Flack wrote:What a terrible idea. Having the cassette player in your car (if you even still have one) eat your tape is just one of the negative possibilities.
Eventually a CD/DVD will degrade. How long "eventually" is depends on how they were made; some older CDs degraded in as little as ten years. Current estimate I think is 50-100 years. You also failed to mention that magnetic tape is endangered by household and stronger magnets; magnets will do nothing to a CD/DVD or even a jump drive.
I missed the chance to pick on your phrasing by asking if you no longer have a car how do you travel? :)
Flack wrote:Leave a tape sitting on your dash on a hot summer day and you'll come back to it sounding a bit warbled.
No advantage for CD/DVD here; it will do the same thing as tape or vinyl phonorecords since the base structure is plastic too.
Flack wrote:And then there's the physicality of storage. My 32 gig iPod holds approximately 8,000 songs. You really don't want to be hauling around 800 cassette tapes in your car, do you?
Or 80 MP3 cds. If you make a "mixdisc" - my own expression - where you burn a CD of perhaps 125 mp3s, a typical DVD player hooked to a TV can read the disc structure and play them, actually showing you the files and directories. I have aproximately 2500 mp3s, I take my CDs and RIP them. This saved me when I got evicted, I lost my original "regular" CDs I ripped from - which basically sat in a packed case, no longer used - and backup MP3 disc copies, but I still have the MP3s on hard disc.
Flack wrote:To me, cassette tapes are old enough to be outdated, but not old enough to be retro yet. Maybe there is some weird longing for that technology, but wait until a kid finds out the AA batteries in a Walkman only last a couple of hours before the tape starts draaaginnnnng ...
I own about 10 rechargeable AAA batteries I use for my digital camera, which it uses 3 at a time. I carry 6 and when I use them I recharge them. The economics make so much more sense. A set of 4 AA or AAA alkaline batteries sell for perhaps 80c in quantity, a set of 4 rechargeables sell for perhaps $5. Do the math; if you use anything that "eats" batteries, e.g. uses them faster than a wall clock or smoke detector, at a rate exceeding 2-4 times a year, you really need to switch to rechargeables. If you're going through batteries 2 hours at a time, a set of 16 will allow you to change out 3x every day and recharge them as they drain.
Basic cost is about $30 based on buying two sets of 4 with charger for $10 each and 2 battery-only packs for $5 each. A set of 24 alkaline might cost $10 and would be used up in a week. A set of 16 rechargeables thus runs $60, and will last about 4 years, figuring $30 for the batteries and 1c worth of electricity a recharge for 1,000 times. The break-even point off the top of my head is about one month. Plus you only spend the first $30 upfront, the other $30 is bled of at 1c a day per set over the years.
There are rare cases where Alkaline is a better choice, that is, slow drain, like, as I stated, clocks and smoke detectors, or long-term stability like storing flashlights, because of the one problem rechargeables have, that the battery doesn't hold a charge a long time, good rechargeables do maybe a month or two, alkaline have multi-year stability. (Witness freshness dates on batteries sold now having "use by" dates of 2014 and later.)
Before someone "hoists me on my own petard," yes, I know a smoke detector uses a 9V, not an AA or AAA but the economics still apply. Rechargeables have a "capital cost" of about 5 times that of alkaline but a vastly superior "total cost of ownership" for fast-use and high-drain applications.
