Computers are going to make you disc-less. It's here!

[indraneel]

<p>Tim, the title is all wrong, it should be "Computers are going to make you <strong>optical</strong> disc-less. It's here!", and it's probably been that way for a while. FWIW, I have 4 additional disks, 1 terabyte each, and they aren't going away anytime soon. What do you think clouds use: hard disks. Technology is not there yet to make non-mechanical disks as cheap and the currently available mechanical rotating ones.</p>

<p>As for optical disks, I haven't used them much in the last 5 years, maybe a couple of times a year, no more. They are the biggest dust magnet on my laptop, and the biggest waste of space. This is in spite of the fact that my laptop cannot boot from USB.</p>

<p>CD/DVD are still the cheapest media for physical distribution and has the widest support, and will be so till memory chips catch up. Imagine your grandma getting a micro SD by snail mail and popping it into the movie player... that will likely take a while.</p>

[mark_poseley]

<p>Until high speed broadband is ubiquitous the 'Cloud' and other on line only software delivery methods will not become the norm across the industry. 'Thin' clients as they used to be called require high speed connections or they can become cumbersome in some measure.</p>

<p>In the UNIX and UNIX like world the network centric nature of the OS has tended toward discless installs for a very long time. Jumpstart and other remote install packages allowed configuring an OS and applications and pushing it out over the network. The Wintel world had its own methods, but they weren't native to the OS.</p>

<p>Even Microsoft in the bad old days installed a master copy on the Novell server and only minimal files on the client. That changed a long time ago when distributed computing became popular.</p>

<p>Personally, I prefer having media in my hand to install software. Downloading and managing gigabytes of 1s and 0s into a software library only adds to my workload and backup storage needs.</p>

<p>Actually, I still have a floppy disk in my PC. I had to use it recently to install a driver for my RAID controller; Microsoft didn't have a native x64 driver on the install CD!</p>

[funcrunch]

<blockquote>

<p>nothing stop anyone to make a backup of what you buy online.. its like havign a CD.. sometime easier to find than a CD ; )</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Good point, Patrick. Time Machine on the Mac makes it easy to automatically back up your entire primary drive (and others if you choose) including all applications and permissions settings, and I'm sure there are equivalents for other platforms.</p>

[dhbebb]

<p>Once I had AOL as my ISP and e-mail account. Three times I apparently strayed over a mailbox size limit, and without warning the entire mailbox was wiped (customer service could not restore it). That was enough for me to dismiss any idea of “cloud computing” for evermore. When it comes to music, I want maximum quality, as regards movies, I want instant access and playback even in holiday cottages and other remote locations where there is no broadband, and I want my apps all on disk so that I can re-install them each time I routinely replace a hard disk on a laptop after 2 years’ operation. Anything else is just a fascist plot by hardware manufacturers to get their hands on more of my cash!</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

Hope it's OK to do the drag and drop style of copying to an external Firewire HD because that's what I've been doing for the past three years with my iMac because the amount of data was getting too much for CD's. With copying to CD the software always allowed validation and/or checksum routine to ensuring the integrity of the data to CD from the HD.

<p>

When my iMac died I pulled the HD and put it in an FW enclosure and drag and dropped all my images and documents to my 11 year old G3 Pismo Powerbook and then swapped the iMac HD with the original 160GB FW enclosure HD and copied from the Pismo back onto that. Crossing my fingers on the data integrity of that nightmare backup routine.

<p>

Fortunately I've never had a hard drive fail in all the three Macs I've had since 1998. The 11 year Pismo with its original HD doesn't even pass OS 9's Disk First Aid but it still operates fine allowing me to type these responses. Go figure!

[Tim_Lookingbill]

It's amazing if not unbelievable they can insure data integrity backing up to a Cloud account including installing software onto your system from there without any corruption. Just thinking about my stuff traveling through the internet's "series of pipes" makes me tremble.

