HDDs are the new DVDs

What do you use DVD-Rs for these days? Sharing movies? Archiving data?

I’ve got something like 50-100 DVD-Rs. All carefully labelled; all sequentially numbered, with carefully organised folders inside. Photos, projects, annual email archives.. all boxed, indexed, and backed up, with a duplicate set of discs at another location.

So… as I build up data I want to store long-term, I save it to a folder (Music, Apps, Personal, etc). When that gets to around 4.7Gb, I organise a directory structure, burn it to DVD, burn a copy or two for backup, and make a note to take the backups next time I go away. And it takes time. Lots of time. And plenty of room for mistakes.

And now I’ve decided, in this era of 500Gb HDDs for under £50 – why bother?

I can have one HDD in my Media Center with the entire contents of all my DVD-Rs.
I can have a full backup at a friend’s/relative’s house, on one external HDD, also around £50
I can sync the backups easily using something like SyncBack, either by bringing the external drive round for a day, or over FTP/the internet
And when’s the last time I checked all my DVD-Rs are still error-free? I can error check an entire HDD monthly with a scheduled command.

So that’s decided. I’ve bought 2 x 500Gb Samsung Spinpoint T’s – actually quite small these days – and that’s my data archives for the next few years. And by the time they’re full, I’ll probably be able to pick up a 2-3Tb drive for less than these cost.

That’s a lot of photos.

TYTN II is still here

Well, this one’s a keeper!

A couple of months after getting my TYTN II, it’s still gracing (rather than “bulging from”) my pocket. It’s not a huge step up from the TYTN – indeed, it’s not really worth upgrading, unless the few hundred quid you’ll spend is worth it for these bonuses:

Memory
That 128MB does make the difference! I’m having the strange kind of experience I used to have on my P910i, where I’d check my running tasks, and find some big app (like Opera Mini, or the web browser), happy sat in the background, and I hadn’t even realised. On the TYTN I, having more than 2 large apps would lead to out-of-memory problems, but the TYTN II now seems comfortable enough to let you get on with things, without micro-managing.

GPS
Again – is actually useful. Not that taking out a separate Bluetooth GPS and switching it on was that big a deal, but there was often the “Oh, it’s unpaired; Ah, there’s some COM port error; Eek, the battery’s flat”. With the TYTN II, you select GPS in the app, and it just works. “Nice!”

Keyboard works during calls
Yes, you read correctly! Or maybe you never even noticed.. But the TYTN I would only allow numeric characters to be typed on the keypad during calls – making it useless for writing notes while on a Bluetooth headset. All OK in the TYTN II.

Tilt-screen
I never thought I’d say it, but it is a small bonus: resting the phone on your desk/breakfast table, and tilting the screen up to read. I never thought it’d be useful, but it is. And it does allow 2-4 fingered typing; I’m not yet as fast as when using my thumbs blackberry-style, but it is an alternative.

Camera
Genuinely better than the TYTN – and I’m not talking about just having ‘Sharpness’ turned off in the camera settings. The picture is still a little sharp, with flat colours, but it is better than the TYTN. However, due to the terrible frame rate, with the blurry, jerky image on the pre-photo ‘viewfinder’ screen, it’s always a pleasant surprise to see that the photo isn’t as bad as the preview was. It also works surprisingly well in low light – I mean, really surprisingly not bad for something that is basically a pocket computer with a camera as an afterthought.

And on the downside? Simple:

Stylus
It’s on the wrong side! Really, it is… for a right-hander. Unless you’re one of the 10% that the TYTN II seems to have been designed for, you’ll have to fumble the stylus from one hand to the other, somehow. Two months later, and I’ve still not found it to be as easy as the TYTN I

Battery
As before… except now the case is sleek enough that I don’t want to bolt a 3000mAh brick onto the back of my phone. So it lives on the end of my laptop or a pocket USB charger whenever possible.

Camera
Those people talking about the slow drivers? They’ve got a point… the view you see on the viewfinder screen will be nothing like the photo that’s actually taken. (Fortunately, the photo itself is usually better!)