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Top 5 Submerging Technologies Pinpointed
An anonymous reader writes "Computerworld makes its picks of five 'submerging' (i.e. dying) technologies, as the article asks 'Where are the review committees for obsolete technologies?' The picks, made by 'corporate IT managers and analysts', include Windows 9x, client/server computing and Visual Basic 6."
Why it's sinking: Tape is cheap, but disk technology is closing the cost gap. For day-to-day backups, disk-to-disk systems that use inexpensive ATA technology make sense.
To archive, what last longer... tape or a hard drive?
I think the majority of people in the business are using hard drives as back up devices now... so tape may very well be out. We know CDRs die sooner than expected... do hard drives sitting on a shelf store better?
Of course, I am paranoid. I still hard drive to hard drive backup and download my database from work to home weekly.
I still wonder if tape is better for archiving though.
Davak
The Standard Response:
Imagine you're an elementary school teacher with a class of 20 six-year-olds. Half of them have no computer experience at all. All of them have poor motor skills. You take them into a computer lab for the first time. You explain the workings of the mouse, and that one button is useful, and the other button is not. (Remember: six year olds. Think kiddie educational software.)
They start plugging away. One hand goes up. "My computer is broken. The mouse thingy isn't working." You kindly indicate the other button, and the child goes on with his "work."
Another hand goes up. "My mouse is broken..."
Twenty times.
Trust me, computers for kids (Apple eMac) NEED one button mice standard.
Now, as to why Apple ships single button mice with G5 towers...you've got me.
Tape backup is only dying because it's so damned expensive - my DDS3 cost more than twice the cost of the computer it's backing up... It'd better last 10 years or more for that kind of money.
There's no backup solutions for good money - even DVD-R has only a 4.7GB capacity - I'd need to burn 3 a night (and it's enough hassle changing the tape every day, never mind swapping CDs).
At work we backup only a small part (~1%) of the network - the cost to buy backup for more than that would have blown the entire IT budget for a year...
If someone comes up with a backup that can store eg. 100GB and price it right (about the same as a 100GB hard drive) then they'll make loads.
According to the chart at the end of the article, Zip drives are a dying technology. I've got news for those guys: Zip drives died, rigor mortis set in, the were embalmed, buried, and have mostly decomposed.
I've got a few of them at home, including two internal IDE Zip drives, an external USB Zip drive, and an external SCSI Zip drive. I also have about 50 Zip disks but I can't even remember the last time I spun one of them up.
Iomega pissed away that entire market with their greed. Had they been smarter, they would have given the drives away in every Dell, Compaq, and Gateway system sold and made money off of the media (ala the Gillette shaver business model). Instead, they continued to charge too much for the drives, limiting their adoption. As CD-R and CD-RW media plummeted in price, Iomega continued to charge an arm and a leg for their Zip media rather than dropping prices to retain customers. They introduced the Zip 250, Zip Click!, and Zip 750, all of which failed due to the high drive costs, exorbitant media costs, and marketplace confusion with customers not knowing which model to buy in order to exchange data with colleagues and friends. They never effectively tried to broaden the appeal of their media with MP3 recorders, players, or in-dash car units.
After effectively killing the Zip product line, they introduced external CD-R/W drives. Unfortunately, they were just rebadged units stuck in gaudy blue cases -- for which they charged double what everyone else did. They're toast.
Two months? Boo fucking hoo. Call me in a year, fella, and tell me all about it.
This is not my sandwich.
I have let to see a $600 LCD look better then a $600 CRT.
CRTs:
+ better color
+ better viewing angles
+ Can be set to be flicker free
+ Cheaper (just MSRP not TOS)
- larger and bulkier
- many people don't know how to set their refresh rates
- heat
- Win9x: For most of our hardware, nothing else makes sense. Our budget (small biz -- 20 employees) doesn't let us upgrade that often. Personally, I run Windows only when I absolutely have to, and I certainly am NOT going to run it on the latest hardware. Hence, Win9x.
- Client/Server: You know what? It's not dead, especially for smaller installs. Sure, IBM and other greats can't justify having an app that has to be installed on every darn workstation or has to have heavier clients (I dislike 'fat', it implies bloat.) We don't cater to 300 workstations, we cater to 4 or 5. C/S is still the way for us and will be for ages.
- Tape Backup: Because you'll never convince the PHB that hard drives are just as reliable. Mind you, when the boss buys Maxtor POS drives, what do you expect?
- 1U (1.75-in. high) servers: What in hades do I need a blade for? We add services once, maybe twice a year. We have all of 10 things in the rack...maybe. 1Us are still important for us.
- Color inkjet printers: How often do I print code in color? Reports in color? ANYTHING in color? Rare enough to not justify the laserjet price, that's how not often.
- Ethernet hubs: Intelligent blah, blah, blah VOIP blah, blah, blah. Anyone else tired of this? When my fly gets voice command, folks. That's when I'll care.
- PBXs: Just bought one a few years ago. Have no interest in spending money on something that isn't broken and won't be for years.
- PDAs: This is a case of Last Mile Land out here. I don't even HAVE a cell phone because I can't get a signal -- no towers near enough. A PDA would be nice, but Xmas presents just don't come that large usually.
- Serial/parallel ports: Nothing quite as reliable or easily configured as talking to a simple, straightforward port that doesn't give you any guff.
The rest of the predictions are expected and agreed upon. These are just ones I don't see migrating from anytime soon, and I'm sure lots of other people could make similar lists. Does that mean we're against progress? Hell no. It just means that we'd prefer if those vendors kept their "Convert Now!" pressure down until we damned well are ready to convert and not before. Some pressure is good...keeps us all looking at the new possibilities. But I don't need some jackass breathing down my neck about technologies (VOIP) that will make no sense in our corporation for ages to come yet. I also don't need vendors dropping support for "legacy" systems just because they came out with WhizBang Product 2.0.Blog,Twitter
Actually, a co-worker where I used to work did exactly that!
I believe he was upgrading some part of his PC and got the power connected backwards (loose socket on the drive perhaps). Or maybe something else caused it, but whatever it was the electronics on the drive were ruined, he didn't have a backup and the data on the drive was quite important.
So he went and purchased another drive, and actually ended up buying 2 or 3 drives that claimed to the same model. Lucky for him the drive wasn't that old, and despite there being a couple different versions of the drive with the same model number but different electronics, he got one that had the same board.
He desoldered the circuit boards from both drives and installed the electronics from the good one into the dead one. It actually worked. He managed to boot the computer up and copy all his files to one of the servers on the network. He then threw both drives away and installed one of the drives with the different circuit board, reinstall the OS and other stuff and copied his data back from the server.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Sony's Super AIT (SAIT) tapes are out; 500 GB uncompressed, 1.3 TB compressed. So far, it seems that there are being used in pretty big backup systems. Trying to find a vendor to sell only a single tape drive and some tapes can be relatively difficult (at least I couldn't find one).
Throughput is suppose to be about 30 MB/s (uncompressed).
The drives (and I suppose, the tapes) aren't cheap.