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Data Storage Hardware Technology

Microdrive Technology Rebounds Thanks to iPod Mini 191

Posted by timothy from the 4-gigs-for-cheap dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A few years ago Richard Menta over at MP3 Newswire did a lengthy review on the IBM Microdrive and declared it would significantly alter the MP3 portable market if IBM did one thing - drop the price. That never happened and it prompted Menta last year to declare the iPod's more cost effective Toshiba drive made it moot and he put the Microdrive on his 2002 MP3 loser list. Since then the drive technology was acquired by Hitachi who convinced to Apple to use it for the iPod Mini. The Mini's recent success prompted Menta to revisit his previous write-off. Interesting view of the up and down travils of any technology and how each change can have dramatic effect on its success and failure."
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Microdrive Technology Rebounds Thanks to iPod Mini More

Microdrive Technology Rebounds Thanks to iPod Mini

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  • Pretty annoying (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07, 2004 @02:57PM (#8492187)
    I just bought a 4 GB Microdrive on eBay for $299, before running across this article [ipodlounge.com] that explains how to get a 4 GB Microdrive for $50 less than the going eBay price by buying and taking apart an iPod Mini.

    Apparently all of the 4 GB Microdrives on eBay were obtained precisely this way.... which may explain why the iPod Mini has sold out everywhere despite being a relatively-bad deal compared to the 15 GB model. Hitachi is clearly selling these drives to Apple at or near a loss, for whatever strange reason.

    • Re:Pretty annoying (Score:5, Interesting)

      by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:04PM (#8492228) Journal
      Also you can pick up a 4gb Nomad for 199, and rip out the microdrive also. Ipod mini isnt the only one using the 4GB microdrives that sell for 400+ dollars retail.

    • Re:Pretty annoying (Score:5, Informative)

      by TheKidWho ( 705796 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:05PM (#8492237)
      Actually they were taking the hard drives out of the Muvo2 not the ipod mini.
    • Could someone explain to me what you use the hard drive for? other mp3 players? digital cameras?

      • Re:Pretty annoying (Score:3, Informative)

        by Chmarr ( 18662 )
        Mostly Digital Cameras. Trying to buy a 4GB CF card for your digital camera will run you close to $800, I believe.

      • Re:Pretty annoying (Score:5, Informative)

        by aardvarko ( 185108 ) <webmaster@[ ]dvarko.com ['aar' in gap]> on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:15PM (#8492296) Homepage
        Professional photographers tend to use either:

        512MB Lexar CFs, or
        1GB MicroDrives.
        (Or film. ;-)

        Larger flash cards offer drastically diminishing return, making it harder to carry around ten or twenty of them.

        MicroDrive users tend to be either desperate for storage or more careful with their cameras (as they aren't as shock-proof). (You won't see many pho/journs with a MicroDrive.)

        For the existing MicroDrive users, this 4GB "hack" is a huge boon - given that many current cameras write 10-20MB photographs (in RAW format), the ability to take more than fifty photos between card changes is a bit of a nicety. This likely won't impact current flash card users, though, as the 4GBs are just as damage-prone as the 1GBs.

    • Re:Pretty annoying (Score:5, Informative)

      by Chmarr ( 18662 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:10PM (#8492264)
      Except that it is being reported that Apple has had the firmware in the microdrive changed so that you CAN'T use it as a standard compact-flash type drive.

      If you want to do that... stick with the MuVo2.

      • It's not the firmware. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Murmer ( 96505 )
        It's the filesystem, not the firmware. The iPods apparently use an exotic, but the problem is easily fixed. I don't know if it's easily un-fixed, but if you're going to tear open an iPod for the contents, you probably don't care about that much either way.

        So, anyway, I don't have the URL handy, but the word is that once you reformat those things they work correctly; it wuold obviously not be cost-effective for Apple to bump production costs by insisting that Hitachi munge their firmware, or to waste devel

        • Wrong sir, wrong!! (Score:5, Informative)

          by cflorio ( 604840 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:53PM (#8492469) Homepage
          I have been following this very closely, and this is highly documented on dpreview [dpreview.com]. The microdrives In the Ipod Mini [dpreview.com] are NOT The same ones as are retail or in the muvo2 [dpreview.com].

