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Technology Stocks : WDC/Sandisk Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jerome Wittamer who wrote (1401)	11/9/1997 8:38:00 PM
From: A.J. Mullen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 60323

Jerome & Mike, Thanks for giving my concerns attention. Jerome you may well be right, that GPS already use flash. I do not own one, but I have read many reviews. Nowhere is there any discussion about shutting them down early to conserve memory. I know my notebook takes a tiny Li battery to conserve information so that the computer can be restored to previous state upon rebooting. I believe most Pcs also use similar batteries to preserve info concerning their configuration. A colleague told me that one day his desktop machine wouldn't start. He took it in for repair, and was embarrassed to discover that a dead battery was his only problem. He didn't know his machine used one. I have never had to find the battery in any PC I have been using. The PC is declared obsolete before the battery expires. I thought that one of these batteries might be used in the GPS. If they are using flash memory, then the available technolgy allows storage of many maps, albeit relatively simple ones. A cellular phone could store detailed road maps for, say, a 1 000 square mile area. On moving to a different region, the relevant maps could be downloaded. that would be possible with the memories of current GPS units. Yes, it would be nice to store the whole of the US at one go, but it isn't strictly necessary. Providers may well prefer to sell the maps in sections. They would be able to charge for each section, and there would also be the cost of airtime while downloading. In summary, i'm still not convinced that the extra storage is really necessary for the proposed smart phone. Of course, I once thought an 8MB hard-drive was more than enough storage for my PC. I hope the software writers are busy! Finally, my 1994 Saab has an LCD odometer display. I recently had to change the battery. The odometer did not return to zero.