IDE storage prices tumbling?

On 20/09/2004 Tony Bryer wrote:

In article , Chrisv wrote:
10 years ago, the biggest IDE drive you could get was a 1G, and
most PC's were still being sold with 540MB and smaller drives. this
I know is correct, because I bought a PC (Dell P90) almost exactly
10 years ago, and 1G was definitely "the king". 8)

We tend to buy mid-market and from my records I have

1992 130MB £264 (all+VAT)
1994 540MB £209
1996 1GB £119

My first ever disk drive was a 5.25" FD on a BBC: £400!

Bought from Viglen when they worked out of a shed in a back street
somewhere? Plus of course the Watford DFs, a handful of chips in a
brown paper bag and a photo copied instruction sheet.

I blew the whole of my first ever Xmas bonus on those bits!

--
Jeff Gaines - Damerham Hampshire UK
Posted with XanaNews 1.16.4.6
http://www.wilsonc.demon.co.uk/d7xananews.htm

"Tony Bryer" wrote in message
...
In article , Chrisv wrote:
10 years ago, the biggest IDE drive you could get was a 1G, and
most PC's were still being sold with 540MB and smaller drives. this
I know is correct, because I bought a PC (Dell P90) almost exactly
10 years ago, and 1G was definitely "the king". 8)

We tend to buy mid-market and from my records I have

1992 130MB £264 (all+VAT)
1994 540MB £209
1996 1GB £119

My first ever disk drive was a 5.25" FD on a BBC: £400!

--
Tony Bryer SDA UK 'Software to build on' http://www.sda.co.uk


I've still got invoices from 1996

Sept. 1996
850Mb Seagate's - £84 + vat
1G Quantum Fireball's - £103 + vat

Nov. 97
2.6Gb Fujitsu's - £104 + vat

"chrisv" wrote in message
"Folkert Rienstra" wrote:

Actually it seems like a lot of component technology is hitting the wall
these days. One exception I think is flash drives. They're up to 2 GB now
(maybe 4 GB).

That's pretty impressive considering that 6 years ago you
were lucky if your internal hard drive was that size.

Try 9-10 years back.

10 years ago, the biggest IDE drive you could get was a 1G, and most
PC's were still being sold with 540MB and smaller drives. I know this
is correct, because I bought a PC (Dell P90) almost exactly 10 years
ago, and 1G was definitely "the king". 8)

Well, that is wy I said "9-10 years" ago. ;-)

IBM introduced the DFHS model in 1993-94.
It was available in 1, 2 and 4GB eventually.

I went from the assumption that IDE drives are usually bigger than
SCSI drives but that assumption may be wrong re 10 years back.
Figure that.
IDE/ATA was in it's infant years back then and probably considered toys.

In article , Terry Wilson wrote:
If the size of affordable flash memory catches up with the minimum
size of an installed OS, you could put you OS on a flash drive and
data on an IDE dirves. Instant on! and fast!
Anbody doing this yet?

It's not uncommon in "appliance" linux boxes - firewalls, PVRs, and
things like that.

e.g. http://linitx.com/index.php?cPath=4 for some examples of
firewalls.

Cheers,
Daniel.

"chrisv" wrote in message
...
"Folkert Rienstra" wrote:

Actually it seems like a lot of component technology is hitting the
wall
these days. One exception I think is flash drives. They're up to 2 GB
now
(maybe 4 GB).

That's pretty impressive considering that 6 years ago you
were lucky if your internal hard drive was that size.

Try 9-10 years back.

10 years ago, the biggest IDE drive you could get was a 1G, and most
PC's were still being sold with 540MB and smaller drives. I know this
is correct, because I bought a PC (Dell P90) almost exactly 10 years
ago, and 1G was definitely "the king". 8)

I bought a Time Laptop almost 5 years ago, came with a 6.4 GB drive.

Marcus

"Davis Rorgh" wrote in message
...
"TMack" wrote:

are not really interested in discussions of the price of
hard disks and vendors in the US.

However, since he stated specifically that he is in the UK
that concern does not apply now, does it?

He stated that he was in the UK but he posted a general query
about hard disk prices and possible reasons for price
reductions. He also quoted a price in dollars which
immediately looks inappropriate for a uk group.

What do you do, look for crossposting and whine
before you read the content?

Er..no. I wonder WTF discussions about US prices, US vendors
and the technical details of hard disk technology are doing in
uk.comp.vendors,

I am the OP. I think the poster was right. You seem to nitpick on
crossposting. What do you want people to do ... to multipost?

