why are flash usb drives getting really cheap, but ram doesnt budge?

[zip22]

i have been looking for 512MB PC-2700 ram for a while now, and the best price i could find was around $70. i ended up getting a stick from a member for $60, but still....

how come a 1 GB flash drive can be had for $55 (AR), while a 512 stick of ram is at least $70? i couldnt believe that i couldnt find a stick of ram cheaper than $70.

i realise they are 2 very different products, but arent they somewhat tied together?

[tom10167]

Nope.

Look at hard drives. We're itching at <$.50/gig.

That means for one dollar, you'd get two gigs.


Trust me when I say that $140/gig for RAM is REALLY.... REALLY.... REAAAAAALLLLLLLYYYYYYY cheap.

EDIT: To be analogous(That's what I do)

Think of cars(Surprise, surprise!)

You have one car, and this car is big, and I mean HUGE. We're going to call this a Ford Econoline utility van. This is inexpensive, big, but ridiculously slow.

The other car is a Porsche 911 GT2 Twin Turbo track-god. This car is tiny, so it should be cheap? Yeah right, this car's top speed is somewhere between Fighter Jet..... and light.


Get it?

[Captain Slug]

Flash chips are not the same as RAM chips. I don't remember specifically why, but they aren't comparable in either speed or function. In fact even the older IDE hard drives kick the pants off the transfer rates that Flash chips have.

If Flash chips were the same speed as DDR RAM chips, you wouldn't be using DDR RAM chips.

[XWRed1]

Flash chips aren't the same as ram chips because they are slower, not as dense, and have a limited number of rewrites.

The single thing that makes them attractive to anyone anywhere is the fact that the contents stay when the electricity goes away.

[CrystalMethod]

Samsung announce a few weeks ago that they would not be releasing any RAM into north america. They may have started to ship to north america again, but it'll be weeks before we see any sort of price drop. Now if all the companies could flood the market like they did in late 2001, then we would all be getting cheap upgrades. *sniff* i miss the good old days...

[tom10167]

These ARE the good days, I remember rushing and getting a stick of 256meg PC100 when it was only $200.

[clash]

Good ol' days? Heck, i remember paying $90 a MEG for ramm.... These are the Good days