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PC Makers Run Short of Popular Drives
Lucas123 writes "The impact from the monsoonal flooding in Thailand over the past three months is now being felt by users as computer system manufacturers are unable to meet supply needs. Lenovo told its corporate customers this week that is has run out of a number of drives including several types of 7200rpm and 5400rpm HDDs. 'Akin to the hysteria when banks defaulted in the 1930[s], PC orders across the industry are being placed for which HD supply does not exist,' a Lenovo rep wrote to his clients. IDC this week said the HDD shortages that have resulted from the flooding of four major Thailand industrial parks will likely be felt into 2013. Western Digital and Toshiba have been hit the hardest. PC shipments are also expected to fall short by 3.8 million units in the first quarter of 2012 due to component supply shortages. Meanwhile, there has been some indication of retail HDD price stabilization, but for some of the most popular hard drives prices continue to soar."
We're short on hard drives, and the factory workers are short on homes because of flooding.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
That's what they get for putting all (or most of) their eggs in one foreign basket.
I mean, sheesh. It's not like "single point of failure" is an unknown concept or anything.
That's silly. Even with the current rise in hard drive prices, SSDs are still terribly expensive by comparison. Otherwise, SSDs would have already been seen as competitive against hard drives even before this supply problem.
Only 2x or 3x for a lot better performance? Not everyone would have jumped on it but there still would have been plenty of performance minded consumers lining up to buy them.
Even with limited supply, it still makes much more sense to escalate to larger drive sizes before going to SSD.
Terribly expensive if you look at price per GB, but not terribly expensive if you're just interested in getting a nice, high performance, low power, quiet drive, and don't need a ton of disk space, then SSD's are quite reasonable.
Newegg sells a 120GB SSD for about the same price as a 1TB hard disk drive. Most people (well, maybe not the Slashdot crowd) don't need a TB of disk space and the SSD will work quite nicely for them.
When I upgraded from a 1TB drive to a 64GB SSD in my desktop, I kept the 1TB drive for my large storage needs. It turns out that except for a single DVD that I ripped a few months ago, I haven't stored anything on the 1TB drive, and still have lots of room on the 64GB drive. My 8GB of photos and 12GB of music still leave me lots of room to grow. I imaging that by the time I do outgrow the 64GB drive, I'll be able to buy a 256GB or even 512GB SSD for the same or less price than I paid for the 64GB drive.
I think the problem that computer manufacturers face is that when a consumer sees a computer with a 500GB hard drive next to one with a 120GB SSD, they are going to go for the 500GB hard drive since bigger numbers are better.
They are neither over priced or overrated. Just misunderstood.
Gen 1 was shit, much like the first automobiles. Just a curiosity for the early adopters and extremophiles. The latest ones are not really over priced. That's just what it costs, which reflects what the market will bear. Sure, there might be price fixing, but for what it *is*, it seems reasonable depending on the model and features.
It is most certainly not overrated. The performance increase is quite substantial over spinning media. Form factor and density are pretty darn good too. Let's not forget that with no moving parts you don't have to worry about letting it fall. Of course, spinning media has some features to mitigate that, but SSD mitigates it by fundamental design.
My own laptop has a small 64GB SSD and two 1TB "normal" drives. The responsiveness of the OS *skyrocketed*. You don't need huge SSDs. The smallest SSD on market would probably suffice.
This is where they are misunderstood. With proper configuration you can move all user data to the larger cheaper drives and use the SSD for core files and temporary storage/cache. Even with Windows 7 bloated to all hell I still have a lot of programs installed (faster to have their files on the SSD too) with almost 1/3rd of the drive free. It's nice to not have to defrag either. With TRIM support the reliability and lifetime of the drive goes up quite a bit too.
Where they are not overrated at all is server applications. You can build a very very fast DB server with some SSD's. So there are valid enterprise use cases for SSDs when you compare their costs against vastly more expensive solutions delivering higher I/O and throughput such as the ioDrive2. There are quite a few drawbacks to a PCI-E implementation of SSD that can balance against the resultant bottleneck of the SATA bus. However, with 6 GB/s SATA that is less of a concern and there are some pretty decent SATA RAID controllers that can better handle the load. For a number of database applications you don't need a large amount of space, but higher performance. Build a RAID with cheaper and more affordable 64GB SSDs with a decent controller ($1500-200$) and you have a storage solution at about 25% of the cost of the enterprise PCI-E SSD solutions.
Like I said, very misunderstood.
The vast majority of people would see a tangible and cost justified benefit simply be using it for the core OS files. I know I am.
