The memory stick was first introduced in the fall of 1998 and has since found itself in the hands of millions of people for personal and business use.

The definition of a memory stick is basically a small device that allows you to save digital information such as music, pictures, and documents to it. Memory sticks are very small in size and can be taken anywhere you go. They are much smaller than the compact flash and smart media cards that are on the market today.

A basic memory stick of 8 MB can hold up to five times the amount of data storage that a 3.5 floppy disk can hold. If you were using an 8 MB memory stick for your digital images, you'd be able to store about 160 images, depending on the photo resolution.

A memory stick is designed to allow the user to transfer data, text, graphics, digital images, and music from one device such as a computer to another computer or from a PDA to a computer, etc. very quickly without the hassle of using cables connected from one device to the other.

MP3 players are a prime example of how digital data is transferred from one device to the next. Sony puts out a few different models of memory sticks. One model is the MSH-128 MB Memory Stick Media. This little memory card has a 128 MB of memory on it with 123 MB available. You can save up to 96 pictures on this one memory stick at a resolution of 2592 x 1944 or you can save 1975 pictures on one memory stick at a resolution of 640 x 480.

You can find memory sticks in various sizes such as 4 MB, 8 MB, 16 MB, 32 MB, 64 MB, 128 MB, 256 MB, 512 MB, 1 GB, and 2 GB. The basic dimensions of memory sticks are 21.5mm in width, 50mm in length, and 2.8mm in depth. The memory stick's integrated circuit memory type is flash memory. The operating voltage for most memory sticks is 2.7 - 3.6 volts and the average power consumption is about 45ma. The maximum data transfer rate is 20 MHz, the access write speed is about 1.5 MB per second, and the access read speed is 2.4 MB per second. It has a serial interface and has a 10 pin connector.

Sony manufactures memory sticks in various sizes such as 32MB, 64MB, 128MB, 256MB, 512MB, 1GB and 2GB Their dimensions are 20mm x 31 mm x 1.6 mm.

Sony memory sticks are used in digital cameras, PDA's, mobile phones, and game systems like the Sony PSP. The memory stick pro duo is a perfect fit for such devices due to its small size. This tiny memory stick is the perfect way to save the important stuff in your life that you have taken with your digital camera or digital video camera.

The number of photos you can save depends on the size of the Sony memory stick pro duo card in your digital camera and the resolution of the picture taken. For example, the 64MB will store 74 pictures at 2 MP, 54 pictures at 3MP, 33 pictures at 4MP, 25 pictures at 5MP, 21 pictures at 6 MP and so on. A 2 GB memory stick will store 2,368 pictures taken at a 2 mega pixel resolution. If you used the same memory stick and took pictures at 8MP then you could only save 512 photos.

Digital video is much the same for the Sony memory stick. Instead of using mega pixels you would use video resolution. For example, if you had 64 MB memory stick and ran the video resolution at 160 x 120 then you could only film 6.25 minutes of video. If you ran the same memory stick at 640 x 480 video resolutions then you would only be able to save 1.57 minutes of video.