Until recently I had an old mini stereo system that I had not used for a few years. AM/FM radio, CD, and dual cassette decks. Since I was not using it, I gave it to the ARC. Today, while cleaning out the cabinet it had been sitting on, I found a package of six unopened, never-used Maxell XLII 60 cassette tapes. Should I toss them in the trash, or do people still use these things? I also had some music cassettes that I've thrown out because the quality of tapes is lousy, and some spoken tapes relating to people I knew, which I'll have professionally converted to digital, maybe CD or maybe MP3. But I'm wondering what to do with the unused, unopened blank tapes.
I assume you mean cassettes, not 8-tracks, or heaven forbid reel-to-reel! Kinds always tease me about the slide rule in workshop!
Audio tapes, like VHS tapes and floppy disks- were one of those products that even though they were the best technology could produce at that time- just sucked! We had no idea what would be next (digital encodes- mp3, flac, etc) on solid state media but most still knew magnetic tape was just inadequate from the getgo. The proof is how quickly magnetic tapes (both audio cassette and VHS) faded into obscurity once digital recording media pricing became reasonable.
Yes. Cassette tapes. I did say cassette. I went through school with two slide rules (a full-size trig one at home, and a six-inch one without trig that I carried to classes) and two abacus. Also a full-size one and a small one. I felt real remorse when I bought my first hand-held calculator and abandoned the slide rule and the abacus to a drawer. I could not have gotten through school without them. And I even used the small slide rule when I took my ham radio exams. I still have both slide rules and both abacus. I'm not sure, but they might be the possessions I have owned the longest. I don't think I have anything else from back then. I was probably 10 or 12 when I got the big abacus, and I didn't yet know how to use the trig functions when I got the big slide rule, so maybe I was 14. I have a painting that was in our home before then, but it was not mine until recently.
Wow, lots of things mentioned here I've never seen in person That said, I do know cassette tapes, and would be surprised if you'd easily find someone to use them. I *think* I still have some Hi-8 tapes from stuff I recorded. At one time, I put that all onto my computer, and I'm sure it's still on one of my hard drives buried in some folder that doesn't make sense anymore. You may as well take any of those spoken tapes you plan to keep, play them in a small cassette player and record it through your computer. I used to do that with audio cassettes back in the day, but once I got CDs to replace things I deleted the old copies and ripped the CDs instead.
I don't have a cassette player anymore. I'm going to have the spoken ones professionally copied. That way I'll get the best audio quality the cassettes can deliver. It's weird to think that these tapes, which I bought back when I regularly recorded or copied stuff, but which I never got around to using, are not now worth anything to anybody. How long will it be until the blank recordable CDs I bought a few years ago, are worthless also? (I used them to send a collection of hiking photos to a bunch of friends. Now I can just upload the photos to a web site and email a link.)
I think very very few people still use tapes. I don't. My parents don't. My grandma even has CD's for music. I do still have my yellow Sony sports walkman from when I was a kid though, just can't toss that! I also still have some tapes laying around from when I was recording music but that's it and haven't played those in over a decade. Blank CD's are still used. However, hard drive storage is really the way to go, and everything is moving to the "cloud" now. It's nice to be able to access your files anywhere!
Am I getting old because I find that alarming? I like to pay for a CD (or a record in the old days) and have something for my money. Paying for a file name that doesn't really exist anywhere sort of grates me. It appears from the following that I am not alone with this view; BBC News - Sales of vinyl records rising Why the joy of vinyl records never faded | This is South Wales
The phase out from cassettes to CDs started roughly 20 years ago, if not more. I'm not overly surprised that they aren't worth too much at this point. Even CDs are going to slowly phase out with MP3s and SD storage. I still have a stack of CDs sitting around, but haven't actually used one for anything in a couple years. I've even got blank DVDs sitting at home. Given that you can get a 1GB SD card for about $5 and re-use it to your hearts desire, I don't expect even those CDs to be worth much in another 5-10 years. It'll be SD cards and the cloud. Grumpie - even with the cloud, you can still download and keep a copy locally. Even with iTunes/Amazon/etc, you don't get a physical item for your money, just a file now.
I know. I'm just a big cynic. Had too many times where a service suddenly isn't available for whatever reason or you suddenly find a subscription is due after getting used to a free service or if not subscription, thousands of annoying ads. With a cd or old vinyl (which I no longer have) you have the item AND you can copy it to your phone to listen to later. (I'm getting old aren't I? )
When you buy a song or album from iTunes, you have as much a physical copy as with a CD. With a CD you have a piece of plastic with digital information coded on its substrate. When you buy a song or album from iTunes, the digital information is coded in the magnetic medium of your hard drive, and (if you so choose) in the physical flash memory of your MP3 player. The hard drive and MP3 player are as solid and physical as a CD. The cloud is another matter. Then it's on someone else's physical media and you connect to it via the internet, and if your internet connection is down you cannot access it, and if the cloud service you use goes bankrupt, you may lose it if you have not kept a copy at home. With only one computer I have no use for the cloud. I suppose I could use it for backup, but I'm content to trust an external HD for that. I suppose if I had a fire I'd lose that. But with everything backed up to the cloud, all my personal information would be available to anyone who hacked the cloud server.
I'm with you Grumpy, I still buy CD's too. I like having the physical disc, album insert etc. The best part is I can create a 320kbps MP3 from the disc and put it where I want and sound quality is better than what you get on Amazon (don't know about itunes as I've never bought anything on there). Plus, then I don't have to worry about internet connection issues. Back to the original question though, we actually use tape backups at work for our corporate data backup. Different type of tape but tape nonetheless.
