The Gadget Monkey » flash ram

What is the point of digital photo frames?

Christian Cawley — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 05:47:52 +0000

It’s a photo frame with a TFT display that allows the display of digital photos. Yet it’s expensive, delicate, and ultimately pointless.

Yeh, sure, you can change the photo on a whim with minimal effort, but digital photo frames are the perfect example of a white elephant. You spend a load of money on it, then plonk it down on the mantelpiece or your desk, and that’s it. It doesn’t do anything else.

Which for £50 or so is a bit of a mistake – especially when the battery runs down.

I’m a big fan of electronics and toys and gadgets, but the digital photo frame really isn’t worth anyones money.

Instead, warm your place up a bit with real photos, in real photo frames that won’t go out or break, and leave you in 20 years time unable to relive old memories, because the old technology cant be repaired, and the old flash ram with those special moments on can’t be read.

Flash ram pricing

Christian Cawley — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:55:59 +0000

There’s been a bit of a rumbling over the web in various forms over the price of the Apple MacBook Air. These concerns have been mainly based around a misunderstanding of different engineering techniques and standard in the manufacture of flash ram.

It seems – and obviously if you consider the amount of reading and writing a flash ram HDD substitute would engage in – that there is a considerable difference in price between the ram used in iPods and that used in the MacBook Air.

The price is different of course because the ram is different. There are in fact a number of different standards of flash ram, of which that used in the MacBook Air is one of the most stable, high-end solutions.

However knowing exactly what is going on in the world of flash ram is very useful for informing opinion on the future of media storage…

Consequences of HD-DVD losing to Blu-Ray

Christian Cawley — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 06:57:37 +0000

Toshiba’s announcement that they would stop the development of HD-DVD discs and players signalled the end of the high definition optical disc format war, and handed victory to the Sony consortium.

However with the issue of Blu-Ray’s reliability with PCs still at large, don’t expect Blu-Ray to become de facto; don’t even expect this particular war to be hugely significant.

The Gadget Monkey tells me that this is just a blip – that the high definition optical disc format war is in fact just a phoney war, a standard to run parallel to standard DVD for only a few years to come.

Such is the slow take-up of High Def television and broadcast across Europe and the USA, despite the Sony propaganda, that the winner of the high def optical disc format war was never going to be winning anything more than a bit of money that was lost out on when DVD became the prevailing format.

Flash Ram is mere months away from being a viable alternative, is smaller, lighter and more versatile. A lot of money has been spent developing 5 inch discs in a world where portable media players continue to sell well with screens that are – at best – 5 inch.

So don’t get too attached to that Blu-Ray player.