2006 vs. 2016, Flash Memory Edition
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Just before the end of the year, people in my social network—and likely yours—were posting pictures of themselves from 2006 and 2016, ostensibly to compare their contemporary selves to their appearance ten years ago.
Rather than gaze at myself ten years ago, I thought it would be fun to compare a recent purchase of removable flash memory to another similar purchase from 10 years ago.
![](https://i0.wp.com/juanomatic.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/SanDiskUSB1GB.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
2006 USB Memory Stick
In 2006, I bought a removable USB memory stick, which was all the rage at the time in the days before Dropbox and other cloud storage solutions. The capacity was one (1) gigabyte and I paid $51.29 on Amazon. It might have seemed like a good deal at the time.
![](https://i0.wp.com/juanomatic.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/SanDiskSD32GB-e1484329921367-640x640.jpg?resize=640%2C640&ssl=1)
2016 SD Card
A few weeks ago, at the end of 2016, I ordered an SD card for my SLR camera. The capacity is thirty-two (32) gigabytes and I paid $14.99 on Amazon. In some ways, even this purchase seems a bit dated. SD cards seem like a niche product these days since the days of the compact digital camera, which drove those sales, seem to be over. Also, 32 GB is not a lot of capacity. Consider that I could buy 64 GB, 128 GB, and even 256 GB for about $25, $60, and $120, respectively.
To really summarize the difference between the two over the last ten years, consider that I bought something thirty-two times bigger, that is orders-of-magnitude faster, for less than a third of the price.
I may have changed over the last ten years, but I don’t think I can say I changed as much as flash memory.
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