clubhouse54.com

I don't think it's too far off. Hitachi is working on perpendicular hard drives right now. Current HDs are about ready to max out, but these new drives offer almost twice the data in the same space. We'll be seeing 1TB 3.5" HDs in 2007, and 20bg 1" inch drives also.

At this rate, I see everyone carrying vast amounts of data with them at all times in tiny hard drives in the not too distant future.

Wasn't IBM working on a quantum based HD?

Ah, someday all the computers in the world will be connected, lets call it a global network, of computers. People will be able to have data on special computers called…"servers", with these "servers" they can share information with anyone, anywhere, anytime.

I'm an idiot.

disposable thumbdrives

roo wrote: There's also going to be a need to leave something tangible behind for quite some time as well.

Marketing relies on leaving something in front of somebody else. If I can put a CD (or other removable media) with my name on it on your desk, I'll have made a greater impact than just emailing a pdf.

-until the point when no one uses that removeable media anymore.

If you put a 5.25" floppy on someone's desk, they're going to think you're crazy. Within a few years, it will be easier for both the sender and the recipient to just do a data transfer.

When it's easier to handle things by a data transfer rather than a disc, disc burners won't be as popular as they are now, and they'll be seen more as a nuisance than as a benefit.

Even the PC users will give up their CDs eventually. Give it a year or two after blu-ray and hd-dvd come out, and then you'll have HVD, and then you'll have

CD-R(W)
DVD-R(W)
DVD+R(W)
BD-RE
HD-DVD-whatever
HVD-whatever
and whatever else shows up.

You'll eventually have so many incompatible formats that it won't be feasible to expect that everyone will have the same format.

On the other hand, everyone with a computer from the last seven or eight years has USB ports, and the vast majority of those have ethernet ports.

When jump drive can carry gigabytes, and when fiber cables can carry terabytes, removeable media will be seen as a nuisance. And if you eventually add wireless connectivity to storage, discs seem even more annoying.

I think the only reason someone would look at you like you're crazy for giving them a floppy is because of the tiny amount of data that can fit on it. CDs and DVDs can hold a lot of data, and they are pretty much disposable because of how cheap they are.

I have a 1gb thumb drive, but it is too small. I use it for work and need to move from computer to computer and still have access to my email. So I keep my .pst file on the thumb drive, but it's at 900mb right now.

The biggest thumb drives I've seen is 4gb, but it's way too expensive to justify buying.

What we need is nearly instant wireless file transfer from thumb drives to other thumb drives or HDs. Hard drives and USB file transfer speeds are too slow to keep up with anything. Lacie just released a 2TB HD, but it peaks at 85 megs per second; too slow.

I don't think any computers will ship with any kind of removeable, non-hard drive media in ten years.

At that point, why would consumers have any demand for cd-capable computers?

The thing is that as hard drive capacity increases so does the capacity of write-once and read-only media. A 1TB HDD might be common in 5 years but also common will be 50GB discs with movies. So your HDD will still only fit 20 of them. Also the need for capacity increases, today a 1TB disc may seem huge but in 5 years OS X may need 20GB and iDVD may need 100GB. When I bought my first mac I had a 3.5" floppy that contained the operating system and norton utilities. Today you'd probably need a DVD-R to do the same thing.
Then there is the issue of cost. If today's trends continue it'll be cheaper to store data that you don't often need on write-once media. For example a couple of days ago I bought 100 DVD-Rs for $35. The same capacity on a HDD would cost me $400 (2x250GB HDDs). Sure the HDD is faster, and is reusable but the kind of data I burn on the DVD require neither speed nor will ever change (backups, movies).
I see a place for both in the future, since they serve different needs.

bedstuy wrote: seems like a lot of media bias here!

dangerously close to LIES.

fizzwinkus wrote:
what will be considered small in another ten years?

Duh, anything from this year.

That's awesome!

I started expecting:
I'm just a Bit
Yes I'm only a Bit
And my polarity has gone to shit.

Blaze wrote:

You guys have to watch Hitachi's perpandicular HD commercial!

First thing that came to mind was the Bill of Rights...

Jesus, the boys down in marketing have too much frigging time on their hands.

I wonder if they can be sued for that?

That said, is there any way I can watch it without it stopping and starting repeatedly? I'm on my Puny Dialup Connection, and it keeps not having enough of it loaded and having to pause and wait for more of it to come in. There doesn't seem to be a way to control playback; is there any way to not play it until after the whole thing loads?

Read-only media isn't cheap here.
$3.20 for a DVD-RW

fizzwinkus wrote:

ukimalefu wrote:

fizzwinkus wrote:
what will be considered small in another ten years?

Duh, anything from this year.

which is exactly why there will always be a need for removable media. no matter how fast networks get, there will be some file size where transporting a disc or card or hd will be faster.

I don't think so. If you have a wireless hard disc that's fast enough, you're good to go.

Capacity needs have grown exponentially because what we're storing has grown. First people wanted to store more text, then they wanted to store more applications, then they wanted to store music, and now they want to store video.

Capacities will continue to grow quickly until we hit some sort of wall(meaning it's physically impossible to store more), or until we don't need them to, and when we get to a point that we don't have anything bigger that we need to store, capacity won't increase as fast.

Bandwidth, on the other hand, will continue to grow until we hit the point where things can be transferred faster than they can be consumed or viewed.

Necessity causes innovation. No necessity means less innovation.

100 years ago, people could have never predicted the technology we have now. I'm damn sure that someone will find a way to make read-only media obsolete.