Flash

Monday September 19, 2005 - 11:24AM EDT

I mentioned solid state storage before eventually taking over for harddrives. Becasue it is superior is just about every technical and practical way. The only hurdle was that it was "expensive" to produce. Which is really just garbage and the result of market and production. That kind of "expensive" is the worst kind of illusion. Well with the launch of iPod nano, it has kind of marked the explosion of flash based memory. It was already happening but it is the first device of its kind to use so much for its price. People who argue the the nano is more expensive for a comparable iPod mini have no idea. You can today buy large flash based harddrive that size of regular computer harddrive today but they cost ten times as much. Flash has no moving parts so it is more reliable. Also no moving parts means less power consumption. It is also orders of magnitude faster than a regular harddrive. Much more durable in extreme condition. All fighter jets use solid state harddrives, they wouldn't be caught dead running their aviation operating systems on spinning harddrives. I am not sure about commerical and civilian aircraft though. Information density is not quite as good as your standard harddrive but it is getting there. In a 10 years or less they they might have solid state storage that has a capacity of more than 10 terabytes on something the size of those smart chips on credit cards. The speed of storage has really lagged behind computer speed. Solid state storage will catch it up. And will make Windows taking so much time paging out to the harddrive a thing of the past.