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Forum Index : Other Stuff : 128GB USB3 Flash drive for NZ$30....
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Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9306 |
You know, I continue to be amazed at how much storage you can buy on modern hardware, for such little cash - even WITH the virus affecting prices across all areas. Today, I bought a 128GB USB3 flash-drive for the grand sum of NZ$30, or US$20 if you calculate in the greenback.  23-cents per GB.....  I still remember buying my first USB flash drive - 256MB USB in a lovely brushed aluminum case, and it cost me $275 at the time(in NZ money), as 256MB was one of the biggest capacities you could get at that time. Using that as a point of reference($275 per 256MB), the new 128GB drive I just bought for thirty bucks would have cost $137,500!!!! Wow. Now, that is apples and oranges to some extent, as 256MB was about the biggest you could get at the time, but just for effect..... I remember my first HDD was a Seagate U5 series, 20GB @ 5400RPM, and it cost me $250. Still being amazed at the low, low prices we pay for storage today vs yesterday.  Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9306 |
@ GIZMO: Please delete this duplicate thread. Something odd happened, and it posted twice.... Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| Davo99 Guru  Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
I am also amazed at storage prices and Capacities. When I got my First Digitial Camera in 2000 I bought an 8 Mb card to go with it. that was as far as the Budget would stretch. Was almost $300. Well heeled mate bought a 16 mb ( yes MEGA byte) card. Not many shots and I'd have to download onto the laptop. Still, it was wondrous and Marvellous. I don't have any super sized Cards or USB's. No need now. I have a 256GB SD card that holds something like 8000 Low compression images which blow out to over 50 Mb ea in my Cameras. Way more than I need for anything. I was buying USB's by the thousand at a time a while back. Was doing Volume work with up to 1500 Clients at one gig. I'd get them from Chynaah and get a design for the boys, one of the girls and a neutral one. I was putting photos on them and we changed from doing CD's which took almost 3 min to burn even if they only had 50 Mb on them and that was a long time when you have a que of people waiting. I bought some USB's from orifice works as a test marketing exercise and added $10 to the price as an option when they were costing me just over 5. USB's would download in 10 Sec so were a Huge time saver. I gave a Box of a dozen to my girls and told them to offer them as a $10 extra option and " Lets see how loud they scream at that". Next day they rang me and asked if I was coming over that day? I was working another site and they would follow me doing the selling the next week. I said I left everything you will need yesterday. They said yeah we know but we sold out of the Usb's nearly straight away. I was stunned. They said people are saying " You get the USB in the price?" They would say yeah but you can have it On CD for $10 Cheaper. 6 out of 10 took the USB option. We made huge time savings, used to tell people there would be plenty of space to put other pics on them and they were wrapped. I bought them in bulk locally and got the price down then I got the stylised ones from Chynaah for a Buck each. Was getting 1000 for the boys, 1000 for the girls and 1000 of the non descript ones which would last about a month as we were doing printing at the time as well and did about a 50/50 mix. Got them in 8 gb which was huge for what we needed but smaller ones were cents Cheaper so went for the impressive factor and it worked very well. What fascinated me and I'll always remember was we used to get a lot of complaints about the price of the CD's. People would say things like " They only cost a Dollar, how can you charge $30". I'd say I bet a $100 note only costs the Gubbermint 2C to print but they are worth a lot more aren't they? With the USB's and the price Jacked $10, not one single complaint did I ever hear. Even with the plain ones. People were stoked they got the images on a USB and thought they were getting a great deal. I didn't have to buy and print the CD's, buy and print the cases and slicks, just made a promo image with some sample pics and contact details which we pasted into every usb when we put the other images on and that was that. My daughter works for an electronics retailer so gets me cards Dirt cheap. I don't bother much with USB's now, I put everything on cards as everyone has a reader and laptops and printers have had them built in for years. A lot of the time I just pull a brand new card card out the packet, ( have at least half a dozen in my bag) and shoot on that and hand it to the client at the end. Don't have to stuff around then posting or downloading, just hand it over which they think is great. I keep the 2nd card for myself and usually get 3-4 Shoots on one 32Mb card which I what I usually get and then down load them and throw the card in a Box. I have read a lot to the contrary but I have cards and USB's that are 15 Yo and read like the day they were first used. They have been extremely reliable in my experience. Only reason I stop using them is because they get too small to bother with. My Daughter brought me home a 128 GB Micro the other day to put in my tablet. So much info on such a small component. I store a lot on the card because I use it for business purposes and it's great to have samples of your work and documentation handy wherever you are. I can also Wifi images from the camera to the tablet as another backup and then upload them to clients or insta or whatever. Did a family Reunion last year and tapped into the bluetooth on a TV in the venue and ran a slide show. People didn't notice at first but were stunned when they did. Nice tip in that one! I remember when the 100MB Zip drives came out. Man they must have sold LOADS of those. CD's were still expensive especially for a one off use and print places would have piles of the things stacked up as everyone seemed to use them for information storage. A Good friend gave me a 1 Tb USB years ago and they were worth many hundreds then. I was reluctant to accept such an expensive Gift. It was given to him by a Company wanting to win his favour as a corporate gift but he had a few already and generously passed it on to me. Wasn't I king ship flashing that thing around!  I'd take it to the lab or wherever and make them download it and then give it back. Didn't trust it not to go " Missing". Still have it in the desk draw here. The leather strap that secures the stainless cover is a bit dry, must put some Dubbin on it but it still shows what a big dollar thing it was in the day with the leather and stainless it's wrapped in. I don't even know what the Biggest card or USB is now? I know they are far bigger than anything I'd ever need so became a mute point a long time back. The biggest are always the worst bang for the buck though and stupid expensive. You can usually buy about 4 half size ones for the same price as rthe largest. How times and prices have Changed. |
