What's the deal with these cheap flash drives?

[ahhaa]

Just saw a ad for a 4G flashdrive for what I paid for a 2G a couple weeks ago... but I don't see any 8Gs or other reason on the horizon for the collapsing prices.

Are they showing defects or are there just too many of'em?

[redwudz]

Probably too many. The production costs have decreased with the increase in popularity and competition. I bought a handful of 1GB USB flash drives for $8.50US a week or two ago.

[trhouse]

The difference is not in the size of the memory, it is the speed. Just try a few large file transfers and the speed difference will be very apparent.

[edDV]

For photos and video you need at least the second tier in speed for these flash cards. With the slow cards photos just transfer slower but for 1-4GB we are talking very slow transfers.

Digital camera video modes neeed second tier flash speeds to get larger frame sizes and AVCHD requires the faster cards.

This page matches device model numbers to speed needs.
http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Catalog(1002)-For_Your_Photos_and_Video.aspx

[Squash]

@ahhaa,

You can get a 16GB Corsair flash/thumb drive at Newegg for $145 USD, or an 8GB for $80 (actually $70 if you use the $10 rebate with it). Office Depot has an 8GB Ativa for $150 that was on sale a couple weeks ago for either $80 or $100, I don't remember which.

[edDV]

Staples has a 4GB PNY USB flashdrve for $29.98 (no rebate).
Cheap but slow.

These things will keep getting larger at similar prices. The packaging, retail markup and shipping keep the prices from falling below $5-30.

[Faustus]

There is a glut of memory chips for these devices right now.

[lenti_75]

this will never stop.....get better and cheaper. it's the way technology goes.

[Alan69]

Actually the flash prices went down and production up months ago, it's just now starting to filter down to retail prices.. And some of the deals aren't that slow, haven't really checked specs much, but most of the reviews for the kingston drives with rebates on buy.com indicate the speeds are pretty decent.

[ViRaL1]

I have quite a few, though I don't use them as much as I thought I would, but part of the overload comes from being a deal-junkie / storage junkie. They do come in handy from time to time when I need to move things to non-network PCs or my PS3. It's the new sneaker net, but the floppy is still alive and twitching.

[handyguy]

About every 7 years some new method comes out. There is probably going to be some of that soon That is better than these.