This is a good example of the old saying "One man's trash is another man's treasure":...
A person buys some videos in the 1980s. They watch them once and store them on a shelf for a long time. In 2006, when ebay is the place to sell your old wares, a golf nut discovers these two titles and puts on a bid. The seller gets money and some shelf space, and the golf nut gets two indispensible instructional videos.

And they all lived happily ever after.

VERDICT - SUCCESS!!

Time for a ratings update.

To recap on the "Ratings System" entry - the results are either "Success" or "Not". Simple!!

Click on the picture for a bigger view:





So far so good.

The debate rages on. Many will tell you that digital is the way of the future,
because it's new, it's better, can hold more information, keeps for longer....etc.etc.etc.

Well, I'm not sure that applies to everything. On comparing digital voice recorders for recording ideas such as:
song ideas
movie scripts
a novel
blog entries(!!!)

I realised that these little digital recorders (see fig 1.) have their setbacks. On reading the 5 star rating review system on Amazon.com, I was amazed at the number of complaints about these machines. I was intrigued so I read on..."erased all my information"...."wasn't compatible with XP software"..."recorded 30 hours of grainy, scratchy, unintelligible information"

I was stunned.

fig 1.



These gadgets boast "30 hours recording time!!" but in the small print it actually means 30 hours of unintelligible static OR...3 hours of high quality recording. And what if the machine crashes while downloading to your computer? What then?
A novel lost!! Brilliant ideas down the drain!!

And nobody wants that.

So then I thought, what about the alternative? I could get a dictaphone (fig 2.) ...yes, that's right...using TAPE!!!! (Techno savvy metros gasp in horror here)
But seriously, you record a side of a tape. You turn it over. You record the other side. You knock the tabs out. If you simply HAVE to have everything you ever create on computer (and many do!!) then get a male to male stereo plug, plug one end in the "line in" jack at the back of your computer, plug the other end into your dictaphone, or tape recorder or whatever, use a program like "MP3MYMP3" (freeware, check any site such as tucows etc.) and record the ideas as MP3s.

Brilliant!!!

Fig 2.




If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Or, to go one step further...

Don't "upgrade" to something crap.