Would this be good as an MP3 drive?

I wouldn't mind the initial time-hit copying all my music over, but I think this +a USB ready car stereo might be a great combination.

Is the slow read speed going to hurt music playback?

I can remember having to explain the difference between the "hard disk" and "diskette" when the little 3.5" ones came out. People had no clue of the difference... I am not that old, but have been on computers as long as I can remember (like back when Apple and Mac were different types of computers, magnets near computers were catastrophic, there was no graphic interface to the interwebs unless it was done in ASCII art style...), ok so I didn't really get moving into computers until the early to mid 80s (first BASIC programming class in 6th grade around 85), by then I am sure some of you had already speant a portion of your career on them; but many people my age or a little younger never experienced any of that.

Like others, my first computer was a Tandy TRS-80; I had no disk drives though, only a cassette.

I'm not that old though.. I got the TRS-80 in ~1990, I think my mom got it at a yard sale for $5. It didn't come with any programs, only the B.A.S.I.C. book.

My childhood friend and I spent the better part of a day drawing an ASCII art naked woman-- we thought that was OMGOMGOMGPONIESOMG PONIES!.

mercurypdx wrote:Would this be good as an MP3 drive?

I wouldn't mind the initial time-hit copying all my music over, but I think this +a USB ready car stereo might be a great combination.

Is the slow read speed going to hurt music playback?

Nah, it should be able to read well over 1MB/S, which would be incredibly high quality music if you had that. You likely have 320KB/S at the most.

socks.mark wrote:Nah, it should be able to read well over 1MB/S, which would be incredibly high quality music if you had that. You likely have 320KB/S at the most.

Thanks.

Hell, while we are taking a trip back to memory lane... Remember Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) using 1400 baud modems? Wasn't that fun?? Ha!

JDAWGRULZ wrote:I got you beat... 2x... Timex Sinclair with 4K of memory & a TI 99-4A with 16K (32K with Peripheral expansion unit).... Both used magnetic tape for external storage. Now I'm the one feeling old.

I STILL have three Sinclair ZX Spectrums and a TS 2068.

bruisedquasar wrote:This Centron is not "one of those cheaper drives". See what the normal low street price is at Newegg and Amazon --well above $49. This Centron is a new product.

When I wrote that this may be a cheaper drive, I meant that Centon doesn't have a stellar reputation in memory. Look up their other products. I received a Centron digital frame and MP3 players as gifts and they were horrible, both in functionality and durability. If those are any indication of this product, then yes, this is one of those cheaper drives. It's just larger and has a rubber shell, but the innards are still crap.

John1000 wrote:LOL. You are soooooo correct. I bet most people just look at her face, but those fingers are hideous. I'd be afraid to date her with fingers like that. On the other hand, maybe she is really into her job and wanted to check out the product she was promoting and tried ripping open the the package with her bare hands. For that, I give her (bleeding) thumbs up.

Looks like a skin issue, likely the same one I have. I build up calluses on fingers. About twice a year they get really dry and sort of peel off. It leaves the skin on the fingers thinner than it should be for a week or so. At the edges of where the calluses were, it can pull off some good skin and cause small bleeding.

PITA and looks gross, but not contagious.

sdc100 wrote:You kids today, I still have my Interact (sold through DAK! If you think today's infomercials are bad, you haven't read classic DAK). It had 4K RAM, 2K ROM, 128x96 resolution (8 or 16 colors. I believe), a very slow cassette drive to load/save software, including BASIC. Expandability was impossible since what little was available never made it into the closeout market. No floppy drives or RAM modules were ever truly available although some were made. Of note, the cassette unit couldn't even erase the tapes for resuse!

MicroVideo supported the machine for two years, 1979-80, making some hardware expansions (32K RAM card and stringy floppy drive)... The Interact computer finally vanished from the US market in late 1980.[/i]

Dang, another Interact owner!! Dad bought us one of these with 16K Ram, after you loaded the BASIC from cassette, I had all of 4K left for my program. I wrote a killer Moon Lander program.

I'm old enough that I can remember when Dad brought home one of the first TI SR-71 programmable calculators that the college he worked at purchased. It was cool.

seijirou wrote:@charlietrent.

