Portable storage medium has come a long way in terms of capacity, form factor and durability. Those of us who started using the PC in the eighties would have come across the magnetic media, floppy disks (5.25 in & 3.5 in). The 5.25-inch diskettes were capable of storing up to 180KB on one side and 360KB on two sides. The operating system for the PC then was DOS and can be stored on these diskettes, in fact running off these. Subsequently, the more rigid 3.5-inch diskette became the standard for portable storage as it can accommodate up 1.44MB of data, which dominated until the era of the optical media. The optical media came in two formats, CD and DVD, which could store up to 640MB and 8.4GB respectively. The magnetic and optical media require their respective drives to read and write. There are other media but the floppies and the CD/DVDs are the more popular ones.
In the late 1980s, mobile phones made their debut in Singapore. Since then, this communication tool has evolved into a device for work, play and everything else in between. Passers-by photograph an interesting scene and send it off to the media; office workers check their emails during lunch; students listen to music as they walk to school; and aunties chat heartily on SBS buses – all using their mobile phones! Indeed, the device has become such a fixture in the average person’s life that being without it is likely to cause some discomfiture. Let us see how the device has evolved, from its original role as a portable phone to the indispensable multifunction gadget that it is today.
We’ve come a long way since having a mobile phone as a communication tool. These days, the mobile phone has become a revered fashion accessory. Of course, there are those who want no more than for it to make voice calls and handle text messages, but more and more want devices that aid them at work, entertain them while on the go and most recently, look good while doing it all. Thumb through women’s glossies and mobile phones are striking a similar pose between the pages of designer jeans, lipsticks and perfumes.
Unveiled in the late 70s, the cassette tape driven Sony Walkman introduced consumers to the idea of a personal music device that they could bring along with them wherever they went. In this issue’s ICEage, we blow the dust off this Japanese invention and see how it measures up to its contemporary, the ubiquitous MP3 player.
