Sunday, April 24, 2011

Flash Memory- Advantages and Disadvantages

The topic I chose to cover is Flash Memory. Although the article is seven years old it maintains its usefulness in discussing the advantages and disadvantages of flash memory because they have remained constant. The advantages and disadvantages of flash memory are very similar since the product came on the market. The main advantage of flash memory is how convenient it is. The device is very small and yet capable of holding hundreds of photographs. Another convenient advantage is the fact that the device has no moving parts, allowing it to be carried easily without worry of wear and tear or losing data. Possibly the best advantage is the price. Flash drives cost roughly a quarter of the price of similar hard drives. The only disadvantage to flash memory is that some models don't sell as well as others and will likely not last on the market. This is surprising to me because with all the products on the market that use flash memory I would think there would be a place for all of the different types of flash memory to be successful. Flash memory is relative to chapter four in the textbook because it discusses ROM and RAM memory and how the computer. I was aware that my computer had Random Access Memory but I wasn't aware how many of my products contain flash drives until reading the chapter and then this article.

Taub, Eric A. "Memory Evolution: Survival of the Smallest." New York Times  2 February, 2004: pC3.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Assignment 6

1.   Create a simplified binary code to hand out to your fellow students.  Briefly explain how the following:
a.   What is a bit?
b.   What is a byte?
c.   What is a kilobyte?
d.   What is a megabyte?
e.   What is a gigabyte?
f.    What is a terabyte?
2.   How are bits and bytes represented?
3.   Create a word quiz for them.  Give them 3 words represented by zeros and ones.  Keep score; make a game of it (they can work as teams or individuals).  Make it fun!

A. What is a bit?
     A bit is the smallest unit of data a computer can process. Bit is short for binary digit.
B. What is a byte?
     A byte is eight bits that are grouped together as a unit. A byte provides enough 0's and 1's to represent 256 individual characters.
C. What is a kilobyte?
     A kilobyte is exactly 1,024 bytes.
D. What is a megabyte?
     A megabyte is approximately 1 million bytes.
E. What is a gigabyte?
      A gigabyte is approximately 1 billion bytes.
F. What is a terabyte?
     A terabyte is approximately 1 trillion bytes.
2. Bits and bytes are represented by the binary system, which is comprised of just two digits, 0 and 1.