Forget 4GB or 8GB flash drives, forget polyethylenedioxythiophene, forget 30GB, 80GB or 160GB hard drive based players, in a few years it will be possible to put a terabyte (TB) in a very small package. Goodbye to messages like this:

Although no 1TB iPods, Zunes or other portable music/video devices exist yet, you can safely wager they are coming. Even if PMC turns out to be a bust.

I was somewhat surprised our CD collection wouldn’t fit on the Zune 30GB. It took nearly a month of time here and there ripping the CDs to MP3 at 320kbps/44 for a total of 4,927 songs, 42.3 GB. The collection does fit easily on our 80GB iPod, so maybe it’s time for me to update to the Zune 80 (if I can find one somewhere, I hear they are hot sellers at the moment).

PMC plans to put an end to these kind of concerns in a few years. PMC might even allow me to re-rip our collection in FLAC or some other lossless format. PMC will slow aging.

Ok, joking on the last one.

PMC stands for programmable metallization cell and was created by scientists at Arizona State University. In April 2009 the first PMC memory chip is going into production via tech.co.uk:

The new memory uses nano tech to charge copper particles on the molecular scale, making it 1,000 times more energy efficient as current flash memory.

Managing a music collection larger than fits on a Zune
Running out of space did yield one side benefit, to look at the situation positively: I was able to pick and choose exactly what music would be synced. It’s been awhile since I’ve run into space issues with a portable music player.

Choosing what music to sync on the Zune is a matter of dragging individual songs, albums or artists down to the icon in the lower left corner. The Zune will update while you work. It didn’t lag far behind how fast I chose the music from the total collection. I’m not sure about you, friendly reader, but I found a significant amount of music in our family’s collection that I didn’t care to have on the Zune.

I asked our youngest teenager to help me pick a few of his favorite artists. Syncing playlists works similarly. Just click and drag the created playlist to the icon to the Zune device graphic.

It’s too bad these small TB devices aren’t here already, but since I’ve been getting more into HD quality video, I can see the out of space messages appearing for video content. Word to the scientists, hurry up and get us a petabyte storage in small packages for video. I’m positively that, health willing, I’ll be around to see the day that we can comfortably pack around our entire entertainment collection: music, videos, books, magazine.

Looking forward to it. You?

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