Wired News on magnetoresistive random access memory, or MRAM, which store data magentically and could eventually lead to instant-on PCs and PDAs that don’t lose all their data when they run out of power:
MRAM is designed to eliminate several of the most infuriating artifacts of the computer age: the interminable wait for devices to boot up and power down, and those irritating operating system messages about “loading” and “saving your settings. Currently computers need to load information into local memory from the hard disk when the power is turned on, and that data transfer can’t even start until after the hard drive has spun up to speed,” Way said. “Whenever you shut down, data has to flow back in the other direction from the volatile memory to the hard drive.”
