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more, more, more flash
Jan. 8th, 2008 | 12:45 pm
A while back (and by "a while back", I mean early December), I got a SanDisk Sansa View 16 gigabyte MP3 player, and have been quite happy* with it. I was quite amazed to find that I could now fit my entire music collection on a flash-based player. In fact, the very first MP3 player I used was a Rio 600 with 32 megabytes of flash memory; you could fit exactly one CD onto it. And that's only if you ripped the CD at the very low bit rate of 64 kbps, which produced weird "chiming" noise artifacts in the background of the resultant MP3 files.
Now, of course, SanDisk has announced that it's coming out with a 32 gigabyte flash-based player.
This boggles the mind, it does. When I first bought a flash drive long ago (and by "long ago", I mean mid-2003), it cost $40 to get a 128 meg flash drive. Compare this to $200 for a 16 gig MP3 player. In 2003, that would have cost approximately five thousand one hundred and twenty dollars. The 32 gig model (which I think will retail for about $330), would have cost over ten thousand dollars.** The capacity of flash keeps going up while the prices keep falling. Very soon now conventional platter hard drives are going to be replaced with solid-state drives; hard drives that essentially use flash instead of spinning magnetic platters.
The future's gonna be weird, ladies and gentlemen.
-JM
*In fairness, should point out that I was only happy with it after upgrading the firmware.
**And that assumes the manufacturing capability existed in 2003, which it did not.
Now, of course, SanDisk has announced that it's coming out with a 32 gigabyte flash-based player.
This boggles the mind, it does. When I first bought a flash drive long ago (and by "long ago", I mean mid-2003), it cost $40 to get a 128 meg flash drive. Compare this to $200 for a 16 gig MP3 player. In 2003, that would have cost approximately five thousand one hundred and twenty dollars. The 32 gig model (which I think will retail for about $330), would have cost over ten thousand dollars.** The capacity of flash keeps going up while the prices keep falling. Very soon now conventional platter hard drives are going to be replaced with solid-state drives; hard drives that essentially use flash instead of spinning magnetic platters.
The future's gonna be weird, ladies and gentlemen.
-JM
*In fairness, should point out that I was only happy with it after upgrading the firmware.
**And that assumes the manufacturing capability existed in 2003, which it did not.
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of Plutonian nights and poisoned Knights
Jan. 8th, 2008 | 11:32 pm
I took a brief break from revising "Share the Pain" to write two new short stories; "Night's Plutonian Shore" (humorous sf*) and "Knight of Poisoned Thorns" (sword & sorcery). Well, both rough drafts are finished, so it's time to revise. Edit, cut, rearrange, line edit, read aloud, agonize over, the whole spiel.
On a wholly unrelated note, someone asked me to buy their house today, and I burst out laughing. What would I do with a house? I live in two rooms, essentially, and not counting noisy neighbors and lousy parking, I find that quite adequate. As an added bonus, I am free of snow removal, lawn care, gutter repair, roof maintenance, mailbox vandalism, and property taxes. What would I possibly do with an entire house?
-JM
*Really.
On a wholly unrelated note, someone asked me to buy their house today, and I burst out laughing. What would I do with a house? I live in two rooms, essentially, and not counting noisy neighbors and lousy parking, I find that quite adequate. As an added bonus, I am free of snow removal, lawn care, gutter repair, roof maintenance, mailbox vandalism, and property taxes. What would I possibly do with an entire house?
-JM
*Really.