Amazing Thailand: 25 percent of worldwide HDD production,

[TotallyOz]

Fascinating article on just how much the world's technology industry is dependent on Thailand.

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20124201-64/hard-drives-could-get-scarce-apple-analysts/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

[Guest anonone]

Yes, one of the many consequences of globalisation. The world is full of interdependent companies and complex supply chains. There will be other impacts as well, though I do not know enough about the specifics of Thailand manufacturing to know which will occur first or be most noticeable.

 

This economic environment has also led to most companies reducing capital invested in inventory and really pushing the just-in-time delivery models. When everything is operating in normal mode, this can work. But with any disruption (floods, typhoon, earthquake), delays and shortages are more probable.

 

Hopefully the flooding waters will dissipate rapidly and with no further loss of life.

 

Thanks for sharing the article.

[Guest thaiworthy]

As usual, I think this is driven by panic. There are always shortages, like the cooking oil shortage of late, which was short-lived.

 

I think the demand for hard drives is lessening. I don't even have a hard drive in my Mac Pro. It has 256 Gig of Solid State Flash memory, just like all the ipds, iPhones and other similar devices. I think very soon that hard drives will become dirt cheap and eventually go the way of the dodo.

[bkkguy]

I think the demand for hard drives is lessening. I don't even have a hard drive in my Mac Pro. It has 256 Gig of Solid State Flash memory, just like all the ipds, iPhones and other similar devices. I think very soon that hard drives will become dirt cheap and eventually go the way of the dodo.

 

and the cost per MB for an SSD is currently what? and for had disk technology? and how much has the relative difference between these changed in the past few years? and how much will it change in the next few years? and how many DNLA media servers that your devices connect to have added hard disks to their offerings in the last few years compared to how many have added SSD options?

 

hard drives are already "dirt cheap" and while I don't think anyone expects people to want to add a multi-platter 2" or 3.5" hard disk to their iPhone or iPad I don't see anyone in the industry predicting the demise of the hard disk any time soon - indeed even if enough consumers or businesses get seduced into "cloud storage" I don't see cloud storage providers using SSD any time soon!

 

bkkguy

[Guest thaiworthy]

I mentioned nothing about "cloud storage." I was speaking as a consumer. I also said eventually, which could be a very long time. Hard drives are dirt cheap, (compared to yesterday) but will get even cheaper. This is only an opinion if you will, just a humble observation.

[TotallyOz]

I disagree with you both. I see the demise of hard disks on the horizon. Apple is THE innovator. They are moving to the Cloud. They are moving in that direction with their ITunes, Apps, etc.

 

Hell, the Air does not even had a disk drive. Lets revisit this thread in a few years and see how far they are able to push this idea. IMHO, hard drive space is going to be less meaningful for the computer user and cloud storage is going to be more important. For me, I have Cloud space that I use 100G account and have more all my important documents there. It really does free up my hard disk and makes my items available anywhere I travel.

[Bob]

For me, I have Cloud space that I use 100G account and have more all my important documents there. It really does free up my hard disk and makes my items available anywhere I travel.

 

There have been too many hacker attacks that have stolen financial information, etc., for me to put my personal documents on some server located in Timbuktu (or god knows where). For the stuff (documents and the like) that I want to take with me, I simply take a flash drive or two.

 

I suppose, in a way, that anything within my gmail account is essentially my own private cloud space...but even there I don't keep very personal documents (like copies of a Will and Trust, financial account data, and the like). Just a personal preference and I'm sure I'm more wary than most.

[Guest thaiworthy]

I see the demise of hard disks on the horizon.

Exactly. Either sooner or later, but this is just fun speculation, anyway. However, I just can't afford another iphone4, having bought three generations of them already. So iCloud on my smartphone will just have to wait, for me at least. As a fellow mac evangelist I have to tone down my enthusiasm, my pocketbook and macbook aren't on speaking terms anymore.

 

There have been too many hacker attacks that have stolen financial information, etc., for me to put my personal documents on some server located in Timbuktu (or god knows where).

Agreed. For sensitive information, it may not be the right place. But for many other things, it can be invaluable. It's practical use for you may outweigh any need altogether. For us techies, it is a milestone, in my personal opinion.

 

But if you really want to talk iPhone4s technology, Siri really has me gasping!

[Guest]

The long term trend in electronics is fewer moving parts.

Relays ==>Transistors

Diskettes ==>Flash drives

Ball ==>Optical mouse

 

In consumer products, HDDs will lose market share to other forms of storage. However, I don't see them being eliminated any time soon. Solid state drives are too expensive and in many parts of the world internet connections are too slow for people to rely on cloud computing.

[bkkguy]

Apple is THE innovator. They are moving to the Cloud.

 

yes - how silly of me, it is just so obvious when you drink enough of the kool-aid!

 

Firewire immediately became an industry standard after Apple backed it and Thunderbolt is poised to be just as successful...

