|
Coming to a home near you: Hot new products and technologies. Check out ZDNet's Future Home site.
TAKE ME THERE
|
| |
Running out of room
as you create the greatest MP3 collection ever?
By
Tobasco, RadioSpy
RadioSpy
thousands of online radio stations. instantly.
LEARN MORE
|
Today, an average new computer comes stocked with a hard drive that holds about 4 to 5 gigabytes (GB) of storage space. This is quite a lot of space and would generally meet your needs as a computer user. Two years ago, my computer came with a 4 GB hard drive, and I still have over a GB of space left after installing just about every program I could ever need, including graphics applications with plug-ins, Web design packages, lots of audio-recording software, security software, some games, Webcams and more. However, as soon as I discovered the joys of MP3s, my life changed nearly overnight. After weeks of collecting and ripping my own MP3s, I was so low on drive space, I couldn't even cache a Web page in my browser.
I suggest that you encode all of your MP3s at bit rates of 160 or higher. At this bit rate, you will fill up roughly 700 MB (0.7 GB) after only 180 songs. Add a few hundred more tracks, and you're going to be maxed out, which sucks, not only because you can't store any more music but because your computer needs some of that extra space to run smoothly. At some point, you are going to have to seriously consider your options for more storage space if you intend to run a Webcast with a good volume of material, or house a jukebox on your PC.
Next: Hard Drives
| |
|
