1 Terabyte of Storage in the Palm of Your Hand

Yesterday at the GDGT NY launch event we stopped by the SanDisk table to check out some of their new products. The new Sansa Clip+ player caught our eye but the star of the table was this little box of the SanDisk Micro M2 memory cards. There are 64 in all, which adds up to 1TB worth of memory, all in the palm of our hand.

Almost 60 years ago the first commercial computer (UNIVAC) was delivered to the United States Census Bureau. It weighed 13 metric tons, used 5,200 vacuum tubes, and measured 25 x  50 feet. The storage capacity was 1,000 words or 12,000 characters.

Today a terabyte of storage weighs just a few grams and fits in a box with the same internal volume as my lipstick holder. In another 60 years, my grandchildren will wear 100-petabyte flash drives as noserings, just you watch.