          The ones out of the Ipod Mini have a very large barcode [dpreview.com] and so far there has not been a single documented case of that microdrive working in any digital camera anywhere.

          If you can provide a link to instructions on how to get the ipod mini's microdrive to work in other devices, you will be my new best friend!

        • Plus, you've got to assume that they're making a profit on these things. Even if someone is just buying the ipod to take it apart, it's still $$$ in apple's pocket. No real reason to discourage that.

        • Re:It's not the firmware. (Score:4, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07, 2004 @04:24PM (#8492677)
          It's the filesystem, not the firmware. The iPods apparently use an exotic, but the problem is easily fixed. I don't know if it's easily un-fixed, but if you're going to tear open an iPod for the contents, you probably don't care about that much either way.


          So, anyway, I don't have the URL handy, but the word is that once you reformat those things they work correctly; it wuold obviously not be cost-effective for Apple to bump production costs by insisting that Hitachi munge their firmware, or to waste development time and money doing it themselves.
          I don't believe anyone has succesfully used one in a camera yet. The story I heard is that the iPod drives are locked in True-IDE mode. Compactflash cards can operate in three modes: (1) PC-Card IO (for modems, ethernet, etc), (2) PC-Card Memory, (3) True-IDE. As you can guess, in the last mode it's just an IDE drive (with a simple pin-adapter). All normal CF memory cards can operate in mode (2) and (3), and I guess most camera's interface with the card in mode (2). If the iPod drive only supports mode (3), it can be formatted to work with a PC but not in a camera.

    • Re:Pretty annoying (Score:5, Informative)

      by aardvarko ( 185108 ) <webmaster@[ ]dvarko.com ['aar' in gap]> on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:11PM (#8492270) Homepage
      The seller more likely obtained it from a Creative MuVo, as the Hitachi drive in the iPod is missing some aspect of the standard IDE controller used in most CompactFlash cards and drives.

    • Re:Pretty annoying (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SpookyFish ( 195418 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:15PM (#8492295)
      I hardly think that a significant percentage of the 100k+ iPMinis were purchased for that reason.

      The Mini isn't a bad deal in any way for people who want one that is mini -- and the size DOES make a difference to plenty of people. 4G is still a hell of a lot of music, for "typical" people and/or those willing to prune what they put on the iPod to songs they'll ever actually listen to.

      I highly doubt Hitachi is selling them at a loss -- Apple is buying with at least 100k unit volume commitments. I bet they haven't even sold 100k total to retail channels! I am sure, however, they wish they'd protected against this, to keep the margins on standalone retail sales high.

      • I think the part that a lot of naysayers miss is that 4GB is a pretty good "sweet spot" for many consumers. I get comments on having a large CD collection (which seems strange to me - only ~250 CDs), and while it's too big to fit on an iPod Mini, it's nowhere near filling my 15GB iPod. The mini version is perfect for folks who have more like 100 or 150 CDs and don't mind not encoding them at full bitrate - which I imagine is a good compromise for anyone who isn't into music enough to own a few hundred alb

    • Re:Pretty annoying (Score:3, Insightful)

      by evilWurst ( 96042 )
      "Hitachi is clearly selling these drives to Apple at or near a loss, for whatever strange reason."

      It's unlikely that they'd do this for a product that was almost guaranteed to sell in large volumes. It's probably the other way around - they're making a small profit on the iPod sales and a really big profit on the drives they sell seperately.
    • Or Hitachi is selling them at an extreme profit in the retail channel, and a slight profit to Apple.

    • Re:Pretty annoying (Score:5, Informative)

      by gordguide ( 307383 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:28PM (#8492352)
      " ... Apple at or near a loss, for whatever strange reason. ..."

      Hitachi is making money off the drives they sell to Apple, in the quantities Apple is buying. It's called manufacturing.

      The "part" you bought cost more in single, packaged, retail distribution channels just like any other part does; it's called retail.

      Wanna buy a new car? Buy it in single parts, forget about the labour (we'll assume it's free) and you will have spent who-knows how many times more than a showroom example when you're done.

