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

To: Jerome Wittamer who wrote (2869)	4/23/1998 10:22:00 AM
From: Jack Bridges	Respond to of 60323

By adding the distributor's margin from Sandisk sales to its existing sales, Seagate would seem to benefit both from increased cash flow and from the gain in SNDK stock price which should accompany any broader distribution of Sandisk products. JackB

To: Jerome Wittamer who wrote (2869)	4/23/1998 10:27:00 AM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 60323

Jerome, Your understanding of the situation was always mine as well. Seagate isn't going to treat SNDK in a way that would make its stock price tank. They want to see the company flourish and become a 1000 lb gorilla in flash. The benefit to Seagate in exercising its option would be simply to make more money; they already distribute their own products. The incremental cost to also sell SNDK's flash shouldn't be that great, I would think.

To: Jerome Wittamer who wrote (2869)	4/25/1998 4:18:00 PM
From: Mike Winn	Respond to of 60323

After reading the following article, I have to say WOW! Someday, they can print flash memory on a credit card. ================================================= zdnet.com Plastic transistors make processors printable By Robert Lemos, ZDNN March 30, 1998 9:03 AM PST A new plastic transistor technology developed by Bell Labs promises to deliver processors that can be printed on credit cards and almost unbreakable flat-panel displays. "Smart cards could have the transistors put right on rather than embedding processors," said Howard Katz, the materials chemist with the project at Bell Labs, the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies Inc. (LU). Katz and a team of researchers at Bell Labs announced their latest research findings at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Dallas on Monday. The findings include a way to spray on the materials to make a transistor, rather than printing. The new process further reduces the cost of making such devices. The team produced the first fully "printed" transistor last year. Benefits for disposable applications Because plastic transistors are built on top of a flexible material -- as opposed to silicon transistors, which easily break -- the technology could deliver nearly unbreakable, albeit very simple, computers. Smart cards, for one, could benefit from the breakthrough. "With a smart card... people are happy with the size, but the plastic transistor would make it more flexible and durable than putting a silicon transistor on a card," said Katz. Today's smart cards -- credit-card-sized pieces of plastic with a processor for handling data -- pose a high-tech solution to the problems of ID, personal-information security and electronic commerce. The plastic transistor could also make portable computer screens tougher. With a plastic display, the transistors would be implanted directly on a plastic sheet, adjacent to light emitting diodes that would light up the screen. The screen would be much more resistant to breaking if dropped. As simple as silk-screening T-shirts At the conference, the team will give details of a new procedure for spraying the layers of a transistor onto a plastic foundation. "The process is very similar to silk screening T-shirts," says team member Zhenan Bao, a second chemist on the team, in a statement. Because the spraying technique requires less material than printing, manufacturing costs would decrease even further, compared to making conventional silicon transistors. "This technology will really pay off for short-term, disposable applications," said Katz. Product ID tags and bar codes could be replaced by a simple spray-on transistor tag. Technology can still be improved The technology still has a way to go before it becomes widely used. So far, the smallest distance achieved by the Bell Labs' scientists for the printed plastic transistor is 75 microns. The latest silicon computer chip, on the other hand, uses transistors made from parts 300 times smaller. "This is where silicon was several decades ago," said Katz. The technology could make good on a dream of MIT Media Lab technologist Nicholas Negraponte: a book made out of flexible computer screens that display downloaded information. However, that day is a bit far off, said Katz. "The practicality of making something like that book is in doubt today," he said. "But tomorrow? Who knows?" The other four researchers on the Bell Labs' team are chemical engineer V. Reddy Raju, physicists Ananth Dodabalapur and Andrew Lovinger, and chemist John Rogers.