Manufacturers aren't close to the ideal yet, but they are moving in that direction with various digital-storage devices, including higher-capacity floppy disks, ultra-tiny hard drives and plastic-coated memory chips that look like sticks of gum. But these devices aren't applicable to all types of digital output, and users complain the sound and picture quality of the products isn't up to the standards of older technology. What's more, the digital-storage devices on the market are, atleast for now, quite expensive, with a single digital gum-stick chip costing more than $100.

Many of the new storage devices are built around flash memory -- a type of computer memory chip that retains data even when power isn't flowing to it. Because it's as wafer-thin as any computer chip, flash memory can be melded into various shapes and packages.

Memory Stick

Cameras generally use Compact Flash, a square about half the size of a business card. Digital-music storage devices and phones are using a flash product dubbed Multimedia Card or one called a Smart-Media card, both of which are smaller in size and data capacity than Compact Flash. All are too small for the standard openings in PCs, though there are adapters that make them it.

Meanwhile, Sony has created its own flash-memory product, Memory Stick, and has built input slots for it in some of the company's desktop and notebook PCs, three digital cameras and a digital audio-video camcorder. Sony is also selling a $1,000 digital photoframe called CyberFrame Viewer, which has a 14-centimeter screen that rotates a selection of images from a Memory Stick inserted in its side. Currently, only Sony products use its Memory Stick, although the company may license it to others.

IBM has stepped in with a "microdrive," a computer hard drive that is just slightly larger and thicker than a Compact Flash card. Its current maximum capacity is 340 megabytes, far more than the 160-megabyte current maximum of Compact Flash.

IBM boasts that cameras and other devices can also access data faster from a microdrive than from flash memory, saving time when digital information is stored or transferred to other devices.

`Old-fashioned music'

To date, most digital-camera and audiodevice makers have embraced flash-memory products over the microdrive. However, some audio and video perfectionists complain that flash memory's limited capacity compromises sound and picture quality. For instance, while often portrayed as sounding nearly as good as CDs,the compression technique in MP3 eliminates too much digital information to approach that level of quality. That puts off audiophiles like Gary Wooley, a Dallas business consultant.

Mr Wooley enjoys searching for new music on the Internet and downloading MP3 files into his home computer, but when he finds something he really likes, he heads to the music store to buy a compact disk. The ``old-fashioned'' music medium just sounds better, he says.

The high cost of today's devices is also a drawback. A 32-megabyte Compact Flash card costs about $100, or about $3.13 a megabyte, and a Multimedia Card sells for about $30 more. The 340-megabyte IBM microdrive is $499, or $1.48 a megabyte.

By contrast, an ordinary computer hard drive costs 2.5 cents a megabyte, making it a much less expensive place to store digital information. For instance, at 32 megabytes -- which some makers claim is good enough to hold 60 minutes of low-quality video -- a Compact Flash card costs $100 and a computer hard drive is just 80cents. But an hour of analog videotape can be even cheaper: 19 cents.

Manufacturers say improvements will occur and prices will come down. "It's only going to get better," says Nelson Chan, vice-president of marketing at SanDisk, which produces flash-memory products and is based in California.Bill Frank, executive director of the Compact Flash Association, a trade group of manufacturers, says flash-memory devices will go down the same declining slope traveled by other computer chips. "The price of these things is going to plummet," he says.

Dataquest analyst Bruce Bonner believes the new storage products must reach 10 cents a megabyte before they threaten conventional hard drives, tapes, film and CDs. A risk to manufacturers is that the cards and sticks of digital memory might be obsolete before the cost gets that low.

Fast-moving improvements in wireless technology and broadband communications may make it easier and more cost-effective to exchange information between devices without any removable stickor card, Mr Bonner says.

"Universal connectivity may be a more convenient form of storage" than portable media, Mr Bonner says.

Not everyone believes there has to be a universal standard. Fritz Koenig, chief executive officer of TMH Corp., a Los Angeles audio research and development firm, notes that consumers adjusted to floppy disks, compact disks, Zip drives and tapes in computers.

"Consumers are no longer as prone to confusion as they were," Mr Koenig says.

-- The Asian Wall Street Journal