Sony USB thumbdrives

[Russianwolf]

Went to Staples today.

1GB Sony Thumbdrives are $22
2GB is $40.

Not sure if this is local or how much of a bargain it is, but I bought one.

[LCHIEN]

There's a worldwide glut of non-volatile memory (e.g. those used in cameras, PDAs, phones etc) and spot market prices have fallen 50% since January according to my electronic industry tabloids. Expected to continue for a while.
I have seen a number of 1G thumbdrives going for $5-20 after rebates at the local office supply and computer shops.

So $20 or less for 1GB is more or less the going rate nowadays.

Supply is expected to remain high and prices low for most of this year so no rush in getting them at these low prices.

It's amazing, that one 1GB thumb drive carries the equivalent of 700 floppy disks. And more amazing, the two I have on my lanyard are almost full.

[Russianwolf]

There's a worldwide glut of non-volatile memory (e.g. those used in cameras, PDAs, phones etc) and spot market prices have fallen 50% since January according to my electronic industry tabloids. Expected to continue for a while.
I have seen a number of 1G thumbdrives going for $5-20 after rebates at the local office supply and computer shops.

So $20 or less for 1GB is more or less the going rate nowadays.

Supply is expected to remain high and prices low for most of this year so no rush in getting them at these low prices.

It's amazing, that one 1GB thumb drive carries the equivalent of 700 floppy disks. And more amazing, the two I have on my lanyard are almost full.

I rememebr not to long ago having a 20 Meg harddrive and thinking it was plenty.

[LarryG]

I rememebr not to long ago having a 20 Meg harddrive and thinking it was plenty.

The first hard drive I ever owned was a 20MB Plus HardCard, which I installed into one of the original Compaq Portables (the one that looked like a portable sewing machine when it was all buttoned up for travel. Weighed about like one, too).

I never even came close to filling up that 20MB ... programs in those days came on one, or at most two, 5.25" floppies that each held only 360KB. Most apps were small enough to leave room for the DOS boot files and most of the common-used utilities needed to run the machine.

I paid $700 for the HardCard (which I still have, BTW; at last check, it still works). At that cost-per-megabyte your 1GB thumb drive would've set you back a cool $35,000.

Good times, good times ...

[LCHIEN]

The first hard drive I ever owned was a 20MB Plus HardCard, which I installed into one of the original Compaq Portables (the one that looked like a portable sewing machine when it was all buttoned up for travel. Weighed about like one, too).

I never even came close to filling up that 20MB ... programs in those days came on one, or at most two, 5.25" floppies that each held only 360KB. Most apps were small enough to leave room for the DOS boot files and most of the common-used utilities needed to run the machine.

I paid $700 for the HardCard (which I still have, BTW; at last check, it still works). At that cost-per-megabyte your 1GB thumb drive would've set you back a cool $35,000.

Good times, good times ...

I bought a 20 MB HH HD kit from then fledgling Michael Dell in Austin, for $500. Went into my compaq deskpro.

[Cheeky]

Went to Staples today.

1GB Sony Thumbdrives are $22
2GB is $40.

Not sure if this is local or how much of a bargain it is, but I bought one.

staples had the SanDisk 1gb cruzers last week for 4 bucks and change. i bought several. some made it on ebay for 3 times the price

[MilDoc]

My first HD was 5 Meg and I was in heaven!

But then, my first computer was a homebrew with 256K RAM and 8 front panel lights and switches to program in binary ....

[Russianwolf]

My first HD was 5 Meg and I was in heaven!

But then, my first computer was a homebrew with 256K RAM and 8 front panel lights and switches to program in binary ....

I remember our Vic20. no harddrive at all.

[Lee4847]

Heathkit here!

H89.. loaded H-dos from a casset tape. It only loade about half the time. And it did almost NOTHING!! LOL... Oh for the "good old days"!!

[TheRic]

Started with Cassette storage, then 8" Inch Floppy Storage, then 5 1/4" 360K Floppy storage, then 3 1/2 720K Floppy, etc.

[final_t]

Bah, you're all spoilt. Back in the day, we had our own twisted pair made out of old shoelaces from a sneaker net running at 110 baud and we liked it. On the weekends we'd all get together and gather up the dots from the paper tape punch and glue them back in to reuse the tapes - the first re-writable storage. You kids have it too easy.

[lrr]

Graduated from Engineering School with only having a slide rule for most of my senior year. When I saw the HP-35 scientific calculator, I almost fainted. It was $400, but it might as well have been $4000!

But I digress ... concerning computers, in the 80s I built my first, and 1MB SIMMs were $100 each, so I got 4 of them for my 386. I do not remember how much the HDD was, but it was a 5.25" Seagate 20MB. Eventually I added a 2nd for a really hot system. And then I upgraded my 1200 baud modem to 9600 baud model.

Of course, it booted faster than my XP machine does now.

[LCHIEN]

Graduated from Engineering School with only having a slide rule for most of my senior year. When I saw the HP-35 scientific calculator, I almost fainted. It was $400, but it might as well have been $4000!

But I digress ... concerning computers, in the 80s I built my first, and 1MB SIMMs were $100 each, so I got 4 of them for my 386. I do not remember how much the HDD was, but it was a 5.25" Seagate 20MB. Eventually I added a 2nd for a really hot system. And then I upgraded my 1200 baud modem to 9600 baud model.

Of course, it booted faster than my XP machine does now.

I was a senior when the HP-35 came out, I waited a year and got an HP-45.

I built my first computer in 1976. I had to get a trashed teletype working. It was the I/O for my first system.
I bought a S-100 Technical Design Labs CPU based on the brand new Z-80 chips and a I/O board. I hand soldered a 20-slot mother board (2000 solder joints), built a 20A power supply with some beer-can capacitors, and then built three 8K static RAM kits (each having 64 1 bit x 1K chips - another 1000 solder joints per board) from Ithaca Audio. I was getting tired of soldering so I wire-wrapped the next 32-K using the new 1x16K DRAM chips based on my own memory board design. I booted from both cassette and paper tape. Running TDL BASIC and stuff.
I added North Star 5-1/4" controller and several disk drives (I think the origininal 5.25" double density, double sided disks hit 360K and cost about $360, too. This was a real N* DOS. I also had the FP hardware board. eventually I upgraded to CP/M.

Later I built a couple more S-100 Z-80 systems based on CAlifornia computer systems and with 8"DSDD drives, had the chassis with the lights and switches, and ran a BBS system w/2400 baud modem and 4MB of FDD drives. I was president of the CP/M-Houston users Group.

They're all gathering dust in my garage now. Don't even know if they'll boot up... Sure was fun in those days.

[TheRic]

Figures Loring would show us geeks up!!!

[LarryG]

I was a senior when the HP-35 came out, I waited a year and got an HP-45.

RPN Forever!

If my HP32S ever croaks, I don't know what I'm going to go. I'm not sure anyone makes an RPN calculator any more.