      Want to manufacture cars? Buy it in quantity parts, factor in the labor, and it will still be cheaper than your one-off.

      The wholesaler's markup on parts (let alone the retail markup) is about the same as a new car dealer's gross markup. Apple isn't even paying a wholesaler, but you did.

      Unlike the original iPod (where Hitachi gave Apple a 1-year exclusive to the 5GB & later larger HDs, from spring 2001 to spring 2002, so that other manufacturers couldn't buy it initially and all prices were lower 1 year later than Apple paid at first in quantity) you can actually buy a 4GB drive retail; pretty much simultaneously with the introduction of the iPod mini.

      So, instead of Apple paying down the cost to ramp up production by itself, like it did with the original iPod's drive, you just paid for some of it. By the way, thanks from all of us.

      Technical analysis of the original iPod (reports cost thousands, I saw them at work) reveal Apple is pricing the iPod twice as low as normal manufacturing practice in electronics (parts cost is just over 50% of retail, compared to the 20~25% typical in consumer electronics); perhaps you're just a victim of Apple pricing lower than the norm in the industry. (I know it sounds crazy, but that's what the data reveals).

    • Re:Pretty annoying (Score:5, Informative)

      by Cecil ( 37810 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:32PM (#8492378) Homepage
      -1, Blatantly Incorrect

      s/iPod Mini/Creative Labs MuVo^2/g -- to get the correct version of the parent comment.

      iPod Minis contain a different version of the Hitachi 4GB Microdrive. In the iPod Mini, the ability for the card to do CF+ has been disabled, it operates only in IDE mode -- making it useless for digital cameras and most other things one would want a Microdrive for. The MuVo has the standard consumer model of the Microdrive with working CF+ support. It has been tested to work properly in the Canon EOS 300D (Digital Rebel) among other cameras.

      You can see whether a drive is from the MuVo or the iPod Mini because the iPod Mini version is barcoded and serial numbered on the label, while the MuVo version is just an empty white label.

      More info here. [dpreview.com]

    • Re:Pretty annoying (Score:5, Informative)

      by GlassHeart ( 579618 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:40PM (#8492420) Journal
      which may explain why the iPod Mini has sold out everywhere despite being a relatively-bad deal compared to the 15 GB model.

      Entering "microdrive 4gb" in eBay gets me 64 hits. Apple announced that it has over 100,000 pre-orders for the iPod Mini. Even if every single one of those was stripped from an iPod Mini (not likely) and Apple only produced enough to fulfill pre-orders (not likely), that would account for 0.06% of its sales.

      Please just accept that your criteria for what makes a good deal may not be shared by... hundreds of thousands of other people.

      • That's assuming that all of these microdrives are ending up on ebay NOW. What about people buying them for themselves, or people with dozens or hundreds of drives but holding them to keep supply low (to keep the price up). IANA Statistician, but I would expect it to be a slightly larger percent, but not more than 2-5%.

  • It takes a long time (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sakusha ( 441986 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @02:58PM (#8492193)
    to become an overnight success.

    • Re:It takes a long time (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      > to become an overnight success. ..especially when you're developed by IBM, a company with a history of failing to properly market their innovative consumer tech.

      Back in 2001, OS/2 was overheard quietly saying to Microdrive, "Sorry, kid, I've been down this road and it's not pretty. Prepare to be ignored by the marketplace."

  • high price (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mix_master_mike ( 540678 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @02:59PM (#8492196) Homepage
    The whole IBM premium pricing for "compelling innovations" is pretty interesting. Why would they keep the price for so high for so long - was someone else purchasing the drives for another procuct?

    Hitachi is probably profiting nicely from this.. It's too bad they don't have CFlash cards that are big and cheap yet, seems that's far down the road.

  • This reminds me of myself (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07, 2004 @02:59PM (#8492197)
    I declared Gopher dead as a result of the web in 1994, and Gopher has since has an incredible rebirth and is now in common use again.
    Text in italics may not have actually happened.

  • Hrmm (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheKidWho ( 705796 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @02:59PM (#8492199)
    Hrmm... this got me thinking... Is it possible to replace the 4gb iPod Mini HD with one of those new 8gb CF cards?

