SanDisk has launched a new USB Flash memory drive touting it as a combination of improved performance and style, which I have to say is a nice change. There’s nothing like going into a meeting full of suits to do a presentation and have to pull out your holiday cheer Flash drive your sister got you for Christmas to load up your slides.

The SanDisk Cruzer Contour has a nice, sleek, glossy black finish with no cap to lose. The USB connector hides itself underneath the frame and slides out when needed, similar to a retractable click-pen. When plugged in the word “Cruzer” lights up with a blue LED light, which basically translates to: “I’m still a geek, but I’m cooler than you”.

SanDisk also doubled the write speed and made the read speed about 2/3 times faster than their previous fastest …

SanDisk today is offering business computer users some serious new security USB flash drives for protecting valuable data. These drives are the Cruzer Professional ($55 to $145) and the Cruzer Enterprise ($75 to $185).

The SanDisk Cruzer Professional, available in storage sizes up to 4GB, offers hardware-based 256-bit AES encryption. This is on top of letting you create a password protected private area on the drive for your eyes only. The Cruzer Professional gets a maximum read speed of 24MB per second.

The Cruzer Enterprise, meanwhile, has the same hardware protection while also taking the password option one step further. It requires that all of the drive’s contents be complex password protected. While we aren’t exactly sure what complex means we assume the four letter password of your dog’s name won’t work with this drive.

Gadgets for young kids are way cooler now then they were when I was young. Within just the last few months we’ve seen a new Kidizoom digital camera, a kid-tough FP3 player and now Sandisk, wanting to make sure they have something for everyone, has released the Sandisk Sansa Shaker MP3 player targeting the smaller tykes.

The Sansa Shaker isn’t necessarily high on tech but it might meet the wants of parents who are tired of kids that always want to borrow their $200 iPod and fill it up with songs from High School Musical and Hanna Montana. This kid-targeted MP3 player retails at just under $40, comes with a 512MB SD card (would you expect another medium from Sandisk?) and has some unique methods for navigating music.

The name “Shaker” comes from the fact that users of the player can actually give it a …

What happens when 1 gig of memory for your flash memory card isn’t good enough? Well, maybe you might want to go all the way and take it to the max which for the moment is a whopping 8 gigsbytes.

SanDisk has unveiled an 8 GB SD High Capacity card, the biggest so far in the SD format. What that means in everyday terms is that you now have the ability to store more than 4,000 high resolution photographs, 15 hours of MPEG 4 video or 2,000 digital songs on a single card – does any of us have that many favorite songs? Well, it doesn’t matter because with this new SanDisk card you can store all of the one-hit wonders since Chuck Barry blasted on the music scene.

The 8 GB SDHC card will come bundled with a SanDisk MicroMate …

Today SanDisk, the original inventor of flash memory cards, has introduced a 4GB microSDHC card. The significance of this release lies in the fact that this microSD card is the largest capacity to date for the smallest model of removable flash memory cards.

The 4GB capacity of the microSD also kicks it the tiny memory card into the microSDHC realm, defined by a new SD 2.00 specification that applies to any microSD card larger than 2GB. The new specification is required for capacities from 4GB to 32GB by the SD Association.

“Content is driving the demand for higher capacity flash memory cards in mobile phones,” said Jeff Kost, vice president and general manager of the Mobile Consumer Solutions division at SanDisk. “The new 4GB SanDisk microSDHC card will allow handset manufacturers and mobile network operators to plan rich media …

Sandisk recently announced that they along with Toshiba are planning on shipping their next generation of NAND flash memory in the first quarter of 2007 as they begin a transition in production at one of their joint wafer fabrication plants. The transition will mark the beginning of producing 56 nanometer multi-level cell flash memory chips from the previous 70 nanometer production. This will create the industry’s highest available density in a single chip MLC NAND flash memory.

This release comes after a number of recent announcements from Sandisk touting milestones in memory capacities, faster performance and flash storage solutions. The higher density in these chips equate to the potential of flash memory cards and thumb drives being available with higher storage capacities. Currently the capacity of memory devices is limited to how many chips …

SanDisk has released another new MP3 player to their Sansa line of devices. The Sansa Connect is a 4GB MP3 player with WiFi connectivity and a 2.2″ TFT display screen.

The Connect allows the user to play music and share it with a built-in speaker as well as view photos. Internet radio can also be streamed through the WiFi connection along with downloading music through any open WiFi network and with Microsoft PlayForSure. There is also an SD card slot to transfer and store additional files beyond the internal 4GB capacity.

“It’s about accessing music of your choice wherever you are. If you’re listening to new songs from a music service and find ones you want to keep, you can bring them into your library and don’t have to wait until you get back to your PC. If you want to tell …

SanDisk recently introduced the slim Sansa View portable video player which allows playing movies, music and viewing photos on a 4″ widescreen color display.

The video player has only 8GB of internal memory, which is quite a bit for playing audio files, but doesn’t go quite as far when viewing video. SanDisk estimates 33 hours of MPEG-4 video playback at 512kbps with the internal 8GB. The video player does have an SD card slot, so the memory can be expanded and video stored externally if needed, and a video out AV jack to allow playback on a television. The player also has a rechargeable battery that allows playback for up to 10 hours on a full charge, a built-in speaker and overall dimensions of 78.5mm x 123mm x 16.9mm.

The Sansa View is expected to start shipping in the first quarter of this …

SanDisk announced today the launch of a 32 gigabyte, 1.8″ solid state drive as a drop-in replacement for existing notebook drives.

The new replacement drive uses non-volatile memory instead of a spinning disk and mechanical head to read and write data. Due to this, the SanDisk drive can offer very competitive read and write speeds without having to spin-up or seek files, with a fraction of the power consumption of a traditional hard drive with moving parts. Lower power consumption can be an important factor for those using notebooks on the road in order to increase battery life.

“This is an important milestone for SanDisk in our relentless quest to create new large-scale markets for flash storage solutions for consumers in the personal computing space,” said Eli Harari, SanDisk CEO. “The 32-gigabyte SSD that we are announcing today represents the fifth generation …

SanDisk is not the first to offer an SD card with USB, but I have to say I like this design a little better than the A-Data version simply because the removable portion of the card is hinge connected instead of being a part that is removed and can be lost.

The real feature here is that you are getting a USB interface built right into your SD card. Normally you would need some sort of SD card reader to insert your card into and transfer the data through a USB or other port. With the SanDisk Ultra II SD plus USB you do not need a reader since you can use this SD card in your camera, PDA or any other device that uses SD cards, and then remove it and connect directly to a USB port.

The …

SanDisk has come out with a cool new MP3 player. This player, which is not far behind the iPOD works off of flash memory of course, since SanDisk is way into the flash memory business, and is available in a 1GB and a 2GB version.

The Sansa c200 has a color screen and allows you to play music, view photos and listen to FM radio. The Sansa supports MP3, WMA and WAV files and syncs up to Microsofts PlaysForSure subscription music. It interfaces to your PC with USB and has a MicroSD slot for additional memory.

This is a nice MP3 player and at the time of this post is under $100 which makes it relatively affordable. One thing to note is that the Playforsure music subscription from Microsoft will require Windows XP and Windows Media Player 10+. If you don’t have these you …