I rarely toss out old stuff that I’ve written. I have on the next to me, for example, photocopies of all my police notebooks from 1979 to 1985, and just about everything else I’ve written since. The same is true in the computer age. I still have the very first article I wrote for publication back in 1992.
On Sunday I was looking for an spreadsheet I did a few years ago which lists the wavelengths, and quarter and half wavelengths, for different audio frequencies at one third octave intervals. I was doing a piece on optimising subwoofers and wanted to make a point about constructive and destructive interference.
In searching for that, I came across a small spreadsheet I did back in October 2002 in which I was comparing the prices for flash memory cards in a range of sizes and formats. The prices were derived from the web page of one of the then better for value online merchants. This is the table:
| Size | Compact flash | SmartMedia | Memory Stick | SD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16MB | $26 | |||
| 32MB | $51 | $41 | $81 | $71 |
| 64MB | $73 | $72 | $116 | $113 |
| 128MB | $142 | $149 | $209 | $208 |
| 256MB | $277 | $449 | ||
| 512MB | $602 | |||
| 1024MB | $1789 |
So here it is, May 2007 or less than five years later. Today I receive some flash memory cards I ordered online last week. The largest of them was the new SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) format. It is physically the same as SD, but breaching the 2GB barrier required changes to the logic, so most SD devices won’t support it (although my Pentax K100D camera will). The capacity of this card is 4GB. Cost: $89.95. And that includes a small USB card reader.
In other words, even though it is 64 times the size, it costs less than a 64MB SD card back in 2002. It’s beginning to look like flash card based digital video cameras are going to be the way of the future.