The Amazing Decline in Memory and Disk Prices

A couple of recent purchases I've made brought to light the amazing reduction of prices for both memory and disk space.  When I purchased my Lenovo S10 a few weeks ago I decided to upgrade its memory, so I purchased a 2GB memory card for the ridiculously low price of $30.  And the net price was actually half that amount, as the manufacturer had offered a $15 rebate as well!  It seems like it wasn't so long ago that 512MB SIMM cards were in the $300 range, so over a relatively few short years we've seen nearly a two orders of magnitude difference in prices...pretty amazing stuff.

What's even more amazing is the drop in disk storage pricing.  One of our servers at Wigix needed some additional hard disk space, so I went and purchased a Seagate Barracuda 750 GB drive  for $156.  A couple of things went through my head as I made this purchase.  First off, it seems like we almost take for granted the amount of disk storage that we use.  750 GB is an absolute ton of storage.  But when I look around my home and take inventory of my DVR's, external hard drives, etc. I probably have close to 2 TB of storage myself, and even with that amount of storage I constantly scramble to look around for more disk space to store off my media files or backups.  My god...when I was in the corporate IT world 10 or 12 years ago there weren't many Fortune 500 companies with a terabyte of data across their entire enterprise, let alone in somebody's house.  And the prices are so ridiculously low now too....750 GB for $156 comes out to about 1/5th of a penny per MB. Again, going back to my corporate IT days I can recall that in the early to mid-90's we were paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 per MB....and we thought we were getting a pretty good deal back then.  A good deal?  That's a thousand times more per MB than what I'm paying now!  No wonder our EMC sales rep had such a smile on his face every time he visited our office back then.

Next up for me...a RAID-enabled NAS drive for the home...stay tuned.

I've Become a Fan of the Netbook

I've just become a fan of a relatively new class of laptop computers called Netbooks.  Netbooks are much smaller and lighter than your typical notebook, with screen sizes in the 9-10 inch range plus a reduce-sized keyboard.  They typically run off of a lower-end, energy efficient processor such as the Intel Atom, and are designed primarily to run browser based applications.  I recently purchased a Lenovo S10 Netbook for just under $400, and I have to say that this little unit has impressed the heck out of me and at its price point is really hard to beat!  In the spirit of being very "lightweight" it runs Windows XP instead of the bloated Windows Vista, and comes with a 160GB hard drive as well as 1GB of memory.  With memory being so cheap these days I immediately upgraded to 2GB, which was a snap with the S10 since both the memory SIMM as well as the hard drive are easily accessible from the bottom of the unit.  And unlike many of the Netbook vendors, Lenovo does not void your warranty should you choose to upgrade either of these yourself.

Aside from having to deal with a smaller screen resolution (1024x600) than normal, the S10 ran browser applications just fine and with no significant reduction in speed when compared to my normal laptop, a Lenovo T500.  I would venture to say that for 90+% of users that a Netbook is totally sufficient to handle their computing needs.  In fact, it looks like many of the Netbook vendors have caught onto this as well, as now they are trying to introduce new Netbooks with larger form factors but using the same lower end processors.  My understanding is that Intel is pretty furious about this since it is basically cannibalizing sales from their higher-end (and more expensive) Pentium-based processors.  Whoops.

Other cool things about the S10 include a built-in webcam, a one-touch backup and recovery system that can save off and restore entire disk images, and a highly customizable touchpad.  In general I am not a big fan of touchpads, as I prefer the Trackpoint and still think it's the most efficient pointing device.  However, the S10's touchpad is a marked improvement over others I have tried in the past due to the level of customization it offers.  Lastly, the built quality and finish of the product are just top notch and belies the price I paid for it.

Downsides?  Sure, there are a few.  The reduced keyboard does take some getting used to, and the right shift key is very poorly placed.  And if you do a lot of multimedia stuff then you might be disappointed with the slowness of the graphics.  When watching videos and fast forwarding or jumping to a specific location it will often take the video several seconds to "catch up" to the audio.  And finally...if you've become accustomed to huge widescreen displays then you may get annoyed pretty quickly by the reduced resolution imposed by the S10's 10.2-inch screen.

Overall I really love this unit, and though it will not replace my existing laptop it will serve as a useful backup as well as a lightweight travel unit.

Netflix Player by Roku: The Future of Video Subscription Services

I've been a devout Netflix subscriber since 1999.  One thing I've always been impressed by is their commitment towards making improvements and also their thoughfulness about their future direction.  To that end, I've been following the growth and development of their "watch instantly" feature.  When it first came out it wasn't terribly interesting since the amount of available content was pretty minimal.  However, that has changed in recent months, and with the recent deal they struck with Starz the amount of available content is now very respectable.  The other recent development is their embedding of the "watch instantly" function in selected hardware.  The feature is now available on the XBox360, on Blu-Ray players made by LG and Samsung, and also on a standalone unit made by Roku.  For those of you unfamliar with Roku, they've been in the streaming audio business for some time now, and I happen to own a couple of their Soundbridge units.  So for them to manufacture a Netflix video streaming unit seemed like a natural fit.  And best of all, if you are a current Netflix subscriber you can watch any available content at no additional cost whatsoever outside of springing over $99 for the Roku box.

I just picked up the Roku Netflix Player last week, and boy have I already become addicted to it.  The setup is incredibly simple...Just power it on, connect your A/V cables (I used HDMI), connect to your wired or wireless network, register the device on the Netflix website, and you're done.  Took me literally 5 minutes to set the whole thing up...piece of cake for anyone.

