May 19, 2008 at 01:51Bookshelves and family data warehouse.
It is interesting how, together with the disappearance of bookshelves and cabinets from the obligatory interior of city apartments, will the issue of convenient storage and access to family data archives be addressed ?
After all, the time is coming when almost every member of the family has a personal computer (not counting mobile devices). At the same time, many books, audio recordings bought on the Internet, as well as some personal data (family photos, etc.) are not intended to be uploaded to the Internet, and are usually stored on the computer’s hard drives by one of the family members. In "advanced" families, for this purpose, separate servers are used that are connected to a common apartment LAN.
However, such a solution is convenient precisely for “advanced” users. For people whose PC knowledge can be assessed as a “user”, server support is too complicated. OS installation, drivers, network settings, ftp / http server settings, etc. - Not at all what a home user would like to do. A suitcase with signed CDs is, on the contrary, primitive, but not always convenient.
Therefore, I’ll try to fantasize on the topic “which device, and how could it effectively solve the task?” .
Perhaps the most important parameters will be:
• universal data storage interface
• universal network interface
• convenient content management
• information backup
• device autonomy
• energy efficiency
• small size
• noise level
• price
It seems to me a device smaller than macmini, using a low-power processor (~ 400 MHz, maybe xScale, down with coolers!), Built-in flash drive at ~ 80 Gb (down with noise !), connected to the device bus via USB2, long live scaling), powered by an external power supply (down with the fans!).
As the software, some kind of open cross-platform add-on over the OS is used, with a well-thought-out (taking into account specifics) interface.
The device has built-in Wi-Fi, which allows you to cling to it both from a mobile device and through an apartment Wi-Fi access point, for example, through an ADSL router with Wi-Fi.
Result: there is a silent, economical device, access to information of which can be obtained from any home computer. The device has predefined parameters of the database structure, and even an ordinary “user” with instructions will be able to get it out of the box and start using it in half an hour.
(issues of administering the device, remote access to it from the Internet, security, backup, etc. - in this case, I do not consider it as optional, that is, secondary :)
- Yes, I understand that these are just “fantasies on the topic” . And maybe in the future it will be more convenient to store all the data on remote Google-storage disks. Or maybe - the position “I keep all my things near” will be more attractive ... Who knows?
After all, the time is coming when almost every member of the family has a personal computer (not counting mobile devices). At the same time, many books, audio recordings bought on the Internet, as well as some personal data (family photos, etc.) are not intended to be uploaded to the Internet, and are usually stored on the computer’s hard drives by one of the family members. In "advanced" families, for this purpose, separate servers are used that are connected to a common apartment LAN.
However, such a solution is convenient precisely for “advanced” users. For people whose PC knowledge can be assessed as a “user”, server support is too complicated. OS installation, drivers, network settings, ftp / http server settings, etc. - Not at all what a home user would like to do. A suitcase with signed CDs is, on the contrary, primitive, but not always convenient.
Therefore, I’ll try to fantasize on the topic “which device, and how could it effectively solve the task?” .
Perhaps the most important parameters will be:
• universal data storage interface
• universal network interface
• convenient content management
• information backup
• device autonomy
• energy efficiency
• small size
• noise level
• price
It seems to me a device smaller than macmini, using a low-power processor (~ 400 MHz, maybe xScale, down with coolers!), Built-in flash drive at ~ 80 Gb (down with noise !), connected to the device bus via USB2, long live scaling), powered by an external power supply (down with the fans!).
As the software, some kind of open cross-platform add-on over the OS is used, with a well-thought-out (taking into account specifics) interface.
The device has built-in Wi-Fi, which allows you to cling to it both from a mobile device and through an apartment Wi-Fi access point, for example, through an ADSL router with Wi-Fi.
Result: there is a silent, economical device, access to information of which can be obtained from any home computer. The device has predefined parameters of the database structure, and even an ordinary “user” with instructions will be able to get it out of the box and start using it in half an hour.
(issues of administering the device, remote access to it from the Internet, security, backup, etc. - in this case, I do not consider it as optional, that is, secondary :)
- Yes, I understand that these are just “fantasies on the topic” . And maybe in the future it will be more convenient to store all the data on remote Google-storage disks. Or maybe - the position “I keep all my things near” will be more attractive ... Who knows?