  • Versus "normal" hard drive based mp3 players? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dnobel ( 716850 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:02PM (#8492214)
    Does anybody know if these smaller microdrive based mp3 players are less prone to damage due to physical shock versus an ipod or nomad zen like device?
    • How prone to damage due to physical shock are the iPod and Zen? I have never heard of anyone breaking an iPod by jogging with it.

      • Re:Versus "normal" hard drive based mp3 players? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by CAlworth1 ( 518119 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:48PM (#8492456) Homepage
        >>I have never heard of anyone breaking an iPod by jogging with it.

        Nor have I, and I have owned two, and know probably 20 to 30 people with them, and have never heard of any hard drive failures. Battery problems, perhaps, but these are regular computer users with very little idea about what they should expect from a product, so they keep buying. Short of near-catastrophic failure, they aren't going to quit using them, or quit suggesting them any time soon I think.
    • Because the parts are smaller, they can't stand as much stress as larger drives. Eg: it's easier to smash a microdrive with a hammer than it is to do the same to a larger drive. But the microdrives are actually more resistant to shock, because they are lighter. When a microdrive hits the ground, it disperses much less energy than a normal laptop drive. Since the microdrive has much smaller forces to contend with, it is more durable. Here's a good analogy: some cars have more horsepower than others, but acce

  • Who convinced who? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi@yahoo.cLIONom minus cat> on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:03PM (#8492222) Journal
    ...was acquired by Hitachi who convinced to Apple to use it for the iPod Mini.

    Is it: ..was acquired by Hitachi who convinced Apple to use it for the iPod Mini.

    or

    was acquired by Hitachi who was convinced by Apple to use it for the iPod Mini.

    Editors should be clearing this up, rather than adding 11 more submissions to the 'Games' catagory. C'mon Timothy - stop playing UT2004 for just a second.

  • How crash resistant are microdrives? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:03PM (#8492223)
    I'm always wondering if these drives can experience crashing or data corruption if it gets hit hard while it's running? Is it really a spinning hard drive or is it something else?

    • The hard drive spins, shortly (Score:5, Informative)

      by MacFury ( 659201 ) <me@nOsPAM.johnkramlich.com> on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:13PM (#8492283) Homepage
      The hard drive spins for a brief period of time to load the next song into the iPods 32MB memory. From there, all reads are done from the 32MB RAM.

      The iPod also attempts to cache the next and previous songs if enough RAM exsists. If you hit the next song button really quickly you can hear the hard drive spin up and locate the song.

    • Safer than a desktop HDD. The tiny platters don't move quite as much when jolted (edges of the platter being much closer to the axis than with desktop drives), and they tend to spin down a lot more frequently than desktop drives. Still not as "safe" as a regular ol' flash card...
      • But that's a trade off really.

        On a stable platform you can re-write a micro-drive more than you can CF [though yeah with sector re-mapping the damage is little, hit to capacity though...]

        Tom
        • Although I certainly can't claim to be a pro just yet, I've cycled 14,000 pictures through one 256MB Lexar 12x without any loss in capacity (disk images are the same size as images made the day after it was purchased) and without any obvious data corruption. You're certainly correct that it WILL wear out eventually... but when it does, I'm out $80 rather than $250.
          • don't get me wrong for what CF is used for now it's certainly suitable [btw the re-write quota on most CFs is about 100,000 cycles so you haven't even hit the half-way mark on any sectors most likely].

            My point though was ....um I forgot.... whatever the entire market is a scam right now. Personally I'll just sit on the sideline and wait for things to sort themselves out ;-)

            Tom

    • Re:How crash resistant are microdrives? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Tyrell Hawthorne ( 13562 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:26PM (#8492346) Homepage
      Yes, it is just a very small hard drive. Have a look at this picture [pocket.at].

      As for the sturdiness, I can say that I've had no problems with mine for the few years I've had it. I've taken a few thousand pictures with it, but I haven't dropped the camera when it was reading or writing to it. However, according to what I've read they seem to be good in this aspect. It isn't solid state, so it's not as rugged as that, but you don't have to worry too much about it in normal conditions.
    • The other day I was showing off my new ipod mini in the parking lot. It was turned off and locked. I missed slipping it back into the sleeve of my powerbook case and the ipod crashed onto the pavement and took a nasty tumble. The blue case suffered one ding, but otherwise externally it was ok.

