New (Computer) Toy Gloat!

[Wayne Davy]

If anyone (like me) has found that CD Burners don't cut it anymore spacewise - check out the prices of DVD Burners!!

I just picked up a Pioneer DVR-106D DVD Multi +/- Burner for $239 from Gamedude's in brisbane (www.gamedude.com.au).

[Stuart]

Problem is- DVDs don't store enough anymore. I've just passed the 1/2 terabyte mark, and trust me- it's going to be a bastard to back that up! (>500 GB, which roughly equates to 100 DVDs, or 730 CDs, or 366000 floppies)

[Daniel]

I just backed up the laptop last night, 830mb via the laplink cable :( to the PC (network not working) then burnt 2 backup CD's via the 4 speed burner. :(

It's definatly time to upgrade to a faster 52 speed burner but then wayne your new toy is about 4 speed from memory. :D

Daniel

[silentC]

Stuart, that is a phenomenal amount of data to be backing up. You must have a lot of very large files there that you don't want to lose, or heaps of them.

I run a couple of web sites with what I consider to be large databases (>300Mb a piece) and we back them up to tape - no messing around with disks. But I think the biggest tape you can get at the moment is 200Gb. Still, a couple of them would beat a wheelbarrow-load of CDs or DVDs.

We're just about to move to a new platform with 36Gb disk space and I'm looking forward to the luxury. Sounds like you'd suffer from claustrophobia.

[Stuart]

It's definatly time to upgrade to a faster 52 speed burner but then wayne your new toy is about 4 speed from memory.

Yes- but that is 4x speed DVD- not 4x speed CD! DVDs spin a lot faster, with a much higher data transfer rate than CDs, so from memory, a 4x DVD is the equivalent of a 48x CD.


We're just about to move to a new platform with 36Gb disk space and I'm looking forward to the luxury.

Are we talking about the same thing? I'm surprised that 36Gb drives are still available. I bought a(nother!) 200Gb drive on Friday


Sounds like you'd suffer from claustrophobia.

Not so much claustrophobia, but I get very nervous when there are power failures! Definitely need a UPS! My working computers each have 30-40Gb, which I use only for operating system and software, and scratch disks/virtual RAM (each also has 512Mb RAM) I then have external drives for my data- 3x 120Gb drives, and the new 200Gb drive:)

[silentC]

We 'rent' our server and have to pay a monthly fee based on the config, so the more disk space, the more cost. We've been struggling along with half that up until now. Now that was claustrophobic. I would spend nearly an hour every week freeing up disk space.

My UPS is an APC Back-UPS RS ~ $345. Definitely worth the price, especially as we have power failures and brown outs quite often here in the country. Has saved my bacon a couple of times now.

Sounds like you're doing movie editing or something.

[Stuart]

Got it in one :)

Currently working on my wedding video- 20 odd hours of footage from 5 cameras to be consolidated. Only been a couple of years since the wedding- been waiting for harddrives to become large enough- well that's my excuse!!!!

[silentC]

I bought a miro-video card with a copy of Adobe Premiere to do that 5 years ago but still haven't gotten around to it.

My favourite bit from the hours of footage we've got was when they asked my Grandmother if she had anything to say to the bride and groom and she replied "I can't even remember their names!". And me her favourite grandson all those years :(

Might make a good tenth anniversary present ;)

[Sturdee]

And to think that my first computer had 64k ram, no hard drives and used floppies of 256k and I used it for wordprocessing, spreadsheets and databases.


Peter.

[silentC]

Yeah, I had a Commodore C64 too, only it had a tape drive, not even floppies. Only threw it out the other day, couldn't bring myself to do it until now.

[stephenmeddings]

call that a computer.... my first was a Sinclair ZX81 with 1K memory, 4" thermal printer, cassette player for storage and old b&w tv for monitor.

Later I upgraded to a C64 then a C128 before moving to the IBM clone world with a 20Mhz AT with 16Mb RAM and 20Mb hard disk.

Those were the days.

How did we manage to do anything??

[Stuart]

I still have a fully functional Apple ][e here in my office- now that was/is a computer! Programming in machine language at 14- no, no life to speak of.

