Thursday, September 20, 2007

I've got the upgrade blues, again.

"Well, I've got the upgrade blues, again."
Thanks to the wonderful Fedora 7 people, I've got to consider the cost and pay the boss. Do I really need a DVD burner? We live in a world where it is possible to save all our precious and expanding personal data, pictures and the like on optical media. We can even copy movies, which is why most people even bother with DVDs. But personal data, I can hardly fill one CD as it is. 700MB is a lot of space actually. Being from the floppy generation, I am still impressed with that. Now a DVD can hold about 4.7 Gigs (single layer) and about 8.5 Gigs (double layer) if you have that technology. I was looking at Tom's Hardware web site. You can get a DVD burner for $30-$100+, and you get what you pay for. I my self don't recommend the cheapest you can find, speed and quality does matter.
Anyway Fedora 7 folks, you have barely crossed the boarder by offering an .iso image of just 833MBs, why not just put it on 2 CDs? Hey, it's a liveCD dummy! It just wouldn't work spread across 2 CDs.
So, what can you do with a new DVD burner that you could not do with your CD burner? Besides copying movies and music. You could backup or Ghost your whole system onto a DVD. I guess the potential to do big things is there. And speaking of downloading movies, what is your download speed. I am always surprised by the number of computer owners/users who don't have cable or DSL. Using a modem is akin to using floppies in my book. What is so weird about this DVD thing is that you don't have to justify the cost because it can be reasonable. You just have to figure out what to do with the technology now that you have it. Is buying a DVD burner one of those life changing things? Hey, we do still live in interesting times.

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