You could have taken the extra 60 seconds and posted to each group
seperately using copy/paste. That way there is no risk of confusion about
who is replying from which group. The need to do this is illustrated by the
fact that J Clarke used the "followups to" in his post which meant that part
of this thread is now only appearing in only one of the four newsgroups.
Crossposting nearly always leads to problems if the message is likely to
provoke discussion. The whole point of having different newsgroups is to
put boundaries on discussions - and crossposting messes up the boundaries.


A newsreader
can supress crossposts in the differemt groups the user goes to but it can
not suppress the same emssage if it is multiposted.

I chose the groups carefully. I limited the crossposting to a GNKSA-
approved four.

Not that carefully - go and read the charter of uk.comp.vendors

uk.comp.vendors also discusses comparative prices. Have a look through
some
threads there to see what I mean.

No need to look at threads - look at the charter. i.e. "This newsgroup is
for the disussion of issues surrounding computer hardware/software vendors
in the UK." Which particular UK vendors were you discussing? You didn't
even request information about any particular vendors - you simply tried to
start a discussion about prices in general and the effects of SATA. Didn't
it occur to you that the crosspost would result in OT material being posted
to uk.comp.vendors? I suspect that it didn't because you didn't read the
charter before posting.

Tony

In article , TMack
wrote:
I am the OP. I think the poster was right. You seem to nitpick on
crossposting. What do you want people to do ... to multipost?

You could have taken the extra 60 seconds and posted to each group
seperately using copy/paste.

No, no, no, NO! That is the worst thing you could possibly do. that would
lead to four independent identically-worded questions in four separate
groups attracting four sets of very similar answers from four sets of
people -- each unaware that the same question is being answered in three
other groups at the same time. It leads to more noise and more wasted
bandwidth than crossposting.

That way there is no risk of confusion about who is replying from
which group.

... but that's the whole *point* of crossposting. If someone replies in one
groups the reply is seen in all the other groups so the people there know a
reply has already been given and won't waste their time and everyone's
bandwidth replying again.

The need to do this is illustrated by the fact that J Clarke used the
"followups to" in his post which meant that part of this thread is now
only appearing in only one of the four newsgroups.

A followup I see the OP wisely decided to ignore. Using followups (on any
message after the first, at least) just converts a crosspost into a
multipost and is bad for all the same reasons that multiposting is bad.

I agree with the OP: he only posted to four groups and they all look fairly
relevant to the question. Posting to fewer groups might have been better,
but multiposting would defintely not.

Cheers,
Daniel.

"Daniel James" wrote in message
...
In article ,
TMack
wrote:
I am the OP. I think the poster was right. You seem to nitpick on
crossposting. What do you want people to do ... to multipost?

You could have taken the extra 60 seconds and posted to each group
seperately using copy/paste.

No, no, no, NO! That is the worst thing you could possibly do. that would
lead to four independent identically-worded questions in four separate
groups attracting four sets of very similar answers from four sets of
people -- each unaware that the same question is being answered in three
other groups at the same time. It leads to more noise and more wasted
bandwidth than crossposting.

Bandwidth is hardly an issue these days in text-based groups - and anyway
the subscribers to uk.comp.vendors could legitimately criticise the waste of
bandwidth due to OT stuff appearing on that group.. And so what if there
are similar answers in different groups? The best bet is not to cross post
at all. If someone MUST do it for some particular reason then the fact that
the message has been crossposted should be made VERY clear in the original.
The problem, as I have already stated, is that different groups exist for a
good reason - they have different charters and deal with different subject
matters. Crossposting accross a range of vaguely similar groups with a
ill-defined general query is BOUND to lead to stuff appearing in some groups
that is completely OT. For example, discussion of hard disk technology is
absolutlely fine for comp.sys.ibm.hardware.storage but it is completely OT
for uk.comp.vendors.

That way there is no risk of confusion about who is replying from
which group.

.. but that's the whole *point* of crossposting. If someone replies in one
groups the reply is seen in all the other groups so the people there know
a
reply has already been given and won't waste their time and everyone's
bandwidth replying again.

