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Shafe recognizes, as does one of ordinary skill in the art, that for
applications where more data is required, it is advantageous to use magnetic
disk drives rather than solid state memory:
State-of-the art portable message devices that rely on solid state
memories are limited in the amount of information they can store,
making them impractical for receiving large documents, electronic
mail, pictures and video images. This limitation is overcome by
replacing the memory with a component disk drive. Ex. 1004, at
8:51-56.
Unfortunately, the cost of solid state memory increases almost linearly
with its storage capacity. Moreover, since there are physical
limitations to known solid state technologies, an increase in the
storage capacity of memory corresponds to an increase in its physical
size. These limitations present a foreseeable problem with the growing
demand for small, sophisticated, portable, and inexpensive devices
with substantial storage requirements.
One area in which the limitations of solid state memory are becoming
apparent is card-based electronic circuits. For example, circuits
embodying or controlling fax machines, modems, cellular phones,
printers, cameras, disk drives, and other devices are presently being
housed in credit-card sized formats of predefined dimensions that plug
into a compatible socket of a laptop computer, PC, or other electronic
device. Three standard formats that have emerged for such credit-
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