The virtual storage world is just like the real one: Stuff expands to fill available space. Consequently, we have a new term to learn: terabyte - which is 1,000 gigabytes and is about to become the new yardstick for measuring disk space.
Even now as we speak, the first 1 TB drives are reaching the market. I currently am testing one from WiebeTech in Kansas, its $652 ToughTech XE. This is a high-end external drive intended for professional and power user markets. The device has FireWire 800 connections (an advanced connectivity method favored by graphics and video production pros), plus USB and the external form of SATA.
What the drive's premium price buys you is heavy-duty casing with shock absorption to withstand the rigors of heavy use. The ToughTech also has no cooling fans. Which makes it almost eerily quiet in operation. It's probably overkill for home use, but is a good choice for such critical missions as business data backup or multimedia production.
Of course, there are less costly alternatives that also have attractive capabilities. Other World Computing in Illinois makes and distributes a wide range of drives, my favorite of which is the NewerTechnology MiniStack V2. It's a small, flat square box that is designed to fit under an Apple Mac Mini, but don't pigeonhole it as just that.
Its small footprint will work well on any desktop, and its USB and FireWire connections will work with any computer. Plus in addition to the drive, the MiniStack also functions as a USB and FireWire hub for plugging in additional peripherals. MiniStack doesn't yet come in a 1 TB version, so I got that capacity through the simple expedient of using two 500 GB ($230 each) models. It's also not a bad "don't keep all your eggs in one basket" strategy.
So what do you do with 1 TB of storage? For one thing, my computer has a 500 GB hard drive, which means I need at least that much storage for backup. But the real space eaters are the video, audio, and photos that take up the lion's share of your hard drive. You don't have to be a creative professional to run into space shortages.
For example, if you have a Windows Media PC or an eyeTV equipped Mac and use it as a digital video recorder, you will be chewing up about 2 GB per hour of recording. So if you taped all 22 episodes of "Heroes" this season, that would have eaten up 44 GB, or about 9 percent of a 500 GB hard drive. Or if you are a music fan, 500 CDs recorded with "lossless" (full fidelity) compression would eat up 125 GB. Add it all up, and it's a lot of space being consumed.
Given the increased demands for data storage space, external drives make more sense to me than opening up your PC and putting bigger drives inside. Pricing will be a little more for externals - you have to pay for the casing as well as the drive - but setup is easier and by adding more drives as you need them capacity is essentially unlimited.
Print that!
Speaking of new standards, HP just set one for all-in-one printers with its new Pro L7600 series. It's faster than its predecessors, with improved print quality - a happy "twofer."
I was skeptical about HP's claims. Printer speeds and cost projections are akin to auto fuel economy ratings in their unreliability in predicting real world performance. However, this time the real world results were there.
The L7600 is what I call a "true" AiO - printer, scanner, copier, standalone fax, and a memory card reader with standalone photoprinter capabilities. The L7680 I tested, with all the bell-and-whistles, including wired and WiFi networking and two-sided copying/printing, currently has a street price just over $300. As written before in this space, a unit with these capabilities is a much more practical option for home and small office use than finding a place for multiple separate devices.
The new HP makes the choice even more practical. Compared to the previous generation Officejet 7410 I had been using, the L7680 was discernibly faster at both document and photo printing. Print quality was first rate, as advertised. HP credits new advanced printhead designs for the speed and quality enhancements.
Printer makers typically get their profit margins from cartridges and supplies rather than the printers themselves. On that score, there is a plus: HP finally has joined the rest of the universe and replaced its single color cartridge with separate ones for each color. Thus, when one color runs out, you don't have to toss the remaining ink. But there's also a minus: HP urges you to buy its relatively pricey "advanced" paper, with a matte finish that is supposed to prevent smearing and enhance print quality. It's OK, but I found less expensive conventional inkjet paper also worked just fine.
All in all, this is an attractive all-in-one.
Al Gordon is a Massachusetts-based communications and political consultant who also writes about technology. You can read more of his articles at www.algordon.com/techblog.html and e-mail him at eagle@algordon.com.