Article:
Planned obsolescence, or built-in obsolescence if you are in the
UK, is the decision by a manufacturer to purposely design,
manufacture and distribute a consumer product to become obsolete
or non-functional specifically to force the customer to buy the
next generation of the product. This plan will be implemented
before the 'Next Generation' is even off the drawing board.
Planned obsolescence is of course, very beneficial for a
manufacturer because it means a customer can't just buy a
product once and have it last for many years thereby never
having to buy again - the life of the product's usefulness or
functionality is fixed, so that at regular intervals the
customer must pay money again and again, and yet again to either
the original manufacturer for newer junk, or buy from the
competition who probably also uses planned obsolescence.
I can't believe we are still using motors and movable parts that
wear out. The technological advances of the last few years have
led to media that can hold Giga bytes of data in volatile and
non volatile storage with no moving parts.
So, does BluRay fit into this scenario? That remains to be seen
because the new technology is so fresh.
The most intense competition in the next-gen optical video disc
format wars is between HD-DVDs and Blu-ray. Blu-ray is backed by
the Blu-ray Disc Association, of which Sony is a member. Not
only a format for HD video and audio, Blu-Ray is a
higher-capacity storage format. HD DVD at this point is being
out sold by Blu-ray. Blu-ray has sold 500,000 more discs.
Is this just a case of 'The Newest Toy' or 'Grass is Greener'?
You can expect Blu-Ray to parallel the rising popularity of HDTV
and it may replace legacy systems unless the onrush of other new
toys overtakes Blu-Ray. If you are an audiophile you may
remember when DAT (Digital Audio Tape) was anticipated as the be
all, end all of sound. Today DAT is used in some tape backup
situations and not much else.
If a 10-year life span for the Blu-ray format is projected, what
comes next? Very likely another phase of planned obsolescence.
SSD is the future, count on it, it does however have hurdles to
pass before it can replace spinning drives. A Solid State Drive
(SSD) is a non-magnetic alternative to a spinning drive. SSD is
based on flash memory. Unlike a traditional drives with spinning
magnetic media and flying read/write heads, a SSD is designed
with flash memory and needs no moving parts.
The major difference between these storage media is that SSD is
not optical (like a CD/DVD) or magnetic (like a floppy, zip or
hard disk) but is a solid state semiconductor much like EPROM or
battery backed RAM.
This is not new technology. It's been around for 20 years in
other applications. NAND flash memory is the core technology of
the removable USB storage units called USB flash drives, as well
as many memory cards available today. 65-nanometer and low
voltage chip technology have allowed manufacturers to make
smaller versions of the traditional flash chips. In
functionality, NAND can simply be considered a silicon version
of a spinning disk drive. This is known as a Solid State Drive,
SSD or Solid State Disk, a volatile or non-volatile solid-state
memory device used as electronic storage for data.
While not technically a disk, the label Solid State Disk is used
in that the device can be used as a replacement for the disk
drive in many modern applications. SSDs are a viable substitute
for the common spinning disk drive, which has moving parts
causing slower memory access. SSD doesn't have the mechanical
limitations that limit search times on magnetic or optical
drives, so the concept of an SSD drive is appealing when
considering noise, speed, power consumption, and reliability.
Considered a drawback in PC disk replacement NAND flash memory
allows only sequential access while NOR flash memory allows
random access. In storage and playback of video entertainment
this may eventually be a non issue.
The SSD can read 300 percent faster (53 Mb/s) and write 150
percent quicker (28 Mb/s), more than twice the speed of
comparable spinning drives. SSD is an innovative NAND
flash-based equivalent for traditional disk drives. It is
capable of reading data at a rate of 56 Mb/s and writing speeds
of 32 Mb/s, two times as fast as standard drives.
Plus and Minus for SSD:
* Limited write cycles. Typical Flash storage will typically
wear out after 100,000-300,000 write cycles, while high
endurance Flash storage is often marketed with endurance of 1-5
million write cycles (many log files, file allocation tables,
and other commonly used parts of the file system exceed this
over the lifetime of a computer). Special file systems or
firmware designs can mitigate this problem by spreading writes
over the entire device, rather than rewriting files in place.