      In the car, I turned the ipod mini on the check to see if it was still alive. Instead of the normal ipod menu, I got the apple logo... it flashed... after a couple of minutes the normal ipod menu appears. I was concer

  • Think outside the square (Score:5, Insightful)

    by powerpuffgirls ( 758362 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:04PM (#8492227)
    MicroDrive won't be successful as a storage because nobody really needs to carry that much data around. When iPod comes in, it changed the use of such device, and people do have needs to carry that much of music around.

    Similar to Acer's latest monsterous laptop, which is so heavy and short of battery life. Most people said it is too heavy and short-life to be carried around, but in reality this laptop is not designed for you to carry around and use it in pubs, cafe or buses, instead it is for people to move from point A to point B, and station it on a desk again. This immediately changes its intended use and market.

    • Re:Think outside the square (Score:5, Insightful)

      by unfortunateson ( 527551 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:14PM (#8492290) Journal
      On the other hand, the current generation of pro-level (11+ megapixel range) digital cameras take 35MB raw-mode photos. A 4GB Microdrive becomes indispensible.

      A couple of the newest MP3 jukeboxes have 20GB and firewire for upload/download of not-neccessarily-music files and are even better.
    • I think it is you that needs to think outside the square. Something like a camcorder could easily use these microdrives. Or how about a PVR that you could easily carry to someone else's house to watch movies.

      PDAs generally are designed to work within the confines of flash RAM, but a microdrive PDA might have all kinds of uses no one has thought of.
      • That is exactly my point, people need to think how a product can be used, not what a product is. Obviously these "people" are the Marketing & Sales departments.

        Your mention of Camcorder, PVR and PDA are all good place to use these MicroDrives, but did the orignal MicroDrive manufacturer think of it? Do we see manufacturers using it now?

        My original post suggested that iPod changed the use of MicroDrive from storing data to storing music, but by no mean did I suggest music storage is the only use for th
      • Camcorders would be a horrible use of Microdrives. A single hour of DV runs toward 12-13GB. Spending ~$200-$400 for 20 minutes of video just for (mostly unused) random access rather than ~$8 for 60 or 90 minutes of sequential would be idiotic.
      • All of these would demand that the battery life on most PDAs improves greatly (I know my Tungsten T2 can't handle the strain when I do things like this for very long). That said, none of them seem at all original, most are already implemented, and I'm amazed nobody seems to have thought how much greater these would be on a device with a MicroDrive.

        Movies - great for anyone who spends a lot of time on buses, trains, and airplanes
        Music - Screw PDA cellphones, PDA game systems, and the like. Make a really g

    • Re:Think outside the square (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Nobody really needs to carry that much data (640K?) around.

      Thanks for your input, Mr. Gates.
    • The cheaper disk capacity becomes, the faster people come up with ways to consume it. When CDs came out everyone was excited because something that took 20 floppy disks fit in a tiny "corner" of a CD. (Okay, so they're round, they don't have corners, just edges. But you know what I mean.) Now microsoft office comes on two CDs, that's 1.3GB if they use them up, and only use 650MB CDs. Now we have DVDs, 4.7GB for recordable/single layer which is almost six and three-quarter (700MB) CDROMs. How long before the

    • Re:Think outside the square (Score:4, Informative)

      by THotze ( 5028 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:27PM (#8492349) Homepage
      You know, I get what you're saying, and to a certian extent, I agree with you. Just making a really big drive doesn't mean that there will be a good use for it. Originally, IIRC, IBM was trying to get people to shove those in PDAs - which would be more storage than most PDA users need(ed), and it'd suddenly make PDAs a lot bigger, a lot heavier, and probably somewhat slower, because its harder to manage a 1GB volume than 64MB of RAM.

