Poverty

Following up on my recent post on DVD-R prices, today I had to buy another spindle and this time I gave in and bought Samsung instead of Verbatim, my poster-child of data integrity and non-coasterness. I figure, I can either get 25 Verbatim DVD-Rs for 14.50€ (58 euro-cents each) or 50 Samsung ones for 19.90€ (40 euro-cents each). Price is seldom a consideration in my technology purchasing decisions as I believe that you generally get what you pay for. This is why I pay for some of the most expensive but best web hosting in the universe (Rackspace), and why whenever I buy a new machine from Apple I go for the top-of-the-range, no matter what the damage to my credit card will be.

But in the case of these DVD-Rs, they’re used for once-off, daily backups. I don’t really care if the data on them will be intact 10 years from now; what I want to know is that if I have a hardware failure I’ll be able to go back to my back-up from the previous day and restore. So, for now, out with Verbatim, in with Samsung.