"ReadyBoost cache cannot be greater than 4 GB on a FAT32 file system or greater than 32 GB on an NTFS file system"

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff356869.aspx

No need for 64 GB if your intention is readyboost.

I've read otherwise elsewhere, and actually, if you look at the first item here from the article you posted:

"External storage must meet the following requirements:

(1) Capacity of at least 256 MB, with at least 64 kilobytes (KB) of free space. The 4-GB limit of Windows Vista has been removed.

(2) At least a 2.5 MB/sec throughput for 4-KB random reads

(3) At least a 1.75 MB/sec throughput for 1-MB random writes"

So you CAN use more than 4GB for ReadyBoost as long as you're running Windows 7.

-Tony

CivlDX wrote:I thought all flash drives were water proof? I've sent a few through the washing machine a couple of times while in my pockets, and they worked fine without losing my data...

Sort of. Rusting is an obvious issue if water is trapped inside. Worst, if your water is particular "hard" (has lots of minerals and electrolytes), a residue can form upon drying that can short the circuitry.

Think how i feel, the first PC i built myself had a 20 meg hard drive and the drive was as big as a cd rom. my first PC didn't have a drive at all.

SevenStarSonata wrote:My first laptop, back in 2005, had a 60 GB hard drive. I'm not sure whether to marvel at technology or feel very, very old.

Either way, this is a kickass deal.

F0rSaken wrote:Hell, while we are taking a trip back to memory lane...

Haha... Now if you said take a 'flash' down 'memory' lane, I'd say you deserve a quality post..

In the spirit of can you top this, my first computer was a slide rule. And no, I did not carry it clipped to my belt like the true nerds in the Engineering school.

I even had to take a course called Graphical Methods in Engineering where we made nomographs and even dedicated slide rules where you bought wood blanks at the Book Store and glued the scales we drew in India Ink on poster board to them.

My senior year we had a course where you programmed a computer by plugging in resistors and capacitors to solve differential equations.

My first job had me lugging a box ( or ten ) of punch cards up to big blinky to process. Picked up the print out the next day. If you ever dropped the box, there went a day or two of work.

Cheers

Sort of. Rusting is an obvious issue if water is trapped inside. Worst, if your water is particular "hard" (has lots of minerals and electrolytes), a residue can form upon drying that can short the circuitry.

I have to fess up, I had one of these brand & model of memory sticks, but at a much smaller capacity (8GB), ran it through the washer and dryer by accident and it did not survive. Multiple PCs did not even acknowledge its existence upon it being plugged in after the SNAFU.

My guess that the difference between mine and all the other stories on here of people who have had it go through the washer and dryer and work just fine after, is exactly what was said in the quoted post... We have (from what I understand) fairly "hard" water in my area. I had chalked it up to the dryer, thinking if I had caught it before running it through, it would have been fine. But I see the logic in the "hard" water + drying theory.

That said, I Woot-ed this 64GB one. I just plan to use the caribiner (sp?) to keep it in my bag for work rather than in my pocket where it would likely go through another wash/dry cycle eventually!

-Tony

I bought two of the Centon DataStick Pro 32GB during a Woot-off and I have problems with both.

For copying smaller files or small amounts of data, they work find. If there is a larger file, like about 1GB size, then they have all sorts of problems. Mostly, the copied file is corrupted.

I don't trust the Centon DataStick Pro 32GB with any really important files.

tony2442 wrote:I have to fess up, I had one of these brand & model of memory sticks, but at a much smaller capacity (8GB), ran it through the washer and dryer by accident and it did not survive...

It could have been the dryer that killed it. These are only rated up to 70 degrees celsius (158 degrees Fahrenheit), which a dryer can easily surpass.

Caffeineismydrug wrote:Haha... Now if you said take a 'flash' down 'memory' lane, I'd say you deserve a quality post..

Ha nice! I didn't think about that (obviously)

3mb a sec is slow to me, my current thumb drive gets over double this. I use it mostly to transfer movies to my downstairs mediabox so 6gb at a time that would crawl for my uses. I'll just stick to my 16gb and do two movies at a time when I want them downstairs.

