memory

The MacBook Air focused global attention--for the first time with prolonged intensity--on a small, thin notebook. Until now, this kind of design simply wasn't on many users' shopping lists. (Particularly Americans who choose performance over portability.) Here's a brief look at this notebook category, both past and present.

A few prefatory notes: Because I use a MacBook Air, the topic of ultraportables has taken on more importance for me. But the impact of this category of notebooks goes much further than personal interest. Ultraportables now contain fast Core 2 Duo processors, snappy solid state drives (SSDs), and better … Read more

If you spend a bit of time searching the Download.com Mac catalog, you might notice a lot of applications that seem identical. These are separate installers for the same programs, but one is for a Mac with an Intel processor, and the other is for a PowerPC chip. Not every program has separate installers, though, and once you've got your program up and running that can lead to a lot of wasted space.

Xslimmer is an effective shareware tool that costs a lot less than buying an brand-new hard drive, even at the plummeting cost of memory. For … Read more

As if things weren't bad enough for flash memory companies this year, they're now even more concerned since Apple has yet to place a major order in 2008, according to a report out of Taiwan.

Digitimes hasn't always been the most reliable source, but they have gotten enough things right lately to take notice, and their report Tuesday suggesting that Apple's flash memory orders have fallen off the face of the Earth jives with other information we've seen this year. According to Digitimes' sources in the Taiwanese flash memory industry, Apple has yet to place … Read more

Do you want to know the best thing about a notebook with a flash memory drive, rather than a conventional hard drive?

It's the silence.

The notebook I'm testing--a Dell Latitude D830 with a 64GB flash hard drive from Samsung--hasn't emitted a sound in three days. Flash drives, which store data in NAND flash memory, don't require motors or spinning platters. Thus, there are no whirring mechanical noises.

Compare that with my T42 ThinkPad. It sounds like a guinea pig got trapped inside, particularly during the start-up phase. Vzoooot. Cronk, cronk, cronk. Zip, zip. (Pause.) Gurlagurlagurla...… Read more

Updated March 5 at 5:40 p.m. PT to clarify paragraph on Intel's flash business.

Intel's profits will fade a bit in the first quarter as the company bears the brunt of falling flash memory prices.

The company announced late on Monday that it was reducing its expectations for gross margin from 56 percent to 54 percent "due to lower than expected prices for NAND flash memory chips." In a way, it's a narrowing of Intel's forecast, since the previous expectations came with a "plus or minus a couple of points" … Read more

Imagine coming back from two weeks in Maui with a perfect tan, thanks to the "PODillow." The healing effects of your vacation in nirvana are rapidly fading away, and you'll do anything to salvage even a shred of that tropical antidote.

Enter the "Memory Foam MP3 Blackout Shades" from Smarthome. It won't retain that George Hamilton glow (which will please your dermatologist), but Red Ferret says you can still be "blissfully submerged" in a blend of music and soothing darkness while your MP3 player is plugged into its built-in speakers. That may … Read more

A speed-boosting overhaul of CompactFlash memory technology could start arriving in cameras next year, but it's incompatible with the version used in today's higher-end models

The new version, called CFast, has faster data-transfer speeds that could let photographers take more continuous shots without waiting for the camera to catch up, cut camera makers' costs for built-in buffer memory, and make it swifter to review photos on a camera or copy them to a computer.

"It's going to end up in the high-end cameras. The reason to move to it is purely for speed," said John … Read more

When Power Downloader is hard at work in the Powerlair he often has several programs running simultaneously. Though he has plenty of RAM in his super system, Power likes to keep track of memory usage to see what's taking up the most space. It also helps to have memory tracking apps when he needs to diagnose system slow downs.

To keep track of how much memory is being used by his mission-critical apps, Power Downloader uses FreeMeter. With this free program on his computer, Power can track disk space usage, memory usage, disk transfer rates, and more all from … Read more

Samsung is touting the reliability of solid-state drives, while citing an explosive market for the devices in server computers.

SSDs are based on flash memory chip technology and have no moving parts. Hard-disk drives (HDDs), in contrast, use read-write heads that hover over spinning platters to access and record data. With no moving parts, SSDs avoid both the risk of mechanical failure and the mechanical delays of HDDs. Therefore, SSDs are generally faster and more reliable. The catch is the cost: SSDs are currently much more expensive than HDDs.

There are also concerns about wear. That is, flash has the … Read more