[MichaelChang]

<p>I really don't see how Cloud Computing can realistically result in irrecoverable data loss.</p>

<p>If you think about it, we're already doing it with money - what was once placed under a mattress is now in the bank, and the process has evolved to making transactions without ever having to touch money, internationally.</p>

<p>I haven't studied the technical nitty-gritty of cloud computing, but given the collective smarts working on the ventures, I'm pretty confident that modern redundant data centers built to facilitate these things will be more robust and efficient than storing data locally. </p>

[wayne_crider4]

<p>Actually Apple is great at obsolescence. That's why their stock price is so high. Sell it again and again and again and make sure new programs won't work on OS's older then 2 years. Meanwhile I can get anything I need to work on my XP machine.</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

Yeah, Wayne and then Microsoft and now telecommunication hardware manufacturers come along and copy Apple's innovation and sells it back to the public as if it's new and their idea. How does Apple compete against that?...uuh...They think up newer, more neat-o stuff for everyone to copy and use obsolescence as a form of dust for everyone to eat.

[JDMvW]

<blockquote>

<p>Meanwhile I can get anything I need to work on my XP machine.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I'm guessing what you need is pretty simple, however. A little internet and a word processor, eh? You can do that on your phone these days.</p>

<p>By that standard, my 1984 Macintosh would still be current. :)</p>

[dhbebb]

<blockquote>

<p><em>Meanwhile I can get anything I need to work on my XP machine.</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p><em>I'm guessing what you need is pretty simple, however. A little internet and a word processor, eh? You can do that on your phone these days.</em><br /> <em>By that standard, my 1984 Macintosh would still be current. :)</em><br /> Call me an old stick-in-the-mud but ...<br /> ... I do some quite heavyweight desktop publishing and imaging with big files, I have 3 laptops, all with plenty of RAM and running XP, Vista and Windows 7 respectively, and for practical purposes I find little difference, except that Windows 7 crashes more!</p>

[szrimaging]

<p>That's funny, neith XP or 7 ever crash for me. Full Adobe Web Suite with ungodly amounts of other things.</p>

<p>I only ever have two issues. First, the video card in my XP laptop gets too hot and causes it to lock up, but this is only when playing video games. And second, Flash+Google Chrome crashes all the time. Other than that, I would say all my Windows systems are rock solid.</p>

[JDMvW]

<blockquote>

<p>Other than that,</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Hmm, reminds me of</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I did heavy duty publishing files on early Macs too, and if I still had the programs they would work as well as they ever did. Many of us, however, find that a lot has happened since XP was a pretender to the throne. I worked on Windows for many years and learned a great deal about the 'blue screen of death'.</p>

<p>I am still using my old 400 MHz G4 Yikes! bus Apple tower as an internet downloader and as a driver for my scanner, so I guess in some sense, it still does "everything I need" of it. ;)</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

JDM, what OS is running on your 400 MHz G4? And how do you retreive your email? Email client program? Yahoo? Any other online email service?.

<p>

I ask because I'm running my 2000 500MHz G3 Pismo Powerbook in OS 9 with Mozilla 1.3 and I can't find a way to get to my online gmx.com and Yahoo email accounts. I don't know how to set up Apple's Mail with my AT&T 1.5mbs DSL modem whether that's possible or not.

<p>

Love it when my own topic goes off topic. Never know what info's going to spill out.

[steven_p]

<p>I still keep my 1998 Wallstreet Powerbook (upgraded to 500mhz/512mb) on hand because of a couple SCSI scanners that sometimes still get some use. The flatbed has a full page transparency lid.</p>

<p>As far as lacking an optical drive, I really don't understand the void in the new mini. I use an early intel mini as a media box and as a dvd/cd player and ripper. I also have an external USB powered DVD writer, because I tinker with macbooks & pros, and they often have unreliable optical drives.</p>

<p>I also prefer to have a built in CD/DVD writer in my portables because I'm the "family photographer" at holiday events. That's when I shoot raw+jpeg, and immediately burn the jpegs to a picture disk for Mom, Sis, and others.</p>

[photo5]