:[

I was excited for a second

bruisedquasar wrote:I grew up in Japan. All the store clerks used Abacus for checkout, even at JC Penny. In 1970s switched to calculators and cash registers. 1980s switched back to Abacus. Found it was faster, less troublesome, less training required. Every school kid is master of abacus by junior high. But...in Japan children do not have game machines or cable TV. They want to learn.

You're JOKING, right? Japan is the center of the universe for gaming. Hello? Wii? Playstation? Any of those names familiar? Saying all Japanese children want to learn is as racist as saying all white men want to watch football and drink beer ...

Have the standard Centon 32GB. No issues and faster than the current drives I have. In for one.

64gig, that matches my iPad exactly. I am going to try to convince iTunes to use this as a backup of all those iApps that keep cluttering up my disk.

elliottm wrote:you whippersnappers. my first computer had 1KB of memory but was upgraded to 16KB - so much memory! look it up - the sinclair zx-81.

DANG! You win. Our TRS-80 CoCo came w/16k out of the box. 1k... your geek cred doth be unparalleled.

I just looked up that Sinclair... could you really buy it unassembled, as a kit? That's awesome!

We didn't own it, but I also remember using a 16k Wang 2200 PCS as a kid, in the late 70's. It's one purpose for me at the time:

10 Print "You are awesome."
20 Goto 10

I had self-esteem problems.

I have to ask him how he ever afforded it, but my brother bought a Mac in the early 80s... not sure if it was 128k or 512k.

I remember being so excited when my dad brought home from work a little computer with a "modem," some weird rubber cups you'd stick your phone's handset into (an acoustic coupler); it was an all-in-one device, and had no screen, but rather a small spool printer! I used to play Rogue on it, wasting spools of paper as the thing re-drew its ASCII map with every turn. I wish I could find a picture of the thing, but I just spent a (happy) half-hour staring at pics of old computers and modems w/no luck. Ah, nostalgia. I wish I still had one those spools full of Rogue, it would make elite geek wallpaper.

jgary wrote:You kids today. My TRS-80 Model I was decked out with 48K of RAM. IIRC a floppy held 86K of data. I thought I'd never fill one up.

Yep, been there & done that. In fact I still have a TRS 80 storage. Also have 8 of the original compaq suitcase portable computers that weigh a ton seems like.

jgary wrote:You kids today. My TRS-80 Model I was decked out with 48K of RAM. IIRC a floppy held 86K of data. I thought I'd never fill one up.

40 track double density was 360k. Unless you're talking real old school Shugart's. 35 track density I believe at 110k. They were, both, quickly out done though. Before that, we had 8" disks.

syrinne wrote:
I remember being so excited when my dad brought home from work a little computer with a "modem," some weird rubber cups you'd stick your phone's handset into (an acoustic coupler); it was an all-in-one device, and had no screen, but rather a small spool printer! I used to play Rogue on it, wasting spools of paper as the thing re-drew its ASCII map with every turn. I wish I could find a picture of the thing, but I just spent a (happy) half-hour staring at pics of old computers and modems w/no luck. Ah, nostalgia. I wish I still had one those spools full of Rogue, it would make elite geek wallpaper.

like this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_700

I could see wasting hours on that...

Jesus. We're all nerds.

firebirdude wrote:Jesus. We're all nerds.

I started messing with computers when I was 12... It started as a hobby and now (24 years later) it is STILL my hobby with the only difference, I am getting paid for it. I have been in this industry since I got out of high school and just kept working my way up.

Not saying I am a 'nerd' though, Ha!

bitman wrote:1.8 million what? I need to know the units, because I too need the the Centox DabaSchmick Blort.

1.8 M(eters) the depth of water that it can fall into and still not be wet? :-)

laconic wrote:It could have been the dryer that killed it. These are only rated up to 70 degrees celsius (158 degrees Fahrenheit), which a dryer can easily surpass.

That's the operational temperature, beyond which it can't operate reliably. It can still survive though. The description says that this has a "silicon case." I assume that it should have been "silicone case." If so, the innards are well-insulated from heat. And since your drive would probably be covered by clothes as it is tumbled in the dryer, there are even more layers of protection. My guess is that this model can survive a visit to the dryer.

firebirdude wrote:Jesus. We're all nerds.

