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Royal.pingdom has compiled a nice history of computer data storage.

This week, my boys were asking me what computers were like when I was their age. I think I had a hard time conveying how powerful a Commodore VIC 20 computer was, and how I scrimped and save to get $300 to purchase a 8k RAM expander, followed shortly there after with the purchase of Commodore's tape drive. (does anyone remember the loopless tape drive made by a 3rd party?)

According to the website, "The first hard drive to have more than 1 GB in capacity was the IBM 3380 in 1980 (it could store 2.52 GB). It was the size of a refrigerator, weighed 550 pounds (250 kg), and the price when it was introduced ranged from $81,000 to $142,400."

28 years later, you can purchase a USB memory stick for about $9.99.

To put that in discounted cash flow terms, the price of 1 gigabyte of storage has decreased at the rate of 27.49% every year for 28 years.

Although Sony's Blu-ray format was released last year, I've only recently tried it out.

As DVD's are my preferred backup medium (I like the fact that they are permanent, and not impacted by magnets) its just taking too many DVD's to backup my all my day-to-day data (about 24 gigs or 5 DVD's) and I'm just plumb tired of swapping discs and keeping track of when the desk 1 of 5, 2 of 5, etc. is done.

Thus the move to Blu-ray - the standard Blu-ray disc holds 25 gigs with the possibility of 50 gigs on one disc (if you buy the right disc).

So I purchased Sony's first generation recorder and I have found the move much more seemless than when I moved from CD-R's to DVD-R.

Just like that move though, I have found that software has a big impact - I've had much better success using Nero to burn, but even at that, the failure rate for a disc recording session is about 1 out of 4 when running at 2x speed, vs. 0 out of 10 for 1 x speed.

(this using a dual core processor fast machine pretty much dedicated to just doing this task and moving data around)

BUT...

it takes almost 8 hours to record at 1x speed.

So its a record and go to bed kind of deal, but if you do that, give yourself 30 mins to brush your teeth and come back and make sure the back up software doesn't have a question for you (file names too long, etc.)

I've now moved massive amounts of movies, music, family photos, backups and data to a series of 50 gig discs and I love it.

Only downside? One of the primary reasons I love DVD-R's backup is that I can pop them into any laptop or desktop and access my data.

Not here.

SONY!!! listen up - make sure your soon to be released SONY TZ laptop has a blu-ray option!

The Consumerist is reprting that COMPUSA intends to close more than 1/2 of all its stores - totaling 128 so far.

The Los Angeles Times/ AP newswire picked up the story this morning, with COMPUSA "Chief Executive Roman Ross cited "changing conditions in the consumer retail electronics market" for the decision.

The company said it intended to focus on operations at its top-performing locations.

CompUSA announced last week that it would close three stores in Texas, Illinois and California.

Mexico City-based U.S. Commercial Corp., CompUSA's parent company, is a holding company under the control of Carlos Slim, a Mexican billionaire."

So what gives?

Without a doubt, COMPUSA stands heads and shoulders above Best Buy or Circuit City in range of products and pricing.

In fact, losing COMPUSA in our town would not be fun - its the best place to run when you need a cable (yes even the $29 rip off 6' Ethernet cables) or a network wireless access point or batteries for that Sony Digital Camera or a variety of other things that you can't find at Radio Shack and don't want to wait to have to order online.

I have some thoughts as to what COMPUSA could do to improve its sales
- as a business account, I am always amazed that it takes 4 times as long for the cash/wrap process - did you know they use a dot matrix printer? hardly state of the art. As a business account, not only do I want a fast price, I also want quick service - it should be faster than the checkout line
- stop locking things up - spend your money on hiring trustworthy employees at $25/hr vs. minimum wages folks who don't have keys - average wait time to buy a laptop I've already paid for? 25 mins. If you are locking things up from shoplifters, well then why not have a separate area for business clients entirely?
- know where your products are - I've gone into the stores, found the product on the display, only to find out (22 mins later) that its not in stock, or like yesterday - its discontinued.
- stop pushing warranties and insurance - don't want it, don't need it - the markup on these must be tremendous - in fact, I understand COMPUSA (and Best Buy) pay their sales staff a 20% commission on these - how much value can they add?
- spend less time training sales staff on how to sell warranties, and more time with hands on products - once upon a time I sold computers in both a consulting and

WHY DO YOU THINK COMPUSA IS HAVING TROUBLES? Share your thoughts and experiences here.