Jos asks:
William Blair wrote:
5 MB (approx.) for only $3,200/month ($24,978 in
2009 dollars)!
I wonder what use case would justify that kind of expense, or would tape
storage not have been that much cheaper ?
Undoubtedly tape is cheaper (not just per byte but also per drive)
but it's not random access.
Clever things were done with tapes, usually in batch mode. The RAMAC
made it possible to think that multiple files (not in the computer
sense but in the business sense) could be updated simultaneously in
real-time.
It is a fallacy to confuse the cost of a storage unit with the value that
The data on it provides. Clearly as the cost of storage has dropped new
applications that previously weren't economically feasible open up.
e.g. When I got started in digital music in the 80's, the most technically
advanced mixing systems began using hard drives instead of tape for digital music storage
and manipulation.
Tim.