memory

When you hear Los Alamos National Laboratory is disabling its computers' USB ports to prevent people from toting away flash memory drives filled with classified nuclear weapons information, it's not a stretch to imagine that there might be a market for thumb drives with a bit of security.

Enter Lexar's SAFE PSD S1100, a product line announced Monday geared for use at corporate or government customer sites where there's a need to keep the lid on sensitive data.

The drives offer built-in 256-bit file encryption and a mandatory password to gain access to the data. The encryption … Read more

Just about every day, we come across a blog or site that claims to have found the worst or dumbest (or both) portable USB drive. And we usually agree each time, until the next one comes along. But we're somewhat conflicted over this 16-pound bowling ball, which the Raw Feed calls the "worst USB gadget yet." We admit that it kind of defeats the purpose of portability, but we still like it, probably because it reminds us of our drive-in movie days (memories over memory?). There's just one question: How do you toss it down the … Read more

Who would've thought that a USB storage device could be a fashion accessory? After all, it wasn't all that long ago that people didn't even know what a USB port was for.

Just today, BIOS reported that Sony--the ultimate slave to fashion--was introducing a sleek new 8GB drive with a retractable connector as part of is "Micro Vault" line. At the same time, blogs were writing of a 4GB drive in orange and black with a "push and pop design" from PQI.

Both probably work fine and will look respectable when you unsheathe … Read more

Rambus beat Hynix in its patent infringement case and a court ordered Hynix to pay $306 million in damages.

The court upheld all 10 of Rambus' patent claims, said a representative for the company.

The memory designer alleged that Hynix and other large memory manufacturers infringed its patents when making DDR DRAM, the most common type of memory in PCs today. Those memory makers denied this, but have not been winning the argument in court.

Rambus is actively litigating other suits against other memory manufacturers.