That would be fine if the subject was fully on-topic for all the original
groups AND people checked before replying. As it is, the OP didn't read the
charter of uk.comp.vendors (or chose to ignore it) and its pretty obvious
that people replying either don't know or don't care about the cross post.
The reason why crossposting is generally a BAD idea is evident in the amount
of stuff in this thread that is completely OT for at least one of the groups
involved and in the fact that somebody decided to use "followups to" in the
middle of it, enusring that part of the thread disappeared from the other
groups. If the OP had used "followups to", say,
comp.sys.ibm.hardware.storage then he could have had the "benefits" of the
crosspost without the risks of replies being OT for some groups and without
the confusion that almost inevitably ensues when messages are crossposted
without either warning or use of followups.

The need to do this is illustrated by the fact that J Clarke used the
"followups to" in his post which meant that part of this thread is now
only appearing in only one of the four newsgroups.

A followup I see the OP wisely decided to ignore. Using followups (on any
message after the first, at least) just converts a crosspost into a
multipost and is bad for all the same reasons that multiposting is bad.

But it illustrates how things tend to rapidly get confusing when messages
are crossposted

I agree with the OP: he only posted to four groups and they all look
fairly
relevant to the question.

The title of a group is not enough to be confident that a post is
appropriate - the OP should have read the charters.


Tony

In article , TMack
wrote:
And so what if there are similar answers in different groups?

So ... anyone who follows all of those groups will see several different
discussions in dfferent places.

Whereas if the original question had been crossposted there would be only
one discussion -- with less repetition and more opportunity for fruitful
exchange -- and most decent newsreaders would only show it in one place.

I'm not arguing in favour of crossposting - I agree that it's done too often
and is usually inappropriate. What I *am* doing is to make two points:

1. Crossposting isn't automatically always evil. There are occasions when it
can be helpful and constructive to involve the communities of two or more
newsgroups in a discussion so that people with different interests and
expertise can all contribute, and the discussion will benefit from the
combination of their inputs.

2. Multiposting is always worse than crossposting.

There's also a third issue I was deliberately not making so much of, which
is that using followups is often also not a good idea. The usual advice is
that when crossposting one should set a followup-to just one of the groups
so that all the discussion takes place in just one group. It turns out that
that is usually not productive, because people who don't normally follow the
chosen followup group will probably not take the trouble to involve
themselves in the discussion - they might post once (though most don't
bother) but they won't see any further discussion or be able to enlarge upon
it. As most decent newsreaders will only show the discussion in one of the
subscribed groups it makes much more sense to allow the discussion to
continue to exist in all of them so that everyone gets the benefit of being
able to see all the replies.

This assumes that the thread is, and remains, on-topic in all of the groups,
of course. If the thread is not on topic in some of the groups that is an
argument against cross-posting to that group, not an agrument in favour of
followups (especially if the poster choses to set the followup to the
inappropriate group).

Setting followups after the thread has started is fatal. Each poster might
set followups to a different group and the discussion would become as
fragmented as in the multiposting case, with the additional problem that the
discussion might get taken to a group that the original poster did not chose
(and might not even be able to access).

I agree with the OP: he only posted to four groups and they all look
fairly relevant to the question.

The title of a group is not enough to be confident that a post is
appropriate - the OP should have read the charters.

Please don't quote me out of context. The rest of my paragraph said:

Posting to fewer groups might have been better,
but multiposting would defintely not.

The point I was making was against multiposting not in favour of
crossposting or of the OP's choice of u.c.vendors.

I'm not sure, though, now that you mention it, that anything the wording at
http://www.usenet.org.uk/uk.comp.vendors.html says anything to exclude the
OP's post - vendors, after all, are people who sell stuff ... and so set
prices. People discussing vendors on the 'net might legitimately be
discussing many aspects of the vendors' business, including the prices they
charge -- and that is what the question was about.

Cheers,
Daniel.

"Daniel James" wrote in message
...

SNIP!

I'm not sure, though, now that you mention it, that anything the wording
at
http://www.usenet.org.uk/uk.comp.vendors.html says anything to exclude the
OP's post - vendors, after all, are people who sell stuff ... and so set
prices. People discussing vendors on the 'net might legitimately be
discussing many aspects of the vendors' business, including the prices
they
charge -- and that is what the question was about.

Gosh - I think we've had an intelligent debate - and reached a fair measure
of agreement which is quite unusual on usenet. However, I must comment on
the last point above - the group is for discussion about named vendors or to
request information about vendors, not for discussion about the general
business of buying and selling. Basically, its where people go to recommend
particular vendors (occasionally), criticise particular vendors
(frequently!) or ask where is the best pace in the uk to buy stuff.

Tony