 

and Apple's decision to release recent IOS update disks in no way invalidates their stance that optical drives are dead...

 

and obviously iCloud is going to be the ant's pants and any attempt to point out what a disaster MobileMe was (and continues to be if you can't afford to throw away perfectly usable hardware) is just pettyness...

 

and many small and large organisations have offered "cloud" solutions long before Apple but it still remains to be seen if they can manage to "redefine" this market...

 

and given the comments in Job's biography about having "cracked" the smart TV UI problem it will be interesting to see what Apple comes up with in the next few months because the current Apple TV product is just a joke...

 

but do send me some Kool-aid - I promise to drinks it so I can believe that "Apple is THE innovator"

 

and perhaps after drinking it I can understand why Apple feels so threatened by Samsung that they think the only way to compete is in the courts rather than in the market!

 

But if you really want to talk iPhone4s technology, Siri really has me gasping!

 

a few easter egg clever responses and everyone is impressed - have a look at Iris, some Android programmers put it together in a few hours

 

if you are in the USA some of the responses are actually useful, but this is a Thai forum so how useful is Siri here?

 

bkkguy

[Guest]

Back to the original topic, well it's not just the electronics industry affected by floods.

Vehicle manufacturing plants around the globe are already taking emergency action to safeguard production by securing alternative production sources for their components.

[TotallyOz]

Firewire immediately became an industry standard after Apple backed it and Thunderbolt is poised

 

For anyone who does video editing Firewire has been a required necessity. Now, Thunderbolt will be. It is not for users like me who don't need that fast speed for most things, but for high end users, it is required. Apple builds things for these users and has done a great job at capturing the video editors market.

 

As for cloud space, we will wait and see. I love it. I have no issues storing information on clouds and think companies are moving in this direction.

 

I just hired a new hosting company for a group I am consulting with in USA. They needed a high speed server for their business. Guess what they got? A cloud server. It cost more. Will deliver higher speeds to the world for the video needs.

 

I don't drink Kool Aid and Jim Jones is not someone I would follow. But, I do love Apple products and that is after purchasing almost every model they have made. Their computers are better, faster, stronger and I love my 3 year warranty.

[bkkguy]

I just hired a new hosting company for a group I am consulting with in USA. They needed a high speed server for their business. Guess what they got? A cloud server. It cost more. Will deliver higher speeds to the world for the video needs.

 

apart from the fact that it cost more what was the most significant difference between the "cloud server" and a more traditional hosting service? how exactly will it "deliver higher speeds to the world" - and if you can't explain that then your clients are being gypped

 

I don't drink Kool Aid

 

funny, I was almost knocked out by the smell of Apple-flavoured Kool-Aid when I opened your post :-)

 

 

bkkguy

[Guest thaiworthy]

funny, I was almost knocked out by the smell of Apple-flavoured Kool-Aid when I opened your post :-)

Your assistance in this discussion has been noteworthy. In fact, it would surprise me if Michael were not more knocked out by the UN-cool aid you have rendered thus far, apple-flavored or otherwise.

 

But then, he is a pretty tolerant fellow, after all.

[bkkguy]

Your assistance in this discussion has been noteworthy.

 

thanks for the compliment - I didn't think you cared

 

and if you are a "Sound of Music" fan Captain von Trapp has the ultimate comeback for you.

 

tolerance has never been one of my strong points - and I am sure Michael and most regulars here know that very well - but it always amazes me that so many people in forums are happy to waffle on about things they seem to know nothing about then get offended and defensive when they get called on it!

 

I don't post here because I want people to like me or my attitude - and the attitude tends to get worse as the waffling gets worse - I post here to give useful alternative opinions when people are posting crap, and I will leave it to others to decide for themselves how useful this is even after deducting brownie points for attitude!

 

bkkguy

[colmx]

I disagree with you both. I see the demise of hard disks on the horizon. Apple is THE innovator. They are moving to the Cloud. They are moving in that direction with their ITunes, Apps, etc.

 

Surely "the cloud" is nothing more than a bunch of hard disks and processors in a giant warehouse in Utah the British Midlands or the Ukraine?

 

All the innovators have done is taken the HD out of peoples machines and put them someplace else...

 

Same with cloud servers - a cloud server will never beat a physical server, after all what is a cloud server? Its a resouce pool carved out of a physical server in the first place!

[bkkguy]

Same with cloud servers - a cloud server will never beat a physical server, after all what is a cloud server? Its a resouce pool carved out of a physical server in the first place!

 

what do you mean by "beat"?

 

obviously a pool of resources will never be faster than the physical hardware it is carved out of, but that is not the issue if you are talking about real cloud servers

 

when you compare the hardware cost for building a cloud service to the hardware cost for building all the individual physical servers it replaces the cloud will win hands down on "bang for buck" any day, even at the retail price the cloud pool of resources is sold at if you are outsourcing!

