Fatter, Faster Flash Memory for Holidays

By Greg Scoblete On Dec 18 2006 - 8:00am

Flash memory manufacturers stressed versatility in a new assortment of products announced in the past month.

ATP Electronics introduced a new microSD card that it will bundle with adapters for both miniSD and full-size SD card slots along with a USB adapter for connecting to a PC.

The product, called the SD Trio Professional Plus, is meant to offer consumers a single solution for their various SD card needs.

A Trio Professional version will also be offered without the USB adapter. Both SKUs are currently shipping and available in capacities from 128MB to 1GB. The Trio Professional will retail for $29.99 for the 128MB card, $39.99 for the 256MB, $59.99 for the 512MB card and $99.99 for the 1GB card.

According to ATP, the microSD card is waterproof and "extreme temperature resistant."

Advanced Media will offer a line of Ridata-branded USB drives capable of connecting together or with other USB devices to serve as a hub.

The drives are shipping immediately and will be available in five styles — elephant, monkey, bookmark, puzzle and uniform. Each drive will include two USB ports for connecting additional USB devices or drives.

The drives offers partition and password protection security features and will be available in capacities from 128MB to 4GB. Pricing was not announced.

PC memory manufacturer Corsair introduced a 16GB USB flash drive, the highest capacity currently available.

The Flash Voyager drive is bootable, allowing users to store a version of Microsoft Windows on the drive and boot their PC directly from the Voyager.

The drive will be packaged in an all rubber, water-resistant housing and offers a read/write speed of 22MB/s and 7MB/s respectively.

The Voyager drive will ship with a security application for hiding, partitioning and password-protecting segments of the drive with 256-bit AES encryption. The drive is shipping now for a suggested $299.

Dallas-based Edge Tech announced its first U3-enabled USB flash drive last week. The DiskGO drives will include several software programs, including the Thunderbird e-mail application, Pass2Go security software, ACDSee image editor, PowerBackup from Cyberlink and ZinioReader. They will be available in capacities from 512MB to 2GB with pricing between $29.95 and $59.95.

U3 is a flash drive operating system developed by SanDisk and msystems to enable USB drives to run or download software applications directly from the drive, without leaving trace files on a host PC.

SanDisk and Sony will team to offer a faster Memory Stick (MS) card for high-definition video applications next year.

The new Memory Stick PRO HG format will offer data transfer speeds up to three times as fast as existing MS PRO media for a maximum theoretical value of 60MB/s. It will also feature a minimum write speed of 15MB/s.

The performance gains will enable the recording and viewing of high-definition video off of MS cards. The new cards will also offer capacities up to a maximum of 32GB.

The MS PRO-HG format will work in existing MS PRO devices, but without the speed enhancements. New HG-compatible host devices will debut next year, as will the new memory cards, the companies said.

Toshiba will ship an 8GB SD High Capacity (SDHC) memory card this January. The product will be a Class 4 card, meaning it can sustain data writing speeds of 4MB/s up to 6MB/s. According to Toshiba, the new card can store up to 3 hours and 10 minutes of standard definition video in the MPEG-2 format. Retail pricing was not announced.