Mushrooms & Specifications

Do you ever wonder why  with each passing year, we are seeing more advanced equipment released, of every kind, yet we seldom anymore see the same sort of specifications listing that will allow the cogent person to clearly assess the product?

It bothers me. From the standpoint of the knowledgeable consumer, I always wonder two things – has something been cheapened, and has some new technique been invented, that I should be aware of. lately, the answers to either of these things are not being answered.

There used to be a class of technical writers, whose job it was to describe a new product, down to the last detail, along with providing some exciting wording in the description – it was nothing that could be considered hype, as that was a word invented to describe the change, when manufacturers unabashedly exaggerated the qualities and benefits of their products.

The casual observation of some specials on Newegg are what prompted the writing of this article. I spotted a few DVD-RW choices that claim to have recording at speeds of 22X. The ones I immediately considered were made by Samsung and LG. I went to the websites of these companies, guided by the pointers from the Newegg pages. When I got nowhere, I looked about the sites, trying to find some more information. There was none to be had.

If you keep up with the development of optical drives at all, you know that when 16X drives arrived on the scene, we were told that there would likely be no more speed increases due to the nature of the media. It was stated that any higher rotational speed would likely cause fracture and explosion of the discs in the drives. For a time, there were no increases. Then we began to see 18X, and then 20X drives. No new media, no further discussion of the stresses on the media.

Now there is 22X claimed speed, and undoubtedly, at least one of these manufacturers will be shown to do it. Still there is no explanation, and as someone who burns a lot of discs, I know that I’ve seen none that are claimed to be ‘sturdier’ or ‘able to cope with stresses of high sped rotation’.

So what is the explanation? For now, there does not seem to be one. The only thing I could think is that since the read speed is still shown as 16X maximum, the writing is done one time, and 22X is achieved exactly one time per disc. This is, of course, a guess; we have to do a lot of guessing these days, as many specifications once given, must be guessed now. This is part of the process of removing things, like cache from each drive. This is simply underhanded; as when Lite-On started putting out slightly differing drives, some with a 2MB cache, and others with 1.5MB – yet the consumer had to look hard to see the differently marked box. On an OEM drive, you had to know the model coding scheme, or you might have gotten the lesser cache. 

In the early days of PCs, specifications were plentiful; so many that newbie customers had to bring a well-read friend to help with the sale. Now, all the adjectives used can be understood by a five year old, and mean little to nothing. The words used are carefully chosen, so as to not be actionable, in case of misunderstanding.

It’s no wonder that we feel like mushrooms – we are truly being kept in the dark.

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Quote of the day:
I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. - Umberto Eco

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