Another standard battle coming
Toronto — DVD writer standards have just been settled with the adoption of the “Multi” format by all vendors.
But now optical drive vendors are battling over a standard for the next generation of DVD.
As Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”
It has been less than 12 months since the optical drive industry settled on a single format for DVD writers.
At one point, there were three competing formats: DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM.
DVD-RAM fell by the wayside fairly early in the game, but both the DVD-RW and DVD+RW vendors remained stubbornly beholden to their own technology for years.
The lack of a single standard delayed the adoption of DVD writers, as users did not want to be stuck with an obsolete technology.
Sony broke the impasse with the introduction of the “Multi” drive, which was able to use both DVD-RW and DVD+RW formats.
After witnessing Sony’s early success with this product, DVD-RW vendors quickly adopted the Multi format.
Hewlett-Packard, as the originator of the DVD+RW format, was slower to get on board, but even they finally moved to the Multi format. Now this format is the de facto standard for the industry.
Securing storage worries arise
Chicago — Data protection and security are the biggest challenges for information technology professionals involved in managing storage networks for their organizations, according to the results of a new Web poll released by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA).
Nearly one-third of poll respondents — 32.5 per cent —said that protecting and securing stored data is their biggest challenge. More than 660 individuals responded to the poll.