memorial

Imagine putting all 2,000 of your favorite MP3 songs into a memory card no larger than your fingernail. A few years ago that would have been a tall order, particularly since the CompactFlash media was the only one with storage capacities above 4GB. But today, with the launch of SanDisk's 8GB microSDHC and M2 (aka Memory Stick Micro) cards, it's no longer an impossible task.

Widely considered as two of the world's smallest flash memory formats available today, microSD and M2 cards are most commonly used in handheld devices such as mobile and smartphones. The availability … Read more

Pollstar magazine asks a good question: why aren't more artists recording their live concerts to CD and selling them at shows? I recall that the Pixies recorded most of the shows on their reunion tour in 2004, but I haven't seen many bands do it since.

Pollstar notes that some venues retain the rights to sell anything recorded there, while others charge artists a fee for the privilege of recording their own shows for resale later. (Fair enough--the venue has probably invested heavily in sound gear, or at the very least in acoustics, which may have an effect … Read more

SanDisk is suing 25 companies for infringing on its patents on removable flash storage devices.

The flash memory maker filed a suit with a U.S. District Court in Wisconsin and another with the U.S. International Trade Commission Wednesday evening, seeking damages, a permanent injunction and an order from the ITC banning the importation of the products.

The roll call of the companies is a long one, but here goes: ACP-EP Memory, A-Data, Apacer, Behavior Computer, Buffalo, Chipsbank, Corsair Memory, Dane-Elec, Edge, Imation/Memorex, Interactive Media, Kaser, Kingston, LG Electronics, Phison Electronics, PNY, PQI, Silicon Motion, Skymedi, Transcend, TSR, … Read more

Jobo on Monday announced the Giga One Ultra device, a portable hard drive for backing up photos in the field. That's a notch more spacious than the 120GB of the Giga One predecessor or the Spectator device, which unlike the Giga One devices have a color screen.

The drives have slots for a variety of flash memory modules, including CompactFlash, SD and SDHC, Memory Stick and Memory Stick Pro. Photographers can back up their data while on the road, an idea that's especially useful if you're running out of flash card space.

The new models can download … Read more

CHIBA, Japan--BiCS. It's the acronym that could extend Moore's Law.

BiCS, which stands for Bit Cost Memory, is a three-dimensional flash memory chip developed by Toshiba in which transistors can be stacked vertically. Stacking vertically, ideally, will allow engineers to continue to add more transistors to a chip at a steady pace, which in turn means continual, steady improvement in electronics. Cost goes down, performance goes up, and everyone can continue to sell new products to willing customers.

The company has created working samples and discussed the technology at academic conferences, but is showing the concept for the … Read more

What ails your sluggish computer? Old hardware? A fragmented hard drive? Or maybe it's overloaded RAM.

RAMBooster is a CNET Download.com user favorite for expanding the boundaries of your computer's available RAM. It's no substitute for the real thing, but combined with a few other choice utilities, RAMBooster is one ingredient in a faster, slicker Windows XP.

See how RAMBooster works in the video below, and as always, tune into other great First Look videos from the CNET Download.com crew.

As much as we like Mimobot drives, and especially their latest Halo family, they wouldn't last a day once our kids got their mitts on them, which they would surely do. But there's a way to revel in your inner (or outer) geekdom with a USB key more discreetly while paying homage to Transformers to boot.

A 2GB Decepticon and a 1GB Autobot are available only in the U.K., according to GeekAlerts, for some unknown reason. Either will easily hold its own in the USB-bot community at large. And they also can be worn on one's … Read more

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Back in 2005, Samsung and Microsoft announced something that got the storage fans in the world excited: they had designed a hard drive with a bit of flash memory in it that would serve as a data cache.

The hybrid hard drive would cut down power consumption, increase battery life, and, most importantly, whack boot-up time, the companies said.

But so far, you don't see a lot of them on store shelves and the benefits are somewhat disappointing, said hard drive executives at Diskcon 2007, taking place in Santa Clara this week.

"The initial versions … Read more