      Having said that, I don't think it's like the Acer luggable. For one thing, the IBM Microdrive took something that was already successful - smaller (2.5") hard drives, and made them a LOT smaller. For another, it sounds like the infamous (if fake) "640K ought to be enough for anybody" comment. Now, admitadly, flash storage is better than anything with moving parts for a bunch of reasons. But saying that there weren't uses at that time for that much data just isn't true - digital cameras were one emerging market, sub-sublaptops were another, and I tihkn that something LIKE the iPod (basically, using it as an MP3 player, not necessarily as slick as a real iPod) is more of a natural use of the technology than something that incidentally "happened."

      It takes a long time from the invention of a technology to the time that it becomes widely used or practical - its a learning curve. That's why there are all sorts of web-based services around now that all the technical foundations were there for in 1998 - because once the tools are available, it takes some time for inventors and idea people to realize it and understand how to best use them.

      I think that if the microdrives can stay bigger (in storage space) than compact flash at a similar price point, which I thikn they will over the next 5 years, you'll start seeing more and more of them.

  • IBM Storage Tech in Mini-ipods? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:08PM (#8492248)
    Well I'm sure the RIAA will love the self-destructive nature of those drives
    • I know that you're joking and it is rather funny, but I just had to point out that I have a 340 Meg microdrive that I've had for over 3 years, and it's survived not only heavy usage but it's been dropped numerous times.

      Microdrives were one aspect of hard drive technology that IBM got right ;)

  • PDAs? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fastdecade ( 179638 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:12PM (#8492277)
    With all this high storage for MP3s, why don't PDAs come with built-in 5 or 10GB?

    Yes battery life suffers, but we already have colour screens and fast processors - the days of plugging in the palm every month or so are gone, and many users are used to recharging on a daily basis.

    It would be nice to fill the PDA with work docs, technical docs, encyclopaedias, useful apps, and a complete backup image - not to mention all the music!

    • Re:PDAs? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Fiveeight ( 610936 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:27PM (#8492351)
      I know someone who used a 1 gig microdrive as storage for their Toshiba PocketPC. Reduced the battery life by 50% if you used the disc much, and it got very hot. The big storage capacity was nice, but it wasn't a very effective tradeoff. Bigger CF cards are probably a better solution for most people unless the 4+ gig drives use a lot less power.

    • Re:PDAs? (Score:5, Informative)

      by .com b4 .storm ( 581701 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @04:15PM (#8492613)

      the days of plugging in the palm every month or so are gone, and many users are used to recharging on a daily basis.

      Funny, I have a Palm Zire (nice bright color display) that I use heavily on a daily basis, with sounds and such turned on. I also make use of the built-in camera once in a while when I'm in a pinch. I only have to charge it once every month or so, sometimes once every two months if my usage is not very heavy for a while. So what's this about recharging on a daily basis again?

      • >So what's this about recharging on a daily basis again?

        The zire is a toy, come back when you have something with a persistant connection to the internet, a larger screen, a keyboard, and a phone and we'll talk. 2.5G devices are everywhere and eat up power like you wouldn't believe.

        • Re:PDAs? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by .com b4 .storm ( 581701 )

          The zire is a toy, come back when you have something with a persistant connection to the internet, a larger screen, a keyboard, and a phone and we'll talk.

          No, the Zire is a PDA. What you described borders on being a notebook - if I wanted to carry a notebook computer around, I would have one. But you see, I don't need (or want) a persistant connection to the internet, or a larger screen, or a phone. A keyboard would be nice, but it's not critical. The Zire lets me organize my contacts and notes, view wh

    • Yeah, I'm not sure why PDA manufacturers aren't jumping all over this. People are willing to pay $300+ for an iPod, and all it does is play music! If you can make a $300 PDA with, say, 512MB of storage for music (or whatever), it seems it'd sell like hotcakes. I know I'd gladly buy one. You could go with a monochrome display or weaker processor to increase battery life.

      Maybe there are PDAs like that now, but back when I was looking I didn't see any. The closest I got were some $300 PDAs that you coul

      • If you can make a $300 PDA with, say, 512MB of storage for music (or whatever), it seems it'd sell like hotcakes. I know I'd gladly buy one.

        An iPAQ H2210 costs around $300-$350. It is pretty good (400 MHz XScale chip, 16,000 color display, etc) and has both SD and CF memory expansion slots.

        Add a 512 MB CF card for around $100 and there's your high capacity PDA.

