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Originally Posted by OverlordXenu /img/forum/go_quote.gif
SSD? They also cost THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of dollars, and I doubt they will be available to consumers. 32gigs of SSD is $500. It goes up exponentially from there.
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Nope, sorry - you're information is only partially correct. 32GB IDE drives were available to manufacturers as of early 3rd quarter last year and the going rate is now +/- $50 per 4GB chip (the laws of economics dictate that cost will continue to fall). That makes a 32GB IDE drive cost in the neighborhood of +/- $400. There are at least two manufacturers that have successfully made 256GB IDE drives to date. While drives that large are currently cost prohibitive, they won't be forever and the larger capacity available, the more affordable "normal" capacity drives will become. Remember virtually every new technology that has ever been invented? It ALL started out expensive, and there were always people saying it would never take off due to cost. Think $1200 VHS players and >$1000 consumer grade CD players. Remember when ABS brakes were only on expensive German cars?
This appears to be the direction the industry is headed in for all sorts of reasons. For the consumer, there are the obvious benefits of greater durability and longevity - as well as reliability. There are also the issues of lower power consumption, lighter weight, faster access times, and smaller footprint. For manufacturers, they can produce the product cheaper (provided they have a hand in flash chip production already such as Samsung) and with fewer moving parts. Drives can also be made at a faster rate. All indications show a lower initial failure incidence rate, as well. All these facts point to an inevitable shift in the direction of chip based drives in the near future. Add to this the fact that MS made Vista's chip based drive technology "official" by issuing compatibility certificates in June.
So, to make a long story short, chip based memory is where we're all headed. Well, our electronic memory, anyway.
Edit, think of it this way - our iPhones are chip based and they offer the same music functionality and sync method as any iPod (now if they would only unlock more of the system so we could use it like an external drive). Logically, one has to assume that there are other chip based players at least being experimented with at Apple since they already have two working models (4 and 8GB iPhones). Remember, my original question asked about mod'ing iPods to use flash type memory. The whole industry adaptation discussion was a little side trip! Also of note, from correspondence with pocketpctechs, they have implied they may be working on increasing the memory available for the iPhone, which if successful, means potentially more widespread versatility among other mp3 players. Replacing the disk in an iPod with a flash type drive is not really stretching the imagination - and think of the benefits!
