DamonHD - 5:23 pm on Aug 23, 2007 (gmt 0)

But in some cases you won't need anything after the flash in that storage hierarchy, since the reason that magnetic disc was there was for cheap, bulk, non-volatile storage at the bottom.

For me, for my application, the SD memory card *has* largely replaced the use of hard disc, and I'm not alone.

So I quibble with your use of "never" since it *has* replaced hard disc in at least one case, ie mine! (I had ~15 hard discs before, so I could further argue that this SD card has replaced about 14.5 of them for me!) B^>

But in general I think many people will be well served by one less moving part to break or go wrong in laptops and other mobile devices...

Rgds

Damon

PS. I entirely agree with the notion that Flash will not replace all hard discs, at least not for a very long time. They are truely amazing things, and get more so every year. I remember explaining how one worked at some gathering, and realising that the 'Winchester' disc's co-inventor from IBM Winchester was standing listening. Apparently I did OK! We were looking at a 10MB (yes, megabyte) 'washtub' style disc stack at the time...

[edited by: DamonHD at 5:27 pm (utc) on Aug. 23, 2007]