        I have one and it works well, battery life is good. Of course, I'd like to put a 4 GB Microdrive in it. ;)

      • PDAs? What are those?

        My iPod can display my contacts, calendar, to-do lists, notes, etc. True, I cannot input that info directly into the iPod, but I don't seem to be missing that function very much. My needs might be simpler than yours, though.

        My next phone, however, will have all those PDA functions.

  • Sinclair Microdrive from the 80s (Score:5, Interesting)

    by axolotl_farmer ( 465996 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:21PM (#8492320)
    Anyone remember the Sinclair Microdrive [nvg.ntnu.no]?

    Sir Clive Sinclair, inventor of the ZX81 and Spectrum line of computers did not believe disc drives had a future. He invented the microdrive. Cheap, fast and with low power demands.

    The microdrive had small cartridges with a tape loop running inside. The Spectrum version held ~100 k or so of data. They were built into the Sinclair Ql, and was available as periphals for Spectrum (Timex in the US).

    It was very soon forgotten except by us old Spectrum afficionados!

    • Yeah, I do... I've got all my 9th grade reports saved on one. You'd be typing along, *pause*... whirrr, whirr whirrr. Bzzz, whirrr. Cute little things, but we kept losing them.

      I was curious later and tried to rig up a special serial cable to interface with an XT and retrieve the information. Never got it to work though.

      Sinclair was a nice little machine. My dad bought about 6 of them.

  • Plans? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by H8X55 ( 650339 ) <jason.r.thomasNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:22PM (#8492328) Homepage Journal
    I wonder what folks will do with all the left over iPod minis and MuVo2s after they pull the drives for storage.

    any ideas?

    • Reuse (Score:4, Informative)

      by cflorio ( 604840 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @04:02PM (#8492500) Homepage
      Thus far, no one has been able to get a vanilla CF card to work with the Ipod Mini.

      Scores of people, however are putting in a smaller CF card or older microdrive in the Muvo^2. This is generally a digital photographer who has a bunch of these cards anyway, and with a 4gb one, their old 256 lexar or 340 ibm microdrive can be spared.

      So, for $199 people are getting a 340mb muvo2 and a 4gb microdrive. Much less than the cost of a 4gb microdrive retail (~$500)

    • Well, there are scores of MuVo2's on eBay without the drive. There are a few more that are being sold with smaller flash cards installed. Going rate seems to be about $50, so add in the cost of a CF card of your choice and you could have a cheap flash MP3 player.

  • SCO starts selling iPod Mini licenses (Score:5, Funny)

    by azuroff ( 318072 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:23PM (#8492334)
    From the press release:

    "IBM had access to the SysV source code. IBM also developed the MicroDrive. Therefore, the MicroDrive is obviously a derivative product, and we believe that all iPod Mini owners now owe us $699."

  • A new floppy drive (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cybermint ( 255744 ) * on Sunday March 07, 2004 @03:39PM (#8492415)
    In this day and age, where computers are so widely used, and our data integrity is vital, we still rely on data storage methods that use moving parts. Nothing lasts forever, but magnetic media always has a nasty habit of failing much sooner, mainly because it still relies on a system vulnerable to friction. Now microdrive technology is rebounding? When is this dinosaur going to die!? Then again, maybe that's the reason it's still around. If it didn't fail, we wouldn't have to buy a new one.
    • Even retail it makes sense right now.

      4gb Microdrive =~ $500
      4gb solid state CF card =~ $1200

      So, people don't want to piss awayh $700 bucks.. makes sense to me.

      • The only problem is power consumption is exactly inverse.

        CT tested video players for pda, and its sad to see movie running from CF running 3.8h and from Microdrive 1.5h before end of battery
        So even with an 400MHZ xscale running on full power, the power consuption of the MD dominated the whole system.
        Well, it seems spinning a disc up to 4000rpm and using electromagnets to pull a metal bar to the right position can't be made as low power as flash....

    • Re:A new floppy drive (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mst76 ( 629405 )

      In this day and age, where computers are so widely used, and our data integrity is vital, we still rely on data storage methods that use moving parts. Nothing lasts forever, but magnetic media always has a nasty habit of failing much sooner, mainly because it still relies on a system vulnerable to friction. Now microdrive technology is rebounding? When is this dinosaur going to die!? Then again, maybe that's the reason it's still around. If it didn't fail, we wouldn't have to buy a new one.

