Photography has an archival product and BW silver print that has been able to last more than 150 years without a loss of quality. There never was a sable formula for a color transparency or print that would last near that long – although Kodachrome came close-if its been kept in a closed box in a dry place or B&W separations were made on guess what – silver based film!

Video tape once the staple of movies and home memories is fast fading from the scene. Its archival life was a short 20 years.

Disk technology (CD/DVD) which promised so much – a long lasting, playable disk of a quality image has also failed to live up to the hype. It was promised to give us other camera angles on clips, as well as alternate endings on movies. Where did these go?
Instead it relied on a non standard formula of cutesy play modes – viewers had to wade through menus to navigate finding the “play” button. Home made disks warped with poorly made labels and were unplayable. Ink jet CD/DVD label printers did a very good job but have almost disappeared from the consumer market.

Commercially made CD/DVD disks seem to be more archival – but even some of these will not play on every consumer player. But if you’re looking for a method of making archive disks from your home/office computer the hope is dim. The whole set of CD power point lectures I made last year are unplayable today, the DVD disks I made for the same course have fared better. I have resorted to backing up my DVD collection on .dmg images on a hard disk. Maybe they would be better archived on a flash drive with no moving parts but that technology has not come down in price and the question of longevity has yet to be addressed.

But you want to play your music and videos that you have made and collected, what will be the technology be developed that will continue to make instant archive available and portable to hear and view? Will our dreams and memories be only for a couple of decades?

http://tinyurl.com/7s9wyat

Second, who is your carrier? Generally a blackberry is only useful if you have it connected to a blackberry server. If you bring it back to Canada, will your carrier provided you the bb service?

From my own experience and the feedback that I’ve heard from my coworkers, the blackberry’s with real keyboards (not touch screen keyboards) are the best. Looking at the BB website, the Bold has a real keyboard…

I had a blackberry world, which had International capabilities, since you travel a lot, it would make sense to get a BB that could be used across the globe…

This is great! Here’s my question. I am currently in Sint Maarten and I can get cheap duty free Blackberries here that are unlocked and therefore, useful in all countries.

My question is…which Blackberry should I pick up? I’m leaning towards a BB Bold but just wanted to get your opinion.

Thanks,
JJ

Final thought…
Is this a device that can go the distance? A thermostat should have a 10-20+ year life, as wifi standards change will this be upgradable? My mac products are generally consumables, with standards making them obsolete way before their mechanics poop out, I’m thinking this product falls into eventual obsolesce category…