I was talking to some co-workers the other day and they mentioned that most standard flash memory has a theoretical write limit of 10,000 or so cycles. After that, the memory chip begins to "wear out" thus losing its ability to save. Seeing how Apple is going the Flash memory route with its Shuffle and Nano iPods, about how long do you envision these devices lasting if users add/delete songs on a regular basis? 3 or 4 years? Of course, Apple is counting on people to upgrade their iPod to a better model ever few years, so perhaps they've already factored this dilemma into their strategy. Anyone had any issues with flash memory products yet? Like jump drives and whatnot?
I still use a Lexar 128mb Secure JumpDrive. I'm sure apple uses top quality flash rom chips in their devices like Lexar does. I don't know the actual theoretical shelf life of the chips. They say the life of a CDR is 5years but I still use CDRs that are almost 7 years old and no read errors.
The 1000/10000/100000 depending on who you listen to limit is not important unless using the flash as a swap disk. The reason for this is that it is that the number given is per sector - So if you only use 256mb of a 512mb flash chip, then it will alternate which 256 it is writing to, thus doubling the life. Even at 10k read/writes maximum and changing all data every day, that will last approx 30yrs. The moral of this story: Flash is good for everything but as a swap disk (i.e virtual ram)
a friend of me threw away his iPod the other day because it was losing songs and working slowly...downward spiral. it got worse every day and in the end it didn't start anymore. it was a early edition iPod which he had for 3 years now or so...when he told his friend he said the same thing as you all, it would be the flash
If its 3 years old its hard disk based, and the cache I believe is RAM, so no flash involved. The first flash iPod was the shuffle, in jan05.
You guys are better off buying the smaller ones, they are more portable than the old 40gig ipod that came out first.
