The Memory Market

The Memory Market

Last Updated - 01/16/12:

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The late 2011 flooding in Thailand forced many hard drive manufacturers to shut down their factories for a period of time, causing channel disruptions. However, the damage has largely abated and both internal and external drives are slowly inching back down in price with OEM contracts being fulfilled at last. Although the worst of the flooding has passed, the catastrophe has upset production and will continue to have an impact on operations and the ability to meet 100% consumer demand through the 1st quarter of 2012. 

This event has precipitated two distinct outcomes: 

1)    More serious consideration to permanently substitute unaffected SSD technology or Flash-based units with no moving parts. (see immediately below)
2)    Manufacturer reassessment over having such a heavy reliance on fundamental parts overseas, now subject to two natural disasters last year, including the earthquake in Japan. Some firms in our industry, and many others, have quietly moved a percentage of their manufacturing capabilities within easier reach domestically.

Solid State Disk (SSD) Drives are generating hidden profits benefiting any system using technology with faster read speeds, vibration & shock resistance, lower power usage and diminished heat. These flash-based hard drives have no moving parts and are a drop-in replacement for systems that use a 2.5" IDE or SATA. This long awaited alternative to the more fragile mechanical hard drives will load an operating system up to 80% faster and significantly extend laptop battery run-times. We predict that within two years, SSD's will be a "must have" item for anyone with sensitive data that wants peace of mind and guaranteed security. Capacities range from 16GB to a walloping 480GB --- ask about them today!  

The future is NOW with the DDR3-1600mhz recent debut! Used in the NEW Sandy Bridges Intel chipset, it's the "must have" for the world's zippiest systems, such as the Apple all-in-one 21.5" iMac. It's not heat shielded nor overclocked, just THE FASTEST DIMM ever manufactured. 

Internal corporate IT budgets have grown recently, with firms targeting more efficiency, while finally rebuilding lagging infrastructure from recessionary purchasing cut-backs.

All Microsoft Windows 7, 64-bit versions are becoming far more common with major desktop and laptop manufacturers. This version targets power users with much higher RAM memory limits (see below) from 8GB (Starter or Home Basic) to a massive 192GB (Ultimate, Pro, Enterprise). This added capacity allows for much faster system performance, as mentioned in Blog: 64-Bit Windows 7 Runs Faster with 8GB of RAM.

Maximum Memory Limits for 64-bit Windows 7 Versions:

  • Starter:  8GB
  • Home Basic:  8GB
  • Home Premium:  16GB
  • Professional:  192GB
  • Enterprise:  192GB
  • Ultimate:  192GB

Microsoft's launch of Office 2010 introduced many improvements and definitely requires more memory and drive space. While Office 2010 has the same memory requirements as Office 2007, it requires far more hard drive capacity than 2007 and twice the memory needed for Office 2003 (even more for previous versions). Learn about Microsoft Office 2010 System Requirements details on our Blog.

We also still support systems using the older SDRAM and Rambus modules, such as Micro DIMMs, ECC/Registered memory and printer memory.

See all standard External Portable Hard Drives Here!

Our generous warranties and liberal RMA policies are the best in the business. Rely on our 28 years of expertise, whatever the market condition!