When you go to the "home" screen you are presented with your "watch instantly" queue, and just like everything else with the player it is brain dead simple to navigate through the queue and select what you want to play.  Once you make your selection, it does take a few seconds for the player to start downloading/buffering the content before playing it on your screen, and the player also determines the "quality" level of the stream depending on how fast your internet connection happens to be at the time.  If you are like me and always demand the highest quality, then there is a back door way of forcing the unit to stream at a set quality level - you can find out how by visiting the Roku Netflix Player link on Wigix.  Sadly there is no way for you to search for new titles to add to your queue from the player itself; you must go back to the website to do this.  However, you can remove an item from your queue as well as rate it from the player.

Probably the main drawback to the player is its lack of a hard disk, so the player is only able to buffer a small amount of the video if your internet connection takes a hit.  I suspect that the reason for a lack of a hard disk is mainly due to the paranoia that the Hollywood studios have about content piracy.  However, in the 10 or so hours I've used the player so far I've only experienced one instance where playback stopped, and even then it only lasted a few seconds.  

I was also pleasantly surprised by the quality of the video stream produced...I think it was pretty comparable to a standard DVD player.  And the player is also capable of streaming HD content, and Roku has stated that HD content will be available by the end of this year...this is great news!  Unfortunately, though, both the current content as well as the HD content will not support any multi-channel audio formats.  Again, this appears not to be a limitation of the device but by the studios' refusal to release those formats with their content.

How does the Roku compare with other video streaming products?  Well, I'm not really an expert here, but there are two others that I had considerecd.  The first was Apple TV, which appears to be getting better and better with each release.  And the unit does come with a built-in hard drive and so it shouldn't be as prone to any hiccups due to connectivity issues.  However, with the Apple TV you need to purchase any of the content you want to watch.  Vudu is another competitor, and their big advantage is that they have quite a bit of HD content available.  However, similar to the Apple product you must purchase or rent all content, and I don't think Vudu is getting many subscribers and so I have a feeling they may end up going out of business.

Overall I'm as please as can be with the Roku, and I really think this is the future of where video subscription is headed.  And I'm sure Netflix would love nothing better than to not have to physically ship all those DVD titles to their subscribers, which is why they are pushing really hard on "watch instantly" and working with various hardware providers to support it.

UPDATE: Roku launched support for HD content during the holidays.  The amount of HD content is pretty minimal right now (mostly TV shows) but will grow rapidly over time.  Netflix is in the process of re-encoding all their Watch Instantly video streams, and as part of this effort you'll see more HD content availability.

Finally Joined the Blu-Ray Owners Club

Well, I finally broke down and bought a Blu-Ray player. I've been following the technology pretty closely for the past several months, especially after the demise of HD-DVD. I finally settled on the new Sony BDP-S550. In addition to having great picture and audio quality it supports all the latest features like Profile 2.0 and can either bitstream or internally decode all the new lossless audio formats such as TrueHD and DTS-MA. The setup was probably the easiest of any DVD player I've owned too. Watched Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk tonight...both were awesome! The interactive features on some of the titles are a bit of a disappointment to me, at least when compared to some of the HD-DVD titles I am familiar with. Not sure if this is an issue with with the BD spec or just the content, though.

The other thing that bugs me is how long it takes to load and navigate through a disc. Again this is not an issue specific to this player, and in fact the Sony fares much better in this regard than other BD players. But with HD formats and all the bits that have to be transferred between the disc and player, navigation is noticeably slower than with normal DVD's. And hearin lies the problem with Blu-Ray and physical media in general. In this day and age of DVR's like Tivo and internet-based on-demand services, the whole process of physically loading a disc into a player and waiting for it to spin up seems so archane, and I'm finding myself getting extremely impatient since I've come to expect instantaneous feedback. And the interactive features are extremely excruciating to navigate through at times. This is why I think that perhaps Blu-Ray may ultimately fail in the end and lose out to some type of internet -connected, media sever type of device, especially when higher speed (> 5 Mbps) internet service is more the norm.

T-Mobile G1 - No UMA!

After my last post regarding Android and the G1, it occurred to me that T-Mobile and/or HTC decided not to include support for UMA on the device.  That's a real bummer, as I am finding UMA to be a great feature on my Blackberry 8320.  Quick simply, UMA allows one to make mobile calls and related data access (e.g. text messaging) using Wi-Fi, and also allows one to seamslessly roam between GSM/GPRS networks and Wi-Fi, particularly handy in cases where cellular coverage may be spotty.  T-Mobile is the only US-based carrier that supports it, and they've made it available on several of their newer devices.  In my particular case, I use the UMA feature quite extensively whenever I travel overseas.  While in my hotel room or overseas office I simply disable access to the local mobile network and use Wi-Fi exclusively.  This means I can make mobile calls back home without incurring any roaming charges since T-Mobile doesn't appear to have the ability or desire to trace calls by IP address.  And this also means all of my text messages and Blackberry email do not incur any data roaming charges either.  I've also read on Blackberryforums that some users are claiming that T-Mobile doesn't even log some of the UMA calls, so those users aren't even being charged for the minutes against their account.  So...I'm wondering if the UMA ommission from the G1 was a major oversight on T-Mobile's part, or maybe a purposeful ommission given the folks like me that leverage it in order to save on their monthly charges.