Age of Tera-sours

I rarely go to PC shows and only pop in when I have something in mind to buy. With one every quarter, we are really quite spoilt here in Singapore, as we are allowed to bide our time in finding the right bargain on the wide variety of latest tech gizmos. Yet, the PC Shows never fail to attract a crowd, a spectacular crowd that is, everyday single time. Maybe this is one way the men gets back at their gf/wives who drags them to every Robinson sale.

Anyway I was there at the Comex'08 last weekend with the intention of buying a CF card for my upcoming trip. Entering the exhibition hall on the 6th floor, I couldn't help noticing the many booths selling external hard drives. The minimum storage is now 160GB, selling below $100 (and I bought an 80GB for my office a year back at almost the same price), and behold ... 1TB ... Tera?? ... a trillion bytes??!! Woah, we have moved so far from the age of 1.2MB floppy disk to this age of monster data storage. These 1TB ext drives are about the size of a bible but could probably contain copies of the bible in over 200 languages plus audiobook, with plenty of space left to spare. Leaving the hall with my puny 8GB Sandisk Ultra II CF Card, I was left wondering what I could do with one of those monster Tera drives.

I guess there lies the trap set by the many consumer goods maker, knowing that we consumers are always willing to spend more money on bigger and better products, with our expectations growing with each snazzy advertisement or sleek looking gadget. Maybe in the not too distant future, I'll lament on how times have caught up with the modest 1TB drive ...

For now I just hope my IT dept will move with the times and expand my inbox storage limit. How can you survive with 100MB nowadays??