Obsolete Technology

It's amazing how fast cutting edge technology can become obsolete. Take, for instance, the Iomega HipZip MP3 player that Jenn got me for Christmas two years ago. At the time, it was one of the better rated MP3 players. It used a propietary disk technology called Clik! that only Iomega manufactured. The discs, which were about the size of a 50 cent piece, could store up to 40MB of music. The average player on the market had between 32-64MB of storage. The benefit of the HipZip was that the storage was removeable, so you could expand your music collection well beyond a single disk.

Today, the HipZip is a relic. Iomega no longer produces the disks or the device. The ample 40MB that it provided is now dwarfed by the storage of an iPod Mini, which provides several Gigabytes of storage (1 Gigabyte = 1024 Megabytes). The iPod Mini is also smaller and lighter.

I bring this up because I was in the basement the other day and I spotted my HipZip. It was setting on the shelf, collecting dust. I had used it quite a bit when I was in the habit of jogging, but it has since fallen out of favor. It takes a bit too much effort to load music onto the device, and it was a little bulky to carry while jogging. I tried clipping it on one time, but it banged around so much I ended up with a sore. When I tried using it yesterday, the battery would no longer hold a charge. I went on eBay to see if the disks themselves had any value, and I could probably get a few bucks for each of the disks I have. That's not quite worth my effort to take them to the post office though.

So what was new, cutting edge technology just two years ago is now obsolete. Maybe I can find some interesting new use for my HipZip player. Perhaps I can rig it to play video games?