MEMORY CARD READER TOPS OUT AT OVER 50 DIFFERENT KINDS

It's amazing to think that around 80 years ago, we were all riding around in vehicles pulled by horses. It's even more stunning to know that these last 50 years have realized more technological advances than the entire history of all humankind. We've gone to the moon, yet the computing power found within the chip inside a talking greeting card contains far more computing power than all the computers those astronauts used to get there and back.

Our technology is accelerating at a furious pace and we're all so lucky to be alive to witness it. I can't imagine what the next 50 years will bring but I'm sure that whomever's around will snicker at us in much the same way we do now when thinking about those horse and buggy passengers.

Most of the chips inside our consumer electronic devices are pretty much out of sight. We know they're inside but we really don't mess with them simply because we don't have to. We really don't know what they do unless you're some kind of uber-geek who's into that kind of thing. No, we just plug into our iPods, point our digital cameras and they all just work. However there actually is one kind of chip we electronic consumers have to interact with when it comes to using some of these devices. The Flash Memory chip is fast becoming the storage medium of choice when it comes to our digital cameras,
mp3 players, hand-held electronic games and other devices that offer a user-expandable memory capacity. Flash memory is different that the memory found in personal computers in that the information stored within them doesn't go away when the power is turned off. That's a good thing otherwise you'd lose all the pictures you took with your digital camera when its rechargeable battery ran out. If you've ever wondered why your tiny mp3 player retains the music within or your cell phone keeps all your names and phone numbers in its address book even though the power runs dry, it's because these devices use flash memory.

Many of these products offer removable flash memory chips or cards so that you can increase the storage capacity of the device or remove and replace one when it fills up. The capacity of these memory cards has also grown exponentially. Originally it was a big deal to have one with a single megabyte and it cost hundreds of dollars. Now you can get cards with 2 gigabytes and more for under $50. But there's a small problem. Over time and partly due to the rapid pace of these emerging technologies, there are over 50 different standards or types of these flash memory cards floating around and they're not compatible with each other. The first version to appear was the CompactFlash and today that has different versions like Type I and Type II and even those have different transfer speed versions. Then there's the Sony Memory Stick (with at least 10 different types and speeds available now), SD, Mini SD, Micro SD, MMC/SD, Olympus DC cards, the list goes on and on. To help deal with all these flash memory standards, developers have come out with universal card readers that attempt to read as many of these card standards as they can.

As of this moment, the one that I'm using is from IOGEAR. Their 56-in-1 Memory Card Reader/Writer seems to offer the widest variety of supported flash memory cards to date and most or all of their variants. I'm not going to list all 56 of them for you here but you can certainly see if your electronic gizmo's card is supported simply by going to the IOGEAR website and read the listings for yourself.

The 56-in-1 works on both Windows and Macintosh computers without additional drivers and supports USB 2.0 for transfer speeds of up to 480 megabits per second which is a good thing given the amount of data these cards can store.
The 56-in-1 requires no additional power, getting what it needs directly from the USB connection to your computer. And while it works with all the popular memory cards without the need for an additional adaptor, you still may find yourself needing an adaptor for a few of the more exotic memory cards.

This incredibly useful little device includes a USB cable and sells for a mere $19.95 which I find to be quite astonishing given this product's versatility. It also comes with a three year warranty but given the speed at which we're moving technologically, flash memory will most likely become obsolete before that runs out.

You can find the 56-in-1 Memory Card Reader/Writer (Model GFR281) at the IOGEAR website at: www.iogear.com.

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