Stories about: Lexar Media

A lot of solid-state disk (SSD) drive reviews and features have been circulating around the Internet lately, and I've noticed that the speeds of those products are increasing remarkably, even as manufacturers use more multilevel cell (MLC) NAND flash memory in their products, which is innately slower than single-level cell (SLC) NAND.

Most USB 2.0 flash drives look the same, but that doesn't mean they perform the same.

Hewlett-Packard has introduced a business desktop with a slim form factor that packs a flash-based solid-state drive, giving the system faster boot times than PCs with hard drives.

Memory maker Micron Technology on Wednesday introduced a line of solid-state drives (SSDs) and said it would plug the technology into portable storage devices by mid-to-end 2008.

Over the next 10 years, thin-film polymers and other flexible substrates could change how people think about and use displays. In the future, you may "print out" reports to sheets of e-paper: flexible polymer displays about as thick as a sheet of paper that can be spread out on a desk for easy comparison and analysis and then reused when the work is done. Your PDA or cell phone may incorporate a roll-up display that extends to let you view maps or Web pages on a larger screen. Your laptop may have a secondary display on the back of the case that can maintain any image you choose, such as your schedule and to-do list -- and you'll be able to refer to it even when the laptop is turned off. Some displays may be embedded on a shirt sleeve or curve around a watchband.

USB flash memory drives are experiencing an increase in product failures as a result of quality-control problems, and the wildly popular replacements for floppy disks could be facing other problems related to fragmentation, according to industry experts.

Microsoft unveiled a new technology licensing policy Wednesday that the company said signals its commitment to working with other vendors in the industry on IP (intellectual property) swaps intended to driver interoperability and innovation.

Between the keynote speeches and technology briefings, attendees at the Intel Developer Forum had a chance to wander about the convention floor and check out new and existing products that make use of Intel Corp. hardware. Following is a small selection of the many devices on show here.

Two-megapixel digital cameras are now commonplace and will soon be superseded by a new generation of three-megapixel cameras. But it wasn't long ago that one-megapixel cameras overwhelmed us with their image quality. Do you really need more than 1 million pixels in your digital images? If the answer is no-and you want to save some money-the last of the megapixel cameras have just come to market, in the form of the Epson America Inc. PhotoPC 650 and the Olympus America Inc. D-450 Zoom. Both cameras produce good-looking pictures, but the Olympus model stands out with higher resolution and a host of useful features, including-true to its name-a 3x optical zoom.