Bought a ZX81 a few years ago for $2- Z80 processors :)

BTW- Currently using a copy of Premiere Pro (equivalent to Premiere 7 by the old counting system)- no need for a graphic capture card- firewired the footage straight into the computer. Analogue and digital footage- can be done if you have a digital video camera! (I don't....but work does :D)

[oges]

we use super dlt tape drives on our servers here 160gb or 320gb compressed.

went to a local computer market over the weekend, put a few items on my wish list including the DVD burner. I also gotta get one of those clear computer cases with the neon lights and led's inside, I know they dont help the performance at all but they do look pretty and is something to waste some more money on. Will match the neon vb sign in the room too.

[fxst]

and I still have my tandy trs80 and tapedrive
anytime I get annoyed with speed of cpu or storage space I fire it up and go....'oooooooooooooh riiiiiiiiiiiiiight 'and its mo longer a prob
Pete:D

[silentC]

If you ever get nostalgic for some of the games you used to play on those machines, download a MAME for it and see if you can find the ROM. I found a few C64 games a couple of years ago. They're a bit hard to find because the sites tend to come and go. The ROMs are almost but not quite in the same category as MP3s. Some are public domain now though.

Oges, if you're having trouble wasting your money, send some to me. SWMBO reckons I'm good at wasting money.

[Daniel]

Given that the DVD burners run at a faster speed to the CD burners then I will upgrade to a DVD burner when the new version of windows comes out next year, I think.

There running an evaluation copy at work here, much better that XP.

My first computer was a Amstrad 64 with tape drive to load software very slow, then an upgrade to an IBM clone AT 286 and have had many since then.

Actually the history of computers is quite interesting when you think about it, both IBM and Xerox shot themselves in the backside in the early 70's.

Xerox could of been one of the world leader in computers today having invented windows and many more items that are used on computers today but management at that time could not see any value in marketing products of such. How wrong they were.


Daniel

Daniel

[stephenmeddings]

Imagine if Digital Research (I think) got the job for the new operating system in the IBM PC rather than Microsoft???

Would we all be hating them now?

They tried a comeback a while back with DR-DOS but Microsoft kept moving the playing field by making programs incompatible with it and thus entrenching Microsoft & Windows into our modern society.

Its amazing think back, to see how far we have come with computers in that last 20 odd years.

Getting back to DVD burners. It doesn't seem that long ago that for $1000 we got a SCSI 3x CD burner at work. We were the envy of everyone. A Box of CD's was $50 and a lot of those ended up in the bin or as coasters since that was well before burn-proof technology. Now you can go out and pick up a 48x burner for $70ish, CD's are 50cents and everything works. Even DVD burners a few years back were for the elite and set you back a couple of thousand and $50 odd for 1 DVD. Now the ordinary bloke at home (or should that read Cyclone God :D) can get one.

[silentC]

The pace of change now is way too rapid for my liking. You buy a machine or piece of hardware and tomorrow it's superceded, worthless and you can't get support for it anymore. I've got a CD burner which wont work with Win2000 without a firmware update but Pioneer doesn't make it available any more because my model is no longer supported - it's 5 years old.

When you go out and pay top dollar for the latest CPU, ROM drive or whatever, all you are doing is paying the R&D costs of the developer. They already have the next few incremental versions on the drawing board, if not on the production line. They're happy to sell you the 'latest' technology at a premium, even though they know it's old news by next week.

I worked for Combank a few years ago. There was a guy who was the 'custodian' of the CD burner. No-one was allowed to walk near it when he was burning a disk. The blanks were gold plated and about $20 a pop. He had a 'wall of shame' where all the stuffed disks were stuck up with the name of the person 'responsible' for stuffing them up.

By the way, DVD has already been superceded by that Blue disk format.

[craigb]

He had a 'wall of shame' where all the stuffed disks were stuck up with the name of the person 'responsible' for stuffing them up.

Sounds like a right prat I've worked with a few similar 'pesonalities' over the years.

Craig

[silentC]

That's for sure. This business certainly attracts its fair share of oddballs. :rolleyes:

[AlexS]

Geez...makes a bloke feel old. I remember having to write a specification to call tenders to buy ONE desktop calculator with nixie-cube display.

First desk-top computer was an Olivetti 101, 13 registers (I think) some of them could be split to use half precision, programmed on magnetic cards. There was very little it did that didn't need to be run overnight...so the cleaner could turn it off or it could run out of paper.

Had neat flashing red & blue lights though!

[Stuart]

Old? you only have to be in your early 30s to sympathise!