Flash memory on a USB stick is easy enough to understand concerning the way it works. The memory is a type of EEPROM and non-volatile, which is the reason it doesn’t require a battery or external power source to retain the information stored on it.

But if you ever asked the question, "Is there a difference between brands?", the answer is yes and no.

Concerning data reliability, all USB sticks are roughly the same. It is very rare that one would absolutely fail on you unless put it through several hundred thousand erase cycles. Some can even go up to a million.

Concerning construction, yes there are differences. Some sticks have a poor casing, causing them to fall apart prematurely. It doesn’t happen often but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

Concerning data transfer rate, this is where the biggest differences lie. Some sticks are legitimately slow.

Sandisk (which everybody has owned at one point or another, I have 3 of them,) routinely has the slowest transfer speeds. Reliable, yes, but slow.

Patriot on the other hand routinely has the highest transfer rate. In particular, the Patriot Xporter series. You will pay more for these, but you will also get faster transfers, both for average and burst rate. The customer ratings speak for themselves on Patriot flash memory products.

(And if you happen to have $300+ that you want to spend, Patriot has a Magnum stick that boasts super-high speeds and has 128GB of storage. Yes, 128GB. That’s not a typo.)

Do transfer rates matter?

This all depends on how you use your USB stick.

If using the stick for:

• Bootable biz-card sized Linux
• Routinely transferring files over 25MB in size
• Routinely transferring large amounts of data

..then you will legitimately need a fast-transfer USB stick.

If using the stick for:

• Photos
• Documents
• MP3s
• Smaller files

..then a faster stick won’t really matter unless you’re transferring many small files equaling a large amount of data.

What’s your favorite (or least favorite) brand of Flash memory?

Sandisk, A-Data, Corsair, Advent, Lexar, etc.? Which do you use? Does it live up to expectation or "act weird" periodically?

Sign of the times: I go into Walgreen’s the other day to pick up a bag of cashews (they’re quite tasty), and in the photo center I spot 4GB USB sticks for $16. Yes, I know you can pick up these things for cheaper elsewhere, but the fact a business primarily known as a pharmacy carries these things is what got my attention.

The brand Walgreen’s carried was obviously generic and not something you’d recognize. This got me wondering whether there is a true difference quality and reliability-wise concerning the flash memory inside a USB stick from one brand to the next.

Curious, I searched the internet to see if anyone has done any testing of flash memory reliability on a brand level.

One such place is CNET and they have a whole section on it. It includes just about every type of flash memory you can imagine with editors reviews, video and so on. The brand you have right now might be listed there, so you can see how it fared out.

The 2 top-rated brands for USB sticks are Sandisk and Lexar.

For everything else, the two top complaints are usually the same concerning USB sticks, that being "slow write speed" and design complaints (i.e. the plastic cap falls off easily, flimsy covering, etc.)

It would appear that yes, there are notable differences from one brand to the next. While a design flaw may be something most people could live with, slow write speeds would drive anyone bonkers (especially considering USB 2.0 transfer speeds are already slow to begin with).

The advice of the moment I give is this:

If you see some generic brand of USB stick, it’s a crapshoot whether or not the design will be solid or flimsy, and whether or not the data transfer will be speedy or not. It might be a few extra bucks for a Sandisk cruzer, but at least you’ll know what you buy will work optimally as it should.

(And by the way, yes the previous link will show you some 16GB versions of Sandisk cruzers. Pretty neat you can put 16GB in your pocket, eh?)

When the first consumer-grade portable video recording systems were introduced they were humongous and had extremely poor battery life. In addition to that they were heavy and gave you "camcorder shoulder" in short order.

As camcorders progressed in technology they started to become smaller but suffered from the same fate as their predecessors – they were stuck using linear recording mediums (VHS, Hi8, VHS-C, miniDV, etc.)

Further down the line, optical media was introduced in the form of direct-to-disc DVD both full-sized and 8cm-size.

For professional videographers, you still can’t escape tape. Not cost effectively anyway.

For everyone else, you can ditch your tapes and discs now by using a camcorder with built-in flash memory. No tapes. No discs.

Most people have seen the Pure Digital Flip camcorder. I have used one of these myself and can honestly say that yes, you will instantly love this thing compared to a traditional tape or optical media camcorder. First of all, it’s cheap (just over 100 bucks). Second, it’s stupidly easy to use. There is zero learning curve with one of these things. Third, everyone has USB and fourth (the best part), it runs on just 2 AA batteries. No need to hunt around for expensive proprietary camcorder battery nonsense.

For those interested it records up to 1 hour of video and yes it does have a zoom feature.

I know what you’re saying.

"I want HD in the palm of my hand!"

Ask and ye shall receive:

Above is the Sony Xacti HDTV tapeless camcorder. And yes it’s true-blue HD. The cost of this unit was last known to be $468. Yes, it’s a good coin for this but it is HD in the palm of your hand. Rock on, flash memory.

If memory leaks (programs not releasing memory once they are done using it) or other memory issues are a common problem of yours, then a handy utility for you is RAM Idle LE.

RAM Idle runs in the background and, well, from the editor’s review:

The program icon sits in the desktop tray and displays the amount of memory your PC has available at any given time.If you know you’ll need a certain amount, you can specify that amount; otherwise, you can let the program run automatically to balance memory needs vs. memory available.

While I’m not exactly sure how this is accomplished, one key feature is the ability to assign memory to a specific application so you know it has the memory available it requires (for games perhaps).

Personally, these kind of things are not up my alley, but I would be interested to see how effective it is. If anyone uses this program, please post a comment.

Last week I upgraded one of our laptops from 1 GB to 2 GB of memory for the whopping cost of $25. The memory was nothing special, just a single 1 GB DDR2 laptop stick. Considering the price of the most common type of memory is so cheap right now, why not double your RAM? The cost of putting extra memory in your system is always well spent as it typically increases performance more than any other upgrade and can extend the life of your PC for a while.

If you are not sure what type of memory you need, use a memory selector such as what Crucial or NewEgg offer (both of these places are also excellent places to buy your memory).

Unfortunately, if you are using older types of RAM such as PC133 or DDR (1), the prices are not as cheap. If this is the case, check out Ebay where you can usually pick up new or good as new stuff for quite a bit cheaper than buying it new.

The only thing you need to pay attention to as far as memory cards for digital cameras are concerned is whether it will physically fit in your camera or not.

There is absolutely no significant advantage from one card format to the next. All that matters is that it can physically be connected to the camera you have.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

I have written in the past about how valuable a system memory selector tool is when you are looking to upgrade the amount of RAM in your system. For the most part, you just find the “type” of RAM you need and then buy it, of course if you do not know what type you need a system memory selector tool is invaluable.

The other day, I stumbled across Newegg’s “Memory Configurator” (not sure if that is even a word) which basically runs a search in their product database for all memory which is a fit for your system. Considering Newegg is, seemingly, the most popular online vendor with this site’s readers, this makes a great tool.

I have recently placed an order which resulted from use of this tool and plan to use it a lot more in the future.