I originally posted this on Slashdot, ready to refute FUD about MD and correct points. Seeing as how a guy claimed that a couple of SmartMedia cards to swap music, I whipped out my trusty calculator and did some calculations. I thought some of you might find this to be of at least mild interest. The original message: --------------------- Let's compare prices here. A 64MB CF card costs from $150 to $200. And it stores around 60-62 minutes of 128kilobit MP3 data. Now, I only record my favourite tracks to minidisc. It just so happens that I listen to a lot of music. I carry around 12 MiniDiscs (In a pair of TDK MusicJack cases), and every single track in there is golden. The "so-so" tracks may be recorded onto other discs, which I have around 20 of which I don't listen to too much. If I don't use the cases it actually doesn't take up much space. Okay, all 12 of the discs are filled to the brink. There's usually around 73 minutes on them (there's usually around one or two minutes left at the end which I can't fit a complete track in). 73 minutes/disc * 12 discs = 876 minutes 876 minutes * 60 seconds/minute = 52560 seconds 52560 seconds * 131072 bits/sec = 6889144320 bits 6889144320 bits / 8 bits/byte = 861143040 bytes 861143040 bytes / 1048576 bytes/megabyte = 821.25 megabytes 821.25 megabytes / 64 megabytes/card ~= 12.83 cards. Since you can't have fractional cards, we'll round it up to 13. 13 cards * 165 dollars/card = 2145 dollars. Note that $165 per 64MB card is a relatively optimistic price already. Two boxes of TDK Colour MusicJacks cost me HK$69 each. According to the current exchange rate of US$0.1285 per Hong Kong dollar at 8:30pm today, that's ~$17.73. Okay, discs in the US and Canada are around $1.50 to $2 if you know where to look. (Note that $165 per 64MB CF card is also a price quoted for "if you know where to look"). Let's make it $2.50. 2.5 dollars/disc * 12 discs = 31.25 dollars Let's look at the ratio, shall we? 2145 : 31.25 = 68.64 : 1 So CompactFlash media costs 68.64 times more than MiniDisc media. Then again, if you listen to the same songs over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, suit yourself. Get MP3. ----------------------------------------------------------------- To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
