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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."
Being so thin, it can be easily shredded, so there's no further need to keep your financial documents on paper.
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.
This was tried before ("Thindisk Flexible Media"), as a new way to stick CDs into magazines. If you thought the AOL CDs were bad before, wait until next year.
According to the specifications, this would require an adaptor to play in existing CD drives.
If they're pushing this as a supplement to advertisements (distribution via mail, magazine, what have you), how are they going to get the adapters to people? How are they going to overcome the barrier of getting people to actually use the adapters?
Seems like there's a bit of a bottleneck in this biz plan.
goats.com: better than
Who remembers CD caddies? And how much you hated them? Why would you want to go back to that?
And for non-technical people (the ones that can't set the time on their VCR), they're not going to be able to figure out how to use the adapter and will likely end up destroying their CD players, particularly if they try it with a slot-loading one.
Sure, it will be great for people who like the CD inserts in magazines, and may be the best thing in the world for them, but I've yet to find an insert that would make me want to keep around an extra caddy just so I could play it. But then again, it would be nice to be able to fold up a CD and stick in an envelope instead of buying the special CD protective packages, so it might work.
Oh, and what do those naked men have to do with CDs?
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
"The flexCD is non-toxic and may be used with food items."
Holy crap! You mean I should have been washing my hands after using rigid discs?
How about for magazine subscriptions? If it's a magazine where they send you a demo disc or the like every issue, they'll just send you the adapter with the first issue, then never again. And then the benefits pay off... they can send multiple CDs per issue, from different vendors, and not have to worry about bulk.
The AOL CDs I get in the mail don't hold up very well either. They tend to break on the second or third (accidental) bending. They also scratch very easily, especially if I accidentally scratch them with a razor blade. Finally, after being broken in half and scratched, they don't make very good frisbees. I was kind of hoping for better things from this flexible format.
The Flex CD is non-toxic and may be used with food items
A little bit odd, don't you think?
Not at all! Finally, a cure for world hunger! We can just ship third-world countries our never-ending supply AOL-CDs!
Mmm... CD-PB&J sandwich. For those who prefer wheat, CD-R-PB&J.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Cool, If we could get AOL to send these out, I'll have a collection of jar openers to go with my coasters.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Haven't you heard? They make special pants for this.
... the pockets are so large and deep that you can fit 52 full sized music CDs in the pocket without damaging them. In addition, our ProtoSleeve(TM) technology, which surrounds the contents of your pocket with a steel shank, will keep the CDs from getting bent or scratched! All you need is a Discman(TM), (which also will fit in your pocket) and you will become a walking CD jukebox!
From the site):
When are we going to see scratch-proof cds ?
With these new floppy discs, if you scratch the thing, you probably just scratch the medium, and the underlying flexible medium has not been scratched. Because producing and selling adapters costs less than producing and selling an album, you can just shell out a couple bucks for a new adapter if yours gets scratched.
Will I retire or break 10K?
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.
you're right. however, you are thinking 'today' when they are thinking 'tomorrow' ... this isn't something we'll see for a while (unless the adapter is simply a case or a flash program).
...and let's not forget DVD players and CD audio systems -- great for the car!
when cdrw came out, no cdroms could read them. soon after, ALL cdroms could read them. similarly with this (if it flies, and it should); cdrom/dvdrom and writers released after some date in the future will all be able to read this new technology, and at that point, you'll see flexible cds in the mail and in your cereal boxes.
problem is getting this standardized and implemented into future drives.
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in case you hate pdfs that could easily be done in html, adobe has a pdf->html page.
here's the specs in html.
basically, there are two flexCDs, named 80 and 120 for their sizes in milimeters. The 8cm disk holds 200mb and the 12cm disk holds an unspecified amount (hopefully 702mb). each disk is 1/10th the thickness of a cd. standard minicd is 8cm and standard cd is 12cm. a 3.5" floppy is 9cm x 9.4cm.
the adapter has two parts which sandwich the flexCD and go in the non-supporting cdrom drive.
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I have an 8 inch floppy.
/me laughs at all the little 3.5 and 5 inchers.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
It would be interesting to know how this technology compares in terms of
- $/GB
- GB/kg
- GB/cm3
as an archive media versus magnetic disks and DLT.Perhaps the biggest drawback may be sheer capacity. I swear that a 600 MB CD is getting to be as useless as a 1.44 MB floppy relative to how much data needs to be archived.
"Provided by the management for your protection."