I had information convergence on my mind last week, but I didn't expect to glimpse the shape of things to come the day my wife took me to a fabric store. Yet, there it was on the side of the Husqvarna-Viking Designer I: the holy grail of compatibility, a 3.5-inch floppy-disk drive. The Designer I is marketed as "the first embroidery machine with a disk drive," which allows-you guessed it-"quick updates via the Internet."
Be it ever so humble, nothing increases comfort level when shopping for cutting-edge technology as the 3.5-inch floppy, a guaranteed escape route to run home to Mama. I didn't realize that we were shopping for an information appliance among the bolts of fabric, but little did I know.
Embroidery machines have been computerized for a while, with touch screens, video displays and patterns stored in RAM. There must be half a dozen ways to connect that sewing system to a desktop PC: a USB port, a serial cable, an Ethernet LAN, infrared data acquisition, flash memory cards, wireless cellular ... but nothing says "ease of use" like a floppy disk. Sony's Mavica digital cameras have been flying off the shelves since they were introduced last year. Do you think that's because they have virtually the same resolution and zoom capabilities as other digital cameras priced similarly, or because they have a familiar 3.5-inch disk drive?
The 3.5-inch floppy disk is no marvel of technology; relative to other storage, it is slow and has a painfully low capacity. It has survived because it is cheap, very reliable, intuitively simple, and installed everywhere. Perhaps a worldwide wireless inter-appliance network that anyone can easily use will soon be able to simplify file transfers and relegate the disk drive to the scrap heap. Personally, I am skeptical: As a network guy, I have yet to see a 10-node LAN connected by copper wire work without unpredictable bugs. I think the ubiquitous and foolproof wireless network is a bit beyond the horizon.
That does not mean that we are stuck with the 3.5-inch floppy disk indefinitely, but that some kind of removable storage that can be swapped between computers and digital devices will always be needed. There have been many attempts to knock the humble, standard floppy disk from its throne: Zip disks, SuperDisks, rewritable CDs. None of those have become singularly popular enough to stand out, and the recent popularity of handheld computers and portable consumer digital devices means that no big, bulky storage medium is going to reign.
One of the hurdles facing new technology like digital cameras is the confusion over storage. Flash memory cards don't necessarily fit every device, and you need an adapter to use them with a PC. There is a battle brewing to establish a de facto standard for portable storage. Sony is making a big push with its Memory Stick RAM cards, which it is beginning to install in cameras, PDAs, and MP3 players. Sony's Sticks currently hold up to 64 MB, and they are fast, but costly.
Another media contender is Iomega's Clik disks: one-inch square disk drives that are faster than floppy disks an hold 40MB each. Clik is still evolving in terms of the drive forms that can read the disks, but at least one digital camera already uses them. Clik's current storage cost per megabyte is roughly one-third that of the Memory Stick.
What Sony and Iomega do not yet realize is that they are not just vying for control of data storage in digital cameras and palmtop computers, but everywhere. If one is widely installed in desktop and laptop PCs, digital-camera manufacturers will stand in line to install drives that let users move data by ejecting and inserting a stick, disk, or cartridge. Market saturation is the key to this race. Sony and Iomega should be giving their respective Stick and Clik drives to anyone willing to install one in a PC, digital camera, or sewing machine.
Contributing Editor Joe Rudich is a network administrator with the St. Paul Companies in St. Paul, Minnesota. (joe@rudich.com)
