CyberLogic Blog

Last year, Thailand experienced the worst monsoon season in 50 years, with hundreds of lives lost and over two thirds of the country swamped by the end of October. The tragic images of flooded towns showed the extent of the immediate damage to the region but the long-term impact of that flooding will be felt for some time yet.

One way in which that flooding has affected the rest of the world is in the supply of computer hard disk drives (HDDs). Apart from being the second largest supplier of complete HDDs, after China, Thailand also manufactures individual components which are used by HDD manufacturers in other parts of the world. For example, there is Nidec, a Thai company that supplies more than 70 percent of all HDD motors worldwide. All of the leading hard drive brands, including Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi, Toshiba and Samsung, use motors produced by Nidec.

Many of these companies were impacted by the floods and as a result, the global supply of HDDs slowed to a trickle. Most of the affected manufacturers are only expecting to have their production rates back to normal by the end of the second quarter of this year, which is a long time away. Until then we face a severe shortage of HDDs around the world.

The Current Situation

At present, some HDD models and capacities are simply not available. Those wanting to purchase HDDs will have to choose from a very limited range of drive capacities, and at much higher prices than before; over double the usual price in many cases. Prices are still climbing and that is expected to continue for a few more months.

South Africa is not immune to the problem, of course. In fact, we face a double-whammy, as the weakening of the Rand against the Dollar in recent months makes the rising global cost of hard drives even more severe for South Africans.

Of course, there is little that we consumers can do about this, but if you’re planning to purchase any HDDs within the next few months, don’t delay. Your options will be even more limited in a few weeks from now and prices will be higher.

Looking on the bright side…

There is one possible upside to all of this, and that is the impact it will have on the adoption of Solid State Drive (SSD) technology. Because SSDs don’t have any moving components, the manufacturers have been able to continue production of SSDs while HDD production was hampered. As the crisis continues, many consumers will be forced to purchase the more expensive SSD drives instead of traditional HDDs. In fact, the effects of this are already being seen, with SSD manufacturers like Sandisk expecting higher profits on the back of rising SSD sales. This accelerated adoption of SSD technology will help to make these units more affordable. And that is a good thing for all of us!

The reason I say it’s good news is that SSDs are superior to hard disk drives for many applications, such as high-end laptops and ultra-fast server storage. The biggest benefit of SSDs is that they are very fast – up to 100 times faster than HDDs. That makes an enormous difference. Many high-end laptops have been supplied with SSDs for some time now, and their performance is worlds apart from what is achievable from an HDD based system. SSDs are also more resilient; because they don’t have spinning disks and moving arms, they handle shock and vibration far more gracefully than the notoriously sensitive HDDs do. And they are more energy efficient, as the lack of moving parts means that less energy is lost to heat. That is particularly important for mobile devices such as laptops which need to preserve battery life.

On the downside, SSDs are still a lot more expensive than HDDs, and they are not yet available in the very large sizes of some HDDs. Hopefully the boost in SSD adoption will help the technology to mature and to overcome these challenges more quickly!

So, while the current HDD shortage poses a significant challenge for IT service providers and consumers in the short term, it will also have a positive spin-off, as the adoption of the superior SSD technology is accelerated.

I was recently lucky enough to have a Grandstream GXV3140 IP multimedia phone given to me for testing. From the outset, my impressions were very good. The packaging was of a high quality and certainly added to the excitement of getting the device up and running. It didn’t take very long to do just that! Setup was very easy and integrating it into our Trixbox PABX was child’s play. We had two units in our office and it wasn’t long before we were making video and phone calls to each other.

The unit comes with a 4.3″ TFT colour LCD, 1.3 Megapixel camera and dual Ethernet ports so that you can have both your phone and your computer connected via a single network point. PoE is not available for this model. It would have been a nice addition but then there are more expensive models that do offer that functionality.

Being a multimedia phone, it comes with a host of web applications such as a web browser, IM, MSN, Google, Skype, Facebook, RSS feeds for weather, news and stocks, etc. Other features include Internet radio, multimedia streaming from the Internet, SD support, USB support, and Flickr web photo albums. It also has a built-in alarm clock, calendar, games etc. The list of features was very impressive and we found it quite useful to have some of these feeds, such as the weather forecast, available at a glance.

The firmware version that was on the phone didn’t have Skype installed on it but apparently Skype is included with more recent firmware updates. I did, however, manage to test other Social Media platforms such as Facebook and MSN. For these apps, I found navigating around via the buttons to be a little cumbersome compared to doing it on a computer. The same applies to the web browser. If there is a computer handy, that will be your first choice for browsing, but failing that it’s very nifty to have a quick way of getting on to the Internet.

The core functions of the phone are very good indeed. The voice and video quality are both superb, as we’ve come to expect from Grandstream, and we liked the fact that the frame rates are displayed on the screen during video calls. This particular model is not a touch screen (see the GXV3175 7″ for that), so all inputs are performed by buttons. This took some getting used to, but once I got the hang of it I found the menu navigation to be fairly simple.

All in all the GXV3140 is a crisp, clear and very capable phone. It’s easy to setup and configure, and it has a quality feel about it. If you need voice and video calling at an affordable price, this is certainly a good phone to consider. It would even make a nice bedside phone, removing the need for a separate alarm clock and giving you quick access to the weather forecast for the next day. If want something a little more powerful, with touch screen functionality, I’d consider the Grandstream GXV3157 model as an alternative. Both of these phones are available from Miro Distribution.