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| noneyabussiness Guru Joined: 31/07/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 512 |
reminds me of the first HDD I had, 20 mb ( yes megabyte) loud and large, but did the job... that was on a AT286 ... EGA monitor and all... lol, it would be a collectable now.. I think it works !! |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
Mine was the same, genuine IBM 286. Shortly after got a 386 and put the 20Mb Hdd in it from the 286. Wow! 2 Hdds, 50Mb of storage. Next one I got was a Pentium 133. Had it built with 8MB of ram. People called me Nuts and said I'd never need all that ram and was a waste. I think it had just under 1 Gb of ram. Again, more over the top stupidity apparently. Got that and gave the IBM's to my Uncle when he dropped in for a Visit. He was saying how he had better get himself a computer to keep up with the times. I said Come have a look at this and took him up the shed where I put the 2 IBM's, monitors a tractor printer and some other thing I had. I'll never forget the look on his face when I showed him the machines and said here you go and loaded them in his car. He used them a year or 2 to learn on then set them up to run his massive model train layout. Gave him a load of Floppys with it too.I remember win 3.11 came on 14 floppys or something insane. I had loads of programs because I had a friend that went to Thailand regularly and would bring me back all the pirated programs which cost cents over there. later they did compilation Disks with loads of programs on them. Friend got me disks for everything. They were cheaper to buy there than what we could buy blank disks here for to copy them. I look back on the way things were and how laughable they are now but were just the done thing then. I remember I felt privileged to even have a computer and in '95 was one of the few of my friends that had one. Still use the original email address I created when I got my first computer. |
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Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1344 |
My first computer was a XT and after using and connecting to the net the computer got stoned and was useless |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9306 |
Those old 20MB era HDD's used to spin-up and spin-down like a jet engine! I still remember that it was CRITICAL that you issued the PARK command before shutting down any PC of that era. Powering off with the heads not parked was usually fatal, as the heads would hit the disk as it spun-down. MS-DOS days there - not even Windoze 3.11 back then I remember the machine I used to have as a toy - I think it was an XT - it was huge, heavy, MS-DOS and green-screen only(nothing fancy like colour!), and had a huge red toggle-switch that made you feel like you were launching a missile or something when you switched it on or off! Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
First computer I ever used was at School. Only School in NSW to have one. I think it was donated by a former student whom had become head of the Company in Oz or something. The brand was Wang. Had these 2 big Hammertone Boxes under the desk that held a whopping 8Mb of Memory. Portable storage was on Cassette tapes. No Idea what they held but they took a long time to load up and everything had to be written by hand. The thing was kept in a big Double door safe like Cabinet with a TV on the top so the students could see what was going on. The monitor was tiny, maybe 10-12". It was in a heavily secured Room with bars on the windows, a door that would be at home on a Bank strong room and the there were 3 aircons keeping the place uncomfortably cool. I remember there were several attempts to break into the room but it was alarmed as well and I think it would have been easier to get into a bank. One clever break in was not through the cement walls of the building but up through the wooden floor. They got in but couldn't get through the strong cabinet. Next thing there were loads of steel plates put down to stop that happening again. Thing must have been worth a Motza in it's day. I was one of a very few Kids ( lord knows why) that was allowed access to the thing outside of classes. Never really got the programming side as I found it very tedious and a comma instead of a Full stop or vice versa would screw hundreds of lines of code and you could spend hours trying to find it because what you were reading off may have been badly printed and you put what you saw which wasn't right..... Ugggh! Other thing was you'd save to tape and it just wouldn't save right so that was a major frustration. The school earned money from other schools entering student marks in tables and doing rolls/ present/ absent reports and things like that. Heady stuff in the day. First computer I ever had was a dick smith VZ 200 I think it was called. Total POS. I spent countless hours trying to program that thing and it never did work properly. Put me off computers for years till my business manager implored me to get one which was the used 286. That was DOS but then 3.1 Came along and I got a hold of that which the 386 ran. Paid some tool a fortune for some management software that took more time entering customer data than could have simply been written in a book. Still, the ability to print documents was a Boon. I'd set them up , put them on floppy and then my wife would take it to work at the council where they had a digital printing Dept which was a big deal then too and have them print it for me. I took a picture of the guy that ran that dept at the christmas party of him and his wife and being a good shot and my wife getting on well with the guy, did an 8x10 for him. Guy thought I'd given him a lung or something so anything I wanted was done on the best paper they had. He was always printing me new Business cards as well trying new techniques and machines which the council always seemed to be upgrading. They did work for other councils as well as an earner. I had some pretty flash literature for those days. BTW Grog, what brand was that USB you got? 128g for 30 of anyones bucks is incredibly Cheap. |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9306 |
I like reading your posts, Dave - you have interesting stories to tell! It is an ADATA drive, from a NZ supplier here: LINK. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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