That's probably why I read most of these posts! Memories.........
Anyway, I have a CentronPro 32gb I got from Woot. No problems with it so far and I use my sticks a lot. I burned a movie onto it last night, and tested out the playback from it just now, because of all the speed talk. It played the movie, no skips, very smooth. Normally I would copy off the drive, but wanted to see how it would work. I did transfer a lot of data to it right after I got it. It may have been slower than some, but that didn't matter to me. I just kept on working.

+1

I have a stereo in my truck that can play from a USB drive, so...
I wonder how many hours of music this could hold, calculated into miles driven.
Um, calculating...
You could drive around the world at the equator 2.75 times, and never hear the same thing twice! And for only 50 bucks! THAT'S VALUE!

My first computer:

Texas Instruments TI-99/4A
Released: June 1981
Price: US$525 (without monitor)
How many: 2.8 Million
CPU: TI TMS9900, 3MHz
Memory: 16K RAM, 26K ROM
Display: Video via an RF modulator
32 characters by 24 lines text
192 X 256, 16 color graphics
Ports: ROM cartridge (on front)
Data storage cassette
Audio/Video output
Joystick input
CPU bus expansion
Peripherals: Speech Synthesizer
Peripheral Expansion Box
Data storage cassette
300 baud modem
OS: ROM BASIC

SevenStarSonata wrote:My first laptop, back in 2005, had a 60 GB hard drive. I'm not sure whether to marvel at technology or feel very, very old.

Either way, this is a kickass deal.

If you think that makes you feel old, my first PC in 1991 had a 70 MB hard drive. Thats MB not GB lol.

Bill

F0rSaken wrote:Hell, while we are taking a trip back to memory lane... Remember Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) using 1400 baud modems? Wasn't that fun?? Ha!

I remember 300 baud ... with handset coupling.
You already missed the BBS discussion, which is HERE. There are some great links to a ZDnet article and a YouTube documentary on BBSs.

Anykey wrote:
Anyway, I have a CentronPro 32gb I got from Woot. No problems with it so far and I use my sticks a lot. I burned a movie onto it last night, and tested out the playback from it just now

You burned a movie into your flash drive? I guess it really can survive a tumble in the dryer as many claim.

recneps7 wrote:…When I say “COMPUTER” is was just an old shoebox covered by a piece of twig but it was a computer to us…..

Pfft! You had absolute elegance compared to what WE worked with! We had nothing but an old condom wrapper with a few pieces of cotton string stuffed inside. And we had to go find our own string, mind you. Writing code meant tying knots in the string at precise intervals, and heaven help you if you got one knot out of order!

You youngsters had it easy...a twig AND a shoebox! Pfft!

Beware! The read and write speeds are extremely SLOW !! Centon quotes only 3MB per second. That's terribly horribly chronically SLOW !

syrinne wrote:DANG! You win. Our TRS-80 CoCo came w/16k out of the box. 1k... your geek cred doth be unparalleled.

I just looked up that Sinclair... could you really buy it unassembled, as a kit? That's awesome!

We didn't own it, but I also remember using a 16k Wang 2200 PCS as a kid, in the late 70's. It's one purpose for me at the time:

10 Print "You are awesome."
20 Goto 10
Clive Sinclair also had a pocket black and white TV with a TUBE! had a disposable wafer battery. I still have one, but no analog signals to watch anymore : (
I had self-esteem problems.

I have to ask him how he ever afforded it, but my brother bought a Mac in the early 80s... not sure if it was 128k or 512k.

I remember being so excited when my dad brought home from work a little computer with a "modem," some weird rubber cups you'd stick your phone's handset into (an acoustic coupler); it was an all-in-one device, and had no screen, but rather a small spool printer! I used to play Rogue on it, wasting spools of paper as the thing re-drew its ASCII map with every turn. I wish I could find a picture of the thing, but I just spent a (happy) half-hour staring at pics of old computers and modems w/no luck. Ah, nostalgia. I wish I still had one those spools full of Rogue, it would make elite geek wallpaper.

Clive Sinclair also had a pocket black and white TV with a TUBE! had a disposable wafer battery. I still have one, but no analog signals to watch anymore : (