Brian, I'd love to have a "pure digital chip solution" to the storage problem. But a factor of 30 over the small spinning disk solution is too pricy for me. (again, we're talking 4 years for prices to converge, given the 1/2 price/10 months [IMHO, optimal] situation and NO change in the disk prices)
And as for the future greater storage requirements, the higher storage flash cards are REALLY expensive now, and if/when they become affordable, they might not be compatible with today's products (for example, I have a 486 computer which will not take any SIMMS over 4 MB each). Are the manufacturers now building into their products the ability to handle large flash cards? I have not spoken with them. Remember, the 20 MB card or disk is large enough to hold about 80 pictures, not too shabby unless you are going to be on one of those around-the-world-in-a-one-man-sailboat trips where you will not see civilization for a year (but then, again, how many pictures do you want to take of ocean waves?)
One more small thing, if you can transfer data from a flash device-equipped device to another through a serial or parallel port, why couldn't you do the same thing with a disk-equipped device? There's no further need to have multiple disk readers than multiple flash readers. I'm not sure whether you would even have to take a speed hit, since the cable I/O should be the transfer speed bottleneck.
Again, just to get everybody thinking.
Cameron |