Actually i'd like her to have an OS that works, thanks ever so. I have WinXP boxes in the field going on a decade, that's three service packs and not a SINGLE driver failure, not one. Until Torvalds stops Goatse-ing the kernel and allows Linux to have a hardware ABI its simply unsuitable for purpose unless you are a CS grad, a nerd who thinks reading man pages and doing forum dances is a "fun" way to spend a weekend, or a programmer. Since my GF is none of those things I'd like her to have a functional OS and Linux doesn't cut the mustard friend.
Hell when i point out Linux is too dependent on CLI fixes and has too many drivers breaking on update instead of getting "well maybe we should do something about that" from the community I get 30 responses telling me how "powerful and leet" CLI is, with one going as far as to ask me "Well how do you expect to write a GUI for "for" loops" like IRL Suzy the checkout girl and other normal people are sitting around writing if/then/else statements? I'm sorry but the entire Linux community is off their nut. I'd be happy to post the link from LinuxInsider BTW, its almost comical how completely out of touch with reality the Linux community is with the wants and needs of consumers. They truly believe that grandmas write for loops and ordinary folks like my GF just can't wait to learn all about their 1970s terminal throwback.
As I finally threw up my hands and said "Its like mass insanity, how else can you explain otherwise rational people behaving so irrationally" and the fact you think an easy to use OS that can be updated for years without breaking and is supported until 2020 is ""S+M" shows that you too are peobably a little off your rocker friend.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Sorry but that's bullshit friend. pulseaudio is a fucking nightmare from hell, the 6 month upgrades break more shit than they fix, and thanks to Torvalds and his itch scratching the kernel is constantly changing like the shifting sands.
I often have close to a dozen off lease machines coming through the door so I HAVE tried Linux friend, and its a fucking mess. hell the Linux of 2004 was more stable than this, the DEs have been gutted and replaced with frankly alpha quality code, the wireless is beyond broken, half the time I can't get jack shit to stick in network manager unless I go CLI (which when i complain again I get 40 treaties on how fucking wonderful CLI is, bite me CLI nutters!) so there is no other way to put it, its really programmer's toys at the moment, certainly not anything i'd trust to a non tech. and since her dad had a heart attack she is having to live 150 miles away and we see each other on the weekends, how the fuck am i supposed to fix her box if Linux takes a shit on Tuesday? with windows she simply calls me and gives me the code for remote assistance and BAM! I've got full control, just like i'm sitting at the box. since i haven't seen Windows Ethernet go down in ages (again unlike Linux where the last ubuntu update took a big shit on network manager for me) as long as she has a connection i'm right there if something goes wrong.
I'm sorry but until the nutters let go of the damned CLI and treating everything from the kernel up as tweaker central its simply unsuitable for purpose. in the retail biz rep is EVERYTHING, I get a bad rep i might as well close the doors and Linux shits itself worse than Windows 98 from what I've seen. here try my "is it safe?" test and see for yourself, this test simulates what my customer would go through if they only owned the box THREE years. Oh and before you say LTS allow me to say FUCK LTS, its a code word for "runs old shit" and most of the software is NEVER backported so you're looking at third party security risks, no thanks. ALL of my machines MUST have the latest patches, no unpatched software allowed.
Now download the version from 3 years ago, get all the drivers working (CLI is allowed here, after all you're the builder ATM not the buyer) and once it is done allow it to update to current, remember NO CLI from this point on because you are Suzy the checkout girl, not some geek! Now see what happened? see how much shit be broke? THAT is the problem. I'm typing this on an XP Home box that has had the same install since 2003, no bugs, no crashes, no broken drivers, and that is after TWO, count 'em two service packs and about 2000 patches.
So I'm sorry friend but from my perspective, and I know this'll piss you off but I call it as i see it, Linux IS Windows 98, no more, no less. What was Win98? It was a CLI OS with a DE shell that wasn't very stable and kinda sorta worked for the basics but if anything went wrong you'd need to go CLI, in fact you could just go straight to CLI and bypass the shell completely. what is Linux? Why It is a CLI OS with a DE shell that isn't very stable and kinda sorta worked for the basics but if anything goes wrong you'd need to go CLI, in fact you could just go straight to CLI and bypass the shell completely. BTW did you know Windows doesn't even HAVE easy access to CLI or even start>run anymore? In windows 7 it is buried waaaaaay in the back under accessories where nobody will EVER find them unless they go specifically hunting for it because IT IS NOT NEEDED. can YOU say the same? of course not because the answer to EVERY question in Linux ALWAYS comes down to "open up bash and type" period. Ask for anything else and you'll get shit thrown at you.
Enjoy your programmer's paradise friend, but since programmers are 0.04% of the population don't be surprised when you never gain any share. Hell I could go on all day pointing out the failures in Linux but why bother? you'll just call me filthy names because I won't drink the koolaid and pretend that inside every grandma there is a C programmer wa
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.