Flash vs hard drive

[Andrewinsa]

Hi everyone

I see in the specs of the 70 that the smaller one has a flash memory while the bigger one has a hard drive. Can someone who is clued up on this advise. My perception is that flash is better from the point of view that it is more stable and when switching on it is almost instantly on. Am I right, is the 250g hard drive on the 70 a slight compromise to get the bigger memory?

Thanks
Andrew

 

[Typhoons]

It make no differance to the speed of operation. The 250Gb is heavier, thicker and I inagine will go through the battery a bit quicker. But if you using it out doors it can stor all your media. The 8Gb if perfect if you only going to be web browsing/watching Youtube or streaming your media from your PC/media server at home via wifi.

 

[gurgle]

The 250 is really a continuation of Archos offering a PMP (Personal Media Player) type offering. If you want your Music and part of your video library with you all the time, then the 250 is the thing for you. It will be heavier. It will have a slightly worse battery life as Archos does a good job of read ahead caching to minimize drive read and spin. But it will be heavier. If you want a really cheap outstanding PMP running Android, The Archos 5/500 is being unloaded for under $250USD. It will now have Donut-1.6 after FW update, but a .5 Tb of storage. That would be my whole Music library and a huge number of Vids.

 

[Kingofthecan]

Hi everyone

I see in the specs of the 70 that the smaller one has a flash memory while the bigger one has a hard drive. Can someone who is clued up on this advise. My perception is that flash is better from the point of view that it is more stable and when switching on it is almost instantly on. Am I right, is the 250g hard drive on the 70 a slight compromise to get the bigger memory?

Thanks
Andrew

From a more conventional standpoint you are absolutely right, Flash memory (Example: Solid state drives for PCs/Macs) takes less juice to run (no moving parts), will not fragment, has much faster read speeds/write speeds (usually) and is generally regarded as 'better'. The drawback is that is costs more per unit of memory to make and is not as efficient at stacking data.

But in the case of the Archos 70, Typhoons/gurgle have it right- it'll probably be heavier/thicker, but it shouldn't really slow down your accessing media files and the like

 

[Andrewinsa]

thanks, you have all given me very useful info, appreciate the feedback

 

[zerotiger]

In general I recommend going with a smaller capacity tablet and spend your extra money on using a cloud based storage system instead. That's the great thing about the internet tablets, you can access music and videos from almost anywhere. Tethering on Android is easy and works remarkably well and it's hard to throw a stone and not hit a coffee shop with free WiFi.

 

[vijaykhai]

Hi Zerotiger,
My knowledge about Android is limited, so can I impose on you to expand on "cloud based storage system instead" ? How do I do this - what apps and process do I follow? I have a Wits A81E 2.2, using it since Sep. and learning hopefully. I use 8GB SD card.
Thank you.

 

[zerotiger]

Think of cloud based storage as an external hard-drive connected to the internet that you (and only you) can access from any website anywhere in the world. I personally use Dropbox. They have 2GB of free storage, which is enough for me right now. You can get additional storage by paying for it on a monthly basis. Google Docs now also offers a storage for files that are not editable in Google Docs and your Google account automatically comes with 1GB free. If you need more, it's like $0.25 per GB per year.
The advantage of this is you can skimp a little on the capacity of the device which can decrease the initial cost. You also don't have to worry so much about back-ups if your device is lost or broken. Additionally, you can access your files from your computer, cell phone, tablet, or any other computer with an internet connection. The downside is the ongoing costs and the limited capacity if you aren't around an internet connection. These are pretty minor for my uses. I don't need my entire DVD collection, photo album, and cd collection in my backpack at all times. If I'm traveling I remove a few movies from the tablet and load a couple new ones.

 

[tipstir]

I just run IIS 7 here along side of my intranet Site use the tablets to access photos, music and videos or download files. This is the only way to to it. DropBox limits on that site but. 3x TB or 2x 2TB at home on server Q4 good enough for me. True why waste your money on tablet with heavy HDD instead of using NAND but I think you 8GB or 16GB would be more ideal. Once you start loading apps that smaller NAND will start saying manage applications meaning out of space buddy!