Brian's Brain

I expended a fair bit of effort the past few weekends, as I more generally have in the past few months, extending and expanding the materialistic simplification process that I last wrote about in detail (ironically) right after Christmas. Some stuff, with apologies to my cohort Paul, has gone on Ebay (don't worry, Paul, I'm not an unabashed Ebay fan, either). Most of it, however, is Goodwill-bound, after I perused Ebay's 'completed auctions' search results and realized that either there was no potential-seller interest in the stuff or that the return I'd get on my auction posting wasn't worth the investment in time and fees (Ebay posting, Ebay final value, and Ebay-owned-PayPal payment percentage...sigh...).

Ebay-bashing isn't, however, the point of this particular writeup. Rather, as I sorted through my storage unit inventory, I was struck by how much of it was effectively obsolete, at how quickly it'd gone obsolete, at how quickly its value had correspondingly plummeted from substantial-to-nil, and at how old this all made me feel (not as old, however, as this made me feel).

Getting rid of hardware has the ancillary benefit of enabling me to also discard the archived libraries of reference documentation, software drivers and other detritus cluttering my shelves and network drives. The last bit might seem silly at first glance; what's the harm in a few MBytes' (or even GBytes') worth of files sitting on an inexpensive, enormous hard drive? Try it some time. Just as with my Microsoft Outlook database which is half the size it was a few months ago due to aggressive culling on my part, the relief at dumping no-longer-needed directories full of files is fantastic to feel.

I was also amused (and a bit chastened) to observe my internal resistance to my discard-the-dross theoretical aspirations, once the time came to actually identify and deal with the dross. Time and time again, I gritted my teeth and waffled when pondering whether or not to add a particular widget to the sell-or-donate pile...even if I could logically discern that I had neither sufficient time nor interest in ever using the gear again (except, perhaps, as a Prying Eyes project). Greed (also referred to as attachment) is, as some say, a potent poison...and awareness of enlightenment is clearly an area of continued focus for yours truly...

I've grouped some of my cast-off 'treasures' into a few big-picture obsolescence-theme clusters:

Format obsolescence

I sold my last Iomega Zip drive on Ebay yesterday, along with one of my two DVD-RAM drives...the other one didn't get any bids despite a $9.99 opening price (speaking of obsolescence, its SCSI interface might have something to do with its unpopularity) and is Goodwill-bound. Headed to Goodwill, too, is my gargantuan 5.25"-plus-3.5" dual-format floppy drive. And, after my Buffalo TeraStation sells, I'll likely shed all of my 3.5" PATA drives (along with my PATA-employing spare direct- and network-attached storage enclosures), save the rare 120 GByte-max HDDs that go in my G4 Power Mac.

I also sold off my D-VHS decks not too long ago. A forerunner of Bu-ray and the recently deceased HD DVD, D-VHS delivered outstanding image quality but never achieved widespread industry adoption. Plus, it shared all of the reliability, random-access latency and other disadvantages of any tape format, versus optical disc alternatives. And speaking of high-def, I also regretfully Ebay'd my I-O Data Device networked, enhanced DVD player. This visionary device enabled, among other attributes, the playback of high-resolution Windows Media Video, DivX, and MPEG-2 transport stream-based material housed on conventional red laser DVDs. However, in spite of advocacy by myself and others, the concept has yet to catch on in a big way...no matter what New Media Enterprises might wish.

Protocol obsolescence

Most of the purging focus here was on wireless gear, not surprising given that it's received the lion's share of the industry's evolutionary attention in recent years (though I did recently cast off the remainder of my HomePlug 1.0 Ethernet bridges...but held onto one set of HomePlug 1.0 Turbo units). From a LAN standpoint, all of my 802.11b adapters save two SDIO cards are going away (if not already gone, along with two 802.11a access points). Why cling to 'b', that is unless you're a hacker looking for packet-sniffing PRISM-based stuff...when backwards-compatible 802.11g descendents are no more expensive, if not cheaper by virtue of their higher volume shipments?

From a WAN standpoint, I daresay the recent demise of the AMPS network has made my CDPD PC Card irrelevant. And do you agree that I can probably shed my Ricochet-supporting PC Cards, too? More generally, as I've also written about in the past, the PC Card interface is rapidly becoming anachronistic, as vendors switch to ExpressCard or dispense entirely with an add-in card slot and exclusively rely on USB2 and FireWire (whose ultimate demise I also wonder if I'll be writing about soon). Unfortunately, however, legacy bridge modules provide incomplete and erratic support.

And speaking of WAN, we can't forget the granddaddy of them all. What about my RS-232-based external 56K modem, which I still distinctly remember upgrading (via PROM replacement...remember those?) from x2 to V.90? Sayonara, US Robotics, for many years you served me well.

Continue reading with 'Staying On The Accelerating Technology Treadmill'...