[tadad1]

I have been reading up on the problem and found a post by someone who once worked in the memory chip industry, sorry I can not recall where I read it to give you a link but the gist was that when the chips are manufactured in batches there are always a number chips that are not the best quality. While they do not test every chip they random test a number of chips in each batch to determine the overall quality of the batch and then the batches are graded. The high yield batches that return a consistant number of good quality chips are sold to the highest bidder. The ones at the other end of the scale showing poor testing results well you know where they end up, in the bargin bin and are snapped up by manufacturers of cheap mp3 players and the like. So most of these players have poor quality or faulty chips because it increases the profit line. Most manufacturers will replace the player if it ends up back on their door step but also know that in the end not many are going to find their way home.

Whilst I can not verify the accuracy of this it makes sense to me when you consider the number of posts regarding chips marked a certain size ending up a constant 108MB or 233MB. I know the same batch testing is used by CPU manufactureres, the good quality ones are used in the top of the range whilst those that return slower results are used in their budget models.