**If the software or firmware intelligently staggers writes over
the entire device, for large SSDs, even with continuous writes,
the endurance limit may not be reached for decades. Envision
your favorite movie or movies on SSD. Write cycles per cell = 1.
If you erase and write over the old recording that's 2 more. Or
the Entertainment may be on a Flash Stick and plugged into a
player with a SSD for output to your entertainment system. *
Price - As of early 2007, flash memory prices are still
considerably higher per gigabyte than those of comparable
conventional drives - around $10 per GB compared to about $0.30
for mechanical drives. **As with any new technology, once
manufacturers sense a demand and manufacturing cycles are
optimized prices will come down. One of my early 'upgrades' was
a 100 Meg hard drive at a cost of an extra $200 dollars over the
original 20 Meg drive. The OLPC XO-1 uses a SSD rather than a
mechanical drive. This is the XO-1 PC Configured as the $100 PC
or One Laptop Per Child - PC. It uses SSD and Linux so Microsoft
and legacy drive makers will try to squelch this innovation.
* Capacity - The capacity of SSDs tends to be significantly
smaller than the capacity of HDDs. **This will also be mitigated
by technological advances, see above note on hard drive upgrade.
* Lower recoverability - After mechanical failure the data is
completely lost as the cell is destroyed, while if normal HDD
suffers mechanical failure the data is often recoverable using
expert help. **Is this mostly a 'Straw Man'. How often is it
worth the recovery price charged by the expert. For 'Enterprise
Systems' where the core business is endangered by loss of data,
Raid Technology is a better and more cost effective solution. *
Vulnerability against certain types of effects, including abrupt
power loss (especially DRAM based SSDs), magnetic fields and
electric/static charges compared to normal HDDs (which store the
data inside a Faraday cage).
**More Straw Man debate. I've lost many disk drive formats due
to power fluctuations, brown outs etc. The Faraday Cage can be
and should be used where needed. It is not excluded in the case
of SSD. Our daily environment is saturated with RF and other
signals. Some are even calling this a form of pollution. The
system may be vulnerable to EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse), but as
this would most likely come from an atomic detonation, your
movie would be interrupted anyway. Let's apply some commonsense.
There are far fewer differences in manufacturing costs of HD DVD
and Blu-Ray players than the retail prices suggest. The
differences between BlueRay and DVD will be promoted and many
BlueRay systems will be sold. For the average home viewer the
difference may be barely noticeable. In the HDTV format the
differences won't be evident unless your display is 55" or more.
I know that if you spend much time watching commercial TV, the
effort to convince you that we all need 120" screens with
Surround Sound and Bass Boost is hard to resist, but will that
marketing effort convince enough consumers to part with that
much cash?
So eventually the battle will play out. Technologies used by
legacy manufacturers will be pushed. They have the resources and
marketing power to keep alive their profitable version of 'what
we need'. Other modes of presenting the same information are
always hard to get off the ground. Performance is often the
deciding factor after the cost is ameliorated and of course
marketing will make or break any product, process or technology
regardless of merit.
A quick summary:
SSD (Solid-State Drive ) is an advanced NAND flash component
replacement for traditional drive technology.
Flash-SSD is can be a direct replacement for a mechanical drive.
It is also secure and reliable as a method for storing
electronic data.
The SSD can read 300 percent faster (53MB/s) and write 150
percent quicker (28MB/s) more than twice the speed of standard
spinning disk drives.
The SSD is extremely rugged, able to stand up to degradation
from vibration and shock and at the same time perform at
temperatures in the extreme from -20 to 80 degrees Celsius, (-4
degree Fahrenheit to 176 degree Fahrenheit).
SSD is already used in UMPC (ultra-mobile personal computers)
and will be included in the OLPC.
I've been intrigued with Planned Obsolescence since it was
adopted as a strategy by Detroit Auto Manufacturers. They're
antiques now, but Detroit used to turn out great steel
automobiles that would last indefinitely with attention to
tune-ups, lube jobs, brake jobs and oil changes. BTW these Cars
could be had for much less than a years salary.
About the author:
Webmaster of Informational Sites and Blogs since 2000
C R
Ellsworth is retired from Corporate America and living in the
'Great Northwoods'
Theatre Systems
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