Blu-ray vs CD-R
So last week I upgraded my home PC with a new motherboard, case and power supply. Trying to figure out what else I could upgrade I went looking for HD-DVD reader/burner drives. Currently pricewatch.com only has 2 available, Sony BWU-100a ($699) and a Samsung BDP-1000xaa ($845).
Needless to say I passed on them both. Looking at the prices I thought “How outrageous!”
Then I remembered the last time I jumped on the bleeding edge bandwagon and the pain I suffered as an early adopter. I bought a Ricoh MP6200S CD-R drive when it first came out. This was one of the first commercially available CD writers out there. It elevated the term ‘coaster’ to a whole new level. After paying upwards of $2 for each blank CDR even if they were useless I didn’t want to throw them away. After about a year the drive really started flaking. The read/write head was frozen and I was out of warranty. Not about to give up on my investment I tore it apart and slathered the mechanism with Vaseline. I was able to make it until CD drives got down in the $50 range and then retired it.
The price I got to pay for all this aggravation? $599 in 1995 dollars.
But it was nice to be able to make mixed CDs while everyone else was still handing out tapes.
– Dave