a 128KB flash memory card will hold so many megapixel images that it takes more time to cull the good shots from the dudds than patience permits.
I agree with Dr. Harrari that the world needs a single standard that will grow predictably to provide increasingly more capacious, more reliable storage at predictably decreasing costs per MB. IMHO, flash remains the only potential solution.
Craig |