      A small rant:

      • Can you boot off a CF card reader? That seems to be the only thing floppies are used for any more.
        • New mainboards can often boot from USB. The point is however that a CF is pretty much a standard IDE connector. You can typically buy a CF->IDE converter for some $20 or so. You should make sure that you don't write too much to it though since they wear out faster. (For Linux there is a Flash File System you can use which optimizes storage for this.)

          Real nice if you want a quite computer.
      • most memory card readers read all major formats(cf/mmc/sd/smartmedia).

        not too many have bought those readers though, and you can't trust that somebody has them. also, cdr's have that base covered(they're also a lot more like floppies are, since they're inexpensive in comparision you can just leave it lying around once used).

      • Lots of reasons.. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Cyno01 ( 573917 )
        People like their floppys. I have teachers at my school who save to a floppy or even a (retch) zip disk instead of the network storage. Also, as you mentioned, the fragmentation of standards. I have a sony camera, it takes memory sticks, try finding a computer that ships with a built in (like floppys are built in) "magic gate" slot thats not a vaio. Also, eveyones computer has several usb ports and probably one or two on the front. Everyone and their mother has a usb drive nowadays, hell, i have one on my w
    • (This is going to assume that we're still talking about small portable devices like iPods, and not full-size computers.)

      The day you get a CD R/W drive small enough and with low enough power consumption to replace HDs and flash memory, go for it. It will probably still be less reliable, since CDRW's don't have the same MTF if you're constantly rereading them and rewriting them. That and it'd kind of suck to have to erase the thing wholesale rather than one file at a time.

      Last I checked, flash memory has

  • "Thanks" to iPod? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @04:20PM (#8492644) Journal
    Perhaps the reason Microdrives fell out of favor wasn't just the price point. With the exception of raw data transfer speed, solid state Flash memory is superior in every way. Portable devices are battery constrained, subjected to extraordinarily rough treatment and great temperature extremes. Flash memory is many times better than MicroDrive in all those critical areas.

    Finally, Microdrives are fading away because flash memory capacities have been increasing as their cost decreases (in addition to the hardware advantages). All we are seeing here with the iPod Microdrives is a temporary reduction in cost-per-byte over flash memory. This artificial bubble will not last, and flash memory will (continue to) dominate in the long run.

    Dan East

    • Flash vs Hard drive (Score:2, Interesting)

      by magicianuk ( 446906 )
      I don't have the figures to hand, but I'm sure someone will correct me ...

      I believe that Flash memory can be rewritten 100k times before failure ... now that's a lot of saving new music files! However hard disks can be rewritten millions of times, which is really good for things like FAT tables, windows swap files etc.

      For things like music, photographs etc. Flash is a much better technology, just a fair bit more expensive than hard disks (at the moment). But for computer storage and in particular swap fil

    • Re:"Thanks" to iPod? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by msgmonkey ( 599753 )
      There has never been a time a time where Flash memory has been cheaper than hard disk storage, so it's no way a "bubble" nor artificial.

      Producing a flash memory is much more complicated
      then getting a piece of metal/glass and covering it with a magnetic material.

      Of course the price of Flash will get lower, but will only happen with feature shrinks and new technology as economies of scale will only go so far.
    • come on, hard drives is a moving target as well. Their density grows fairly rapidly. What do you think? CF capacity will go up and price will go down, but hard drive will remain as it is now. Rather silly thought, I would say. Expect the price difference be in the range something like 1:10 (hard drive to CF) *not* on a temporary basis, but well into the future. By the time we can get 8GB CF for $1,000, there will be 8GB microdrive for $100. Capiche?

  • Microdrives are great (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    We've been putting microdrives in the compact flash slot of our mini-itx motherboards. They are $49 for 340 Mb, perfect for embedded applications, such as POS, for instance, and can hold several years of data.
  • I can't wait until the class action lawsuits are filed.. the click-whirr of death from legions of iPod minis!

    Hitachi has inherited an evil, evil legacy.

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