<p>Once they start selling movies and music on 4-8gb flash drives instead of CDs, then I will agree that the optical disc is dead. But until then, the optical disc is alive and well. I also still believe that optical discs are viable backup media. I have hundreds of them with stuff backed up. As long as you store them in a cool dark place they should last decades. My oldest backup discs from 1999 (the year I bought my first re-writeable CD drive) are still functional. -RW media is best.</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>The OS on my G4 Yikes! tower is OS X Jaguar, and I just access my email through the latest version of Firefox (they keep issuing updates for it) that runs on it.</p>

<p>It doesn't seem to have any problem with either my DSL service mail directly or my Yahoo mail account. It is working through Ethernet cable to a Airport /DLS modem that is wireless for my other machines.</p>

<p>I also use VueScan to access some SCSI scanners, and use it to do the slow job of bringing in my negatives and other film images, but it's a lot faster than the USB alternative.</p>

<p>By the way, the "Yikes!" refers to the fact that the machine still has a G3 tower bus, but with the newer G4 processor. Apple actually tried to renege on the 400MHz chip, so there are relatively few of these machines around -- probably even fewer of them still in service. Probably like there aren't so terribly many XP machines still going, I'd guess. ;)</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>BTW<br>

It turns out to be very easy to make your own install disk for OS X Lion.</p>

<p>There are many posts on this, so Google™. There are also some on YouTube if you need that. :)</p>

<p>Even if you've already downloaded, you can search on the AppStore for your purchases (option key+purchases tab) and you can download the files again without paying again.</p>

[mark_poseley]

<p><strong>Michael Chang says - </strong><br>

<strong>I really don't see how Cloud Computing can realistically result in irrecoverable data loss.</strong></p>

<p>My answer is; businesses fail, sometimes quietly and without warning... If you choose to use an on line service for critical storage, make sure it is someone 'too big to fail'. I just don't know who that would be.</p>

<p>Remember, data storage, whether on line or local can be like a national debt; a few million bytes here, a few billion bytes there, and pretty soon you are talking about real storage needs. ;)</p>

[jim_service]

<p>Although the current flavor is the moving of goods and services to the cloud, I prefer to do these things myself, whether optically or external HD. Sadly, my total life experience (so far!) has been that I cannot depend on others, whether they be friends, corporations or the government. And the trend line for the last two is down.<br>

Taking the example of cloud storage of an image archive, you're depending on the company that does the storing and the communications company. While the storage companies don't have much of a track record (thus calling to question their long term economic viability), the communications companies (AT&T and cable companies) have a long history of ripping you off any way they can.<br>

To them it's all about creating a recurrent revenue stream, monthly payments for storage and transport. I believe that the current moves to cap and/or throttle bandwidth are really meant to set legal precedent. Once that is set, the squeeze is on and your archive is the hostage.<br>

"I haven't studied the technical nitty-gritty of cloud computing, but given the collective smarts working on the ventures, I'm pretty confident that modern redundant data centers built to facilitate these things will be more robust and efficient than storing data locally."<br>

Michael, I'm guessing that nitty-gritty is in the fine print that states that they cannot be held liable for the loss of your data. I'll bet it's there somewhere. That bit of fine print is data that I trust they will not lose.</p>

[dr._karl_hoppe]

<p>Oh, good Lord, I still use the small "floppies"! I'm a dinosaur.</p>

[photo5]

<p>I do have to say I am excited about the iCloud service that Apple will offer "iTunes in the Cloud" which will load all your music into the cloud, so you can access it from anywhere. I think the yearly fee will be $29.99. And they won't care where your music came from, your collection, a friend, the library, or downloaded from a Pirate Bay torrent. They will give you access through the cloud to 256mb/s AAC files from the iTunes store regardless if you bought it there or not. Even if all you have is a crappy 128mb/s MP3 from Napster way back in the day. I have over 400gb of music in my iTunes library (most is Apple Lossless) and whatever they don't have in the iTunes library, they will upload those titles from your computer into the cloud.</p>

<p>So no matter where you go in the world, you will be able to "sign in" to your music library. Amazing.</p>