Slashback: Drives, Pods, OEMs

Slashback tonight with a look at Microsoft's OEM practices, the true nature and size of the Apple iPod, IBM drives (and hard drives in general), and the RIAA's alleged lobbying efforts for a license to invade machines looking for copyright infringement. All below, all now.

Drive-n to strong drink and harsh words. Kenneth Yu writes: "You might recall the overwhelming response to a recent 'Ask Slashdot' regarding the abnormally high failure rates of IBM 75GXP Hard drives, and the pulling of all 75GXP from Pair Networks' Servers. A class action lawsuit has been filed by Michael Granido, Jr., on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated. You can view the complaint in PDF format at http://www.sheller.com/IBM_complaint.pdf. This story was initially reported by Tech Report (http://www.tech-report.com)."

Apropos that, jriskin writes: "Storagereview.com has its new reliability database up and running. I have no affiliation with the site, but it only benifits the community to have as many people contribute as possible. The database is a listing of hard drives and whether or not they have failed, when they were purchased, etc. So get over there and put in all your HD data!" Things like this could help eliminate the anecdotal-only nature of many of hardware complaints, especially if people who are happy with their hardware bother to report it.

Falling far from a tree has nothing to do with it. Majik writes "A quick correction - the iPod has *10* gigs of storage, not 5 (or 6 like the Nomad). And with the Firewire interface you can move an entire CD in under a minute. Although I admit I was hoping for more out of the product announcement, it's still pretty darn cool ... "

On the other hand, jchristopher writes: "Love it or hate it, Apple's new iPod digital music player is here. Yesterday, many people commented that "at least it has no copy protection" and praised Apple's attitude toward digital music. Unfortunately, this may not be the case - according to this New York Times article, the iPod does indeed have copy protection - MP3 files copied to the iPod from one Mac to the iPod CAN'T be offloaded onto a different computer. Ouch!" That means (at least without further hacking) it can't be used as a transfer medium between the G3 and work and the iMac kept hidden in your darkest closet, which is sort of a shame considering that it has all the right things built in to be even better than the several portable firewire drives on the market.

Unorginal Equipment Makers. An Anonymous Coward writes: "This is a follow-up on a previous story posted to Slashdot about Microsoft's anti-competitive OEM contracts." It's a report by German journalist Erik Möller (hi, Erik!), who too an extremely thorough look at the details of OEM bundling deals, and what they mean to customers. Möller's conclusion: "No operating system will ever be able to compete with Microsoft Windows on the desktop market as long as OEMs cannot legally install it besides Windows without losing their license."

'Technical meaures' covers a pretty broad swath. Robotech_Master writes "The RIAA has responded to the 'license to virus' story, calling it a false Internet rumor and explaining their side of the story." So the RIAA officially does not want a license to hack, at least on paper.

Comments

iPod thoughts from a Nomad Jukebox owner.

[nyquist_theorem]

I tried to stay out of this, but the iPod bashing seems to continue.

Seems to be a lot of talk about the iPod being dead-in-the-water (or nearly so) as an MP3 player. I, as a NJB owner and occasional Apple owner (my G3 has been powered up twice in the past year), find the iPod quite appealing, and would gladly exchange my NJB plus two hundred dollars for one. Here's why the iPod will, IMHO, kick the NJB's butt.

#1 - Size. The NJB is exactly the wrong size, as are all the other HD-based MP3 players I've seen. Too big to be really carry-in-on-you portable, too small to hold a useable display or enough buttons to properly save/name playlists, manage files, explore your collection etc.

#2 - Data storage. The NJB didn't used to do this, and even now barely does.

#3 - Speed. USB. Slow. Firewire. Fast. Swapping out even a 6GB NJB MP3 library takes a LONG, LONG time, like many hours. Assuming the software doesn't time out on you, which, ten firmwares later, it still does. Often.

#4 - Reliability. PB5300s be damned, Apple makes decent stuff. I'm on my second NJB, and its starting to die too. Creative puts a *90-day* warranty on the things, they're so flaky. Really.

#5 - Battery life. The NJB gets 2 hours IME from a set of NiMH AAs. There are also issues with overheating, failure to charge, and improper charge status reporting on the units. What good is 1000 hours of music if you can only enjoy it two hours at a time? Many NJB owners are resorting to $50-$70 ratpacks worth of bulky NiMH D-cells to get to the 10hr battery life the iPod advertizes as standard. Bring on the lithium polymer.

#6 - Support. 1-800-SOS-APPL vs. we-wont-even-give-you-a-number-to-call-unless-you- go-through-this-web-wizard and "we think you dropped it". Worse if you're outside the US. Sign me up for some iPod Applecare - after two dead Rios and two dead NJB's, I could use some warranty love.

#7 - Output level. Based on the Reg's comment about the iPod sounding good, and based on the fact that NJB owners everywhere are opening up their units (voiding their 90 day warranty) to try to solder in a reasonable output level.

#8 - Aesthetics. 'nuff said.

#9 - Price. The iPod is cheaper ($400USD) than the NJB was when I bought my first one at $759CAD ($499USD), less than a year ago. If this 1.8" drive format is standardized, then bigger drives should be able to be shoehorned in, as NJB owners have been doing.

#10 - Drive letter (or the mac version, mount-it-on-the-desktop) support. Try using cheeseball banner-ads-galore gotta-use-it-to-load-the-device-whoops-i-crashed-a gain Creative Playcenter and you'll see what I mean.

#11 - Boot times. Even with the latest firmware, its still 20+ seconds from powering the unit up to getting a sound out of it. For those with bigger HDs, older firmware, or less-than-perfect ID3 tags, startup times of two minutes or more are the norm. I can't imagine the iPod would be worse than THAT.

#12 - Proprietary file system with no repair / diagnosis options. There's no way to do a "real" format on an NJB. As in one that actually looks for bad sectors. One bad sector on your fragile fujitsu 2.5" HD? Count on lockups, freezeups, and untold general annoyances. There's no defrag, either.

There's plenty more, but I think the point is made. 'nuff of the pooh-poohing. As soon as someone can get this thing to accept MP3s from a PeeCee running Windoze and/or Linux, it will be the next big thing. (and save the archos jukebox praise, unless you've actually used one - or at least fondled a dead one).