RECLAIM YOUR OLD FLASH MEMORY CARDS
If you have a bunch of those older, smaller capacity flash memory
cards lying around, I may have found something new that will let you
use them once again. After all, you spent a lot of money on them
when they represented the biggest capacity you could get at the
time. Flash memory is computer memory that retains its information
without electrical power. So why not use flash memory instead of the
volatile kind used in personal computers? While the ability to
retain is a desirable one, the simple fact is that flash memory is
way too slow. Today's high-speed computers need even faster memory
to keep up with the demands of multi-gigahertz CPUs and screaming
buss speeds. But flash memory has definitely found a welcome place
in many consumer electronic devices, most notably the digital
camera. But as these digital wonders continue to improve with higher
megapixel capacities, digital shutterbugs find themselves having to
buy larger capacity flash memory cards to hold the bigger image
files. A five megapixel camera for example can take a single picture
that may require over 100 megabytes of storage. It's easy to see how
even a gigabyte flash memory card may only hold ten photographs. As
the price of these larger flash memory cards continue to fall,
digital photographers find themselves buying the newer, higher
capacity cards. And while it's possible to carry around the older,
smaller cards even as a form of backup, most find their way into a
drawer, never to be used again. But one company has come up with a
clever way to breathe new life into these cards.
First, let me give credit to one of my radio talk show
correspondents who put me onto the Keychain Smart Media Reader.
Steve Bass saw it out at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas
and flipped. And when I heard about it, I did the same. Basically,
the Keychain Smart Media Reader looks just like one of those tiny
flash memory thumb-drives that plugs into any available USB port.
Just plug one in and you immediately see a new logical storage
device with its own drive letter and name appear on your computer's
desktop. But what makes the Keychain Smart Media Reader so different
is that it contains no flash memory at all. Instead, you open it up
and insert any of your own flash memory cards into it. Close it up
and voila! You have just converted that old useless flash memory
card into a very useful thumb drive.
 When
I first heard about this, my immediate thought was that the cost of
the Keychain Smart Media Reader itself would make this idea
impractical. That was until I heard that the device sells for $9.95.
At that price, even the smallest, most useless flash memory card
becomes valuable again. Made by MediaGear, the Keychain Smart Media
Reader comes in five different versions, each designed for a
particular flash memory standard. There are Keychain Smart Media
Readers for Sony's Memory Stick (it does not support the Pro
version), Compact Flash, SmartMedia, Secure Digital MultiMediaCard
and the xD-Picture Card.
Each Keychain Smart Media Reader sports a USB plug along with a
small blue drive activity indicator LED that flickers when the
memory card is being accessed.
MediaGear has come up with a very clever and inexpensive way to
reuse something you may already have and up to now was just
collecting dust in a drawer somewhere. You can get the Keychain
Smart Media Reader directly from the MediaGear website at
www.mymediagear.com. |
