Thursday, December 07, 2006

Camera Memory Keeps Getting Bigger and Cheaper

Toshiba just announced an 8 GB SD memory card. While I'm sure it's bound to be expensive, it is very good news indeed! Popping one of these cards into a camera like Canon's PowerShot S3 IS will turn it into one great photo and video taking machine! It would also go a long way towards being able to travel on a 2-week+ trip without a laptop or other device to dump photos onto.

One of these memory cards could literally store thousands of pictures (enough for any international trip I've ever been on) and probably hours of video as well.

Cameras like the Canon S3 with super-optical zoom (12x) and video capabilities make a great substitute for a video camera. As evidence, here are two videos shot with my older Canon S1 IS. One from my journey to Antarctica and another of the baby panda at the National Zoo. Note how far I'm able to zoom with the camera. I had a 1 GB memory card when I took both of these. Expanding that eight-fold would be a dream come true!

Toshiba also just came out with a new hard drive that shows how much data storage technology has changed in the last few years:

PC World reports that Toshiba has developed a 1.8-inch 100GB hard drive, suitable for use in portable music devices. Adding a 25% jump over current storage, the new drive is sized perfectly to fit into iPods.

Production should begin next month and the drive itself will be shown at the January Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The first 1.8" drive developed in 2000 could hold 2GB and cost $740. Today, you can buy an 80GB iPod for about $350.

In six years time, we've gone from a 2GB hard disk to 8GB on a chip the size of a postage stamp! Does that mean we can expect 400GB chips in another six years? I wonder how much longer until we get holographic data storage?

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