 

when you compare adding extra processing power, memory or disk space on demand as your requirements change to the pool you have been allocated on a cloud service or adding the same to a physical server again the cloud will win hands down for convenience and flexibility any day!

 

of course these days the issue has become quite (dare I say) "clouded" because terms like "cloud computing" have lost most of their real or useful meaning (if they ever had any) because too many people, not all of them Apple fanbois, use "the cloud" for what is really just "storing it on the Internet" - a concept that existed for 20 years or more before the Apple marketing team created iCloud!

 

bkkguy

[ChristianPFC]

I think the demand for hard drives is lessening. I don't even have a hard drive in my Mac Pro. It has 256 Gig of Solid State Flash memory, just like all the ipds, iPhones and other similar devices. I think very soon that hard drives will become dirt cheap and eventually go the way of the dodo.

 

I can support this statement with a practical example. In the late 1990, my father bought the first digital camera in our family (we still have it, but I don't remember which make) and it came with a 1GB Microdrive (a hard disk with 1GB in the shape of a memory card, about 30x30x5mm) which at that time alone came at a price of several hundred Euro. But there were no memory cards available with 1GB, so the only solution to store a usefull amount of 5 megapix photos in the camera was a harddrive.

 

Now, in my laptop, apart from the fan the noisiest part is the harddrive (which has about 120GB).

[bkkguy]

I can support this statement with a practical example.

 

you want a real practical example? five years ago every Commart/ComTech trade show in Bangkok (and one or two years earlier at the equivalent trade shows in most other countries) most stalls were fighting to offer the lowest price on 16/32/64 MB flash thumb drives. for the last two years most stalls were fighting to offer the lowest price on 320/500 GB traditional external hard disk drives - not SSDs!

 

I have been to every Commart/Comtech for the last six years and a few trade show in Singapore/HK and Australia - where have you been?

 

ultra-portables and netbooks with SSDs rather than systems with traditional hard disks account for what, 2-5% of total computer system sales?

 

according toEE Times

 

the SSD crowd has given up the notion that SSDs will replace hard drives. Some wonder if SSDs will even find any mass appeal at all.

 

if you don't like EE Times try a Google search on SSD vs traditional hard disks

 

just because 21 years ago your father had an esoteric example of a micro-hard disk design that was considered obsolete years ago, and your current (age unknown, price unknown) notebook has a noisy hard disk, I still fail to see how this supports the statement "the demand for hard drives is lessening"?

 

I don't see the point of responding to any other crap on this thread, it is just a waste of time!

[Guest]

Please keep the debate civilised.

[Bob]

Yep, there's no reasonable basis at least in this thread to get pissy about anything; after all, the discussion really has been about rather mundane things wrapped up in confusing, almost cultish, terminology.

 

Some of us and the media just get orgasmic delight with using and confusing new terminology such as "cloud" computing, databases, or whatever. It ain't all that complicated and using new-age terminology to somewhat suggest what one's talking about doesn't help either the discussion or the understanding.

 

A storage device - whether a spinning electromagnetic thing-a-ma-jig (a/k/a, a harddrive) or a solid-state device (electronic storage device as simple as a flashdrive) - is just that, a closet or location to store data or programs. Who the hell cares what it really is as long as it works well (let's us do what we want to do), is economical (as in cheap!), and doesn't cause us problems (like some asshole gaining access to your social security number or that photograph of you peeing in the snowbank when you were drunk and screwing up your financial or personal life).

 

Cloud computing - remote storage of data (hotmail, photo websites, etc.) or use of remotely stored and accessible programming (every time you use your mobile phone?) - isn't new or even exciting in my view. As long as it's secure (hackers or others can't get into those remote storage devices to obtain access to you or your personal information), it's kind of irrelevant to me how it's done. But, for very personal information (I'm not talking about such things as music collections but, rather, personal family photos, tax returns, financial data, and the like), I see zero reason why to ever allow that information to be stored anywhere but on your own person (either on your own harddrive or electronic storage device) as that's the only way to guarantee it will remain secure. It's simply too cheap and easy to be secure in that manner and, to me, there's no argument out there as to why it would be more beneficial to me to do it otherwise (other than I guess I do lose the benefit of dropping at the tea social that "I'm on the cloud"). I can put all my very personal and private information on a little thing-a-ma-jig not much bigger than a ball point pen and that's where it will stay. Somebody can (and did)hack the Facebook page I used to have and we periodically read about what outfit (Paypal, Visa, Mastercard, etc.) was shockingly relieved of customers' financial data by the millions but nobody, not even god or Steve Jobs, is going to screw with the data on my little thing-a-ma-jig.

 

By the by, it's partly "cloudy" here today in Chiangmai and I'm beginning to wonder if those white fluffy things floating across the horizon are electromagnetic, electronic, or, perhaps, cocaine deliveries from the Mexican drug cartels....