Slashdot Mirror
New, Flexible CDs Arrive
Mortin writes "A company called Flexstorm has developed a new type of CD, dubbed flexCD, that is about 140 microns thick, 1/10th that of a normal CD, and most importantly flexible. The technical specs on this new technology are quite impressive, boasting a weight of only .6 grams on the flexCD 80. Producing a flexCD also only takes .3 seconds, less than that of a normal CD."
I'm old enough to remember when some books and magazines included analog records printed on sheets of plastic ... particularly music instruction books, and things of that nature. I'm looking forward to the days when you can tear a CD out of your favourite music magazine and listen to it ...
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
What happens when a Flex-CD gets a little dent in it, and that little dent hits my CD drive read head at 40x ?
if they are 140 microns thick or whatever, wouldn't they be susceptible to tearing? I mean basically this is just like the foil data layer of a cd with very little protection. this would also make them more vulnerable to scratches and whatnot because you dont have a millimeter or so of plastic between the face and the data. a scratch that would not affect a normal cd may very well scratch all the way to the data layer of a thin cd.
From the website:
:)
flexMail allows you to target your markets selectively, personally, and flexibly, combining our flexible media with traditional direct mail services.
Tis spells more spam to me, so I'm not really sure I'm happy. Also, as a sysadmin I wouldn't want to go again thru "don't run magazine cds" for the people (obviously this is not the cd they were tought to handle
I don't think that's such a good idea. Anybody with special equipment could probably read whatever's left of the tracks on the shards of CD. One shard could hold many kilobytes of contiguous data; even entire documents.
Shredding a CD is kind of like printing all of your documents onto a single mile-long roll of paper, then slicing the paper into 1-foot long pieces. You could get a lot of info off of any one chunk.
Being flexible presents some advantage in the ad business as it becomes possible to send CD like junk mail. I (don't really) look forward to the days of getting Pre-approved credit card mail on this media. However, the format becomes quickly an inconvienience when you decide to keep and use the media. As an example, I remember when the DVD expert group was debating over as to protect the disc in the casing or not (like the Panasonic PD disk.) They decided not to, to the biggest regret of companies like Blockbuster who are irritating their customers by renting DVD with scratches and digs all over (I've got one of these DVDs with a cigarette burn in it!)
I really like the tape format, and I enjoy the mini disc (MD) style, allowing me to throw medium on the desk without caring if it will get scratched. The MD format is almost perfect for me. It's smaller than CDs and fit in backpacks. It's too bad that it hasn't become more popular with increase storage and broader adoption by computer manufacturers.
PPA, the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
Okay, so have they invented a flexible CD? Not really. All they've done is separated the data layer from the rigid plastic layer, so that people will hopefully own only a few of the rigid "adapters" and loads of the data-handling flexCDs. FlexCDs are (a) easier to break than ordinary CDs (because there's no plastic layer protecting the thin data layer, and (b) place more of the cost of playing CDs on the consumer, since producers won't have to pay for the adapters after a while.
Since they're less rigid and have less total mass to 'average out' any irregularities, what happens when there's a small variation that slightly unbalances the disc? This wouldn't affect audio players, but I wonder if their stability would be insufficient to handle much higher speeds. I didn't see any specs on average maximum read speed.
I remember a c-source project called homeCD that would print a postscript image of data sent to it as an ISO image, so you could literally print a REALLY low-data CD on anything, even paper... a few meg at best... you could print on transparency and back with foil for the same affect. Hope they haven't tried to patent the idea.
meh
What are the real benifits of a flexible cd? we dont need jewel cases to keep them straight? they surely cant take up any less space, roll a bit of cardboard up, does it now take up less space? i thought not.
aside from frisbee related injuries, i cant see any benifit, just as i couldnt see any point to flexible keyboards (i never had a wobbly desk, and if i did, id take a power sander to it)
Hey, anyone remember RCA's Dynaflex LP's?
RCA introduced these briefly in the sixties. The word "floppy disk" hadn't been invented then, but it should have been. These monstrosities were floppy, also flabby, flimsy, flim-flams, etc.
According to RCA it was all in the interest of fidelity--even if it did give some misguided consumer the impression they were cheapening the product. (Oddly enough, the reduced costs in vinyl were not reflected in the price of the Dynaflex disks).
As it happened, Dynaflex was flayed in both the consumer and audiophile press, and in the marketplace, just as it did in one's hands, it flopped.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!