Next step for iPod: 80GB?

Toshiba, whose tiny hard drives power Apple Computer's hit iPod music players, announced that it has produced an 80GB model.

The company said in a statement late Monday that it will begin mass production in mid-2005 of new 1.8-inch drives with capacities of 40GB and 80GB.

Similar-size drives currently top out at 60GB.

Apple did not immediately announce plans to incorporate the drives in future products, but new iPod configurations have closely tracked Toshiba hard-drive developments. Toshiba announced plans for a 60GB hard drive in June, followed a few months later by Apple's unveiling of a 60GB color-screen iPod.

Apple is expected to reveal new iPod models, possibly including a larger hard-drive based player and low-end models based on flash memory, at the Macworld trade show in San Francisco in January.

Toshiba said in the statement that it utilized new perpendicular recording technology to achieve storage capacity of 40GB on a single 1.8-inch disk (the 80GB drive will utilize two disks).

Conventional hard-disk construction lays the microscopic magnetic bits that store information flat. Toshiba succeeded in setting them upright, allowing many more bits to be stamped onto a given chunk of real estate. Toshiba said the new technology allows it to achieve record storage density of about 16GB per square inch.

"Our research confirmed the superior potential of perpendicular recording technology, and we have now achieved the core head and disk technologies required for reliable, high-density recording," Kazuyoshi Yamamori, vice president of Toshiba's storage device division, said in the statement.

Consumer electronics manufacturers have steadily gobbled up improvements in storage capacity as digital audio players have tackled additional jobs, such as digital photography and video playback.

Toshiba said it would also use the perpendicular technology in its 0.85-inch hard drives, aimed at cell phones and cameras, boosting capacity to 8GB.

[Christopher Hall]

80 Gigs? Is that really necessary?

I use a 512 Meg SD card in my iPAQ and I find that more than sufficient for any sort of traveling I need to do. Granted, I have to decide what I really want to put on the device, but I've got about 80 songs on there and that's more than I would ever want.

I guess it just isn't for me. Now, if I could just find a player that will take my WMA Lossless songs, that's another story entirely.

of course more is better.

I bet the songs you store on your ipaq are low quality songs.
the ipod can store 1000 songs per 10 Gigbyte at a reasonable
quality.
To get a better quality, i will be like 10 Gigabyte for 500 songs.
so a 80 Gigabyte ipod can sure around 4000 nice songs. But the
down side is you need 80 Gigabyte on your harddrive first.

[kashk5]

Of course

Keep in mind that this technology is still evolving. Just because it doesn't make sense to have an 80 gig drive in an iPod now doesn't make sense to say it isn't necessary for the future. One of the main reasons people haven't adopted portable video players is because of screen quality and expensive hard drives within the players. Now that such large drives have been created at a relatively low cost, these devices, and others not yet introduced, can become a viable option.
One reason hard drive based mp3 players have done so well is because of the ability to carry thousands of songs in a device small enough to carry in a pocket. These small hard drive innovations are just a step toward a time where a person can carry dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of good quality video files with them. Just because an innovation doesn't make sense at the time doesn't mean it's a bad thing. It's just a step toward something greater.

[make_or_break]

But of course it is...

As you already alluded to, any lossless format would dictate a larger HD if only to have enough quantity for any sort of jukebox library. Heaven forbid if one chooses WAV files. That said, my 40GB 4G iPod is itself getting close to the full mark, and it STILL only contains a small portion of my CD and LP library, and that's with most files ripped into AAC at a bitrate of 128k, with the occasional AAC Lossless for particularly favored albums. An 80GB microdrive would be appreciated, though the diminutive iPod's gaining girth and weight as a result (personally, if the iPod's going to go fat, I think I'll hold out until the 120GB Toshiba is ready...).

[Christopher Hall]

80 Gigs? Is that really necessary?

I use a 512 Meg SD card in my iPAQ and I find that more than sufficient for any sort of traveling I need to do. Granted, I have to decide what I really want to put on the device, but I've got about 80 songs on there and that's more than I would ever want.

I guess it just isn't for me. Now, if I could just find a player that will take my WMA Lossless songs, that's another story entirely.

of course more is better.

I bet the songs you store on your ipaq are low quality songs.
the ipod can store 1000 songs per 10 Gigbyte at a reasonable
quality.
To get a better quality, i will be like 10 Gigabyte for 500 songs.
so a 80 Gigabyte ipod can sure around 4000 nice songs. But the
down side is you need 80 Gigabyte on your harddrive first.

[kashk5]

Of course

Keep in mind that this technology is still evolving. Just because it doesn't make sense to have an 80 gig drive in an iPod now doesn't make sense to say it isn't necessary for the future. One of the main reasons people haven't adopted portable video players is because of screen quality and expensive hard drives within the players. Now that such large drives have been created at a relatively low cost, these devices, and others not yet introduced, can become a viable option.
One reason hard drive based mp3 players have done so well is because of the ability to carry thousands of songs in a device small enough to carry in a pocket. These small hard drive innovations are just a step toward a time where a person can carry dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of good quality video files with them. Just because an innovation doesn't make sense at the time doesn't mean it's a bad thing. It's just a step toward something greater.

[make_or_break]

But of course it is...

As you already alluded to, any lossless format would dictate a larger HD if only to have enough quantity for any sort of jukebox library. Heaven forbid if one chooses WAV files. That said, my 40GB 4G iPod is itself getting close to the full mark, and it STILL only contains a small portion of my CD and LP library, and that's with most files ripped into AAC at a bitrate of 128k, with the occasional AAC Lossless for particularly favored albums. An 80GB microdrive would be appreciated, though the diminutive iPod's gaining girth and weight as a result (personally, if the iPod's going to go fat, I think I'll hold out until the 120GB Toshiba is ready...).