#Multi-speed
2 messages in this thread
I am thinking about buying a CD-ROM player. I have seen the multi-speed drives
that spin the disk twice as fast, and supposedly transfer data twice as fast.
These, however, are much too expensive at the moment. It seems to me that
making the disk spin twice as fast shouldn't be that big of a deal. Does
anyone have any thoughts about whether these will come down in price
(significantly) in the next six months? Any other thoughts on what could
happen in the CD-ROM marketplace in general over the next six months?
Thanks, Tom Schindler
Tom,
Multi-speed drives are currently expensive because they are new, which means
that they are still being manufactured in small quantities. When the original
(mono-speed??) CD-ROM units came out, their prices were in the $800-1000 range;
and as you know, they are now more in the $250-500 range.
The problem is not that the hardware to support multi-speed drives is that
much more expensive (although a motor capable of spinning accurately at
multiple speeds is higher than one that will operate at a fixed rpm), but that
to the manufacturers, these drives are a new product with some new parts
required which translates to new tooling which translates to new startup costs
for a production line. In hardware manufacturing, there is somethin called a
"learning curve" which loosely means that the more you make the cheaper you can
make them. Once people begin switching to multi-speed drives and the
manufacturers are turning them out as fast (or faster) than today's CD-ROM
drives, there is no reason the prices cannot come down to be the same or lower
than today's mono-speed drives.