Stairway to heaven

Risking ridicule, as I do every fortnight, I want to say how much I'm enjoying Page and Plant at the moment. Jimmy Page and Robert Plant are half of Led Zeppelin and are currently promoting their new album by going on just about any TV show that will have them.

For those that have never read me before (hello new readers) I am a confirmed Led Zeppelin fan (goodbye new readers). In fact, my second claim to fame is to have actually spoken to Robert Plant (my first claim being I was the person that upset Bill Gates when he wouldn't tell me when OS/2 was going to ship).

One day in the mid 1970s, I gave school a miss and bunked off to Shepperton Studios where I'd heard Led Zeppelin was rehearsing. Finding the band playing, me and my mate stood by the door trying to be invisible. Ten minutes later Robert Plant walked over to the door: 'I'm going for a piss,' he announced. Seeing my opportunity I asked him 'So why won't you tell me when OS/2 is going to ship?' No, sorry, I didn't, that is the wrong story, I asked him if he would sign my Led Zeppelin songbook. He agreed.

Looking for something to say as he signed my book he said: 'Huh, it's like a *****!! aircraft hanger in here.' (Substitute *****!! for a colloquial swear word referring to copulation).

As you'd imagine, totally in awe, I just stood there, smiling, opening and closing my mouth trying to remember if I was supposed to be breathing in or out. Five minutes later, they threw us out.

And it was that phrase that came to mind as I played with the new Jaz II drive from Iomega - two gigabytes on a single exchangeable disk. It's like a sodding - no that is not the word Plant used - aircraft hanger.

I have a one gig Jaz I and I'm having trouble filling that up. Don't get me wrong, the Jaz II seems a great bit of kit, fast and (hung off an Adaptec SCSI card) easy to use, but two Gb?

These days, systems are being shipped with four and six and even eight gig hard drives; just how many Word for Windows documents are they going to take to fill up?

It seems that for so long we have been moaning about running out of disk space and the manufacturers are now getting their own back with the new aircraft hanger specification hard disk.

Is it sarcasm on behalf of disk manufacturers? Hah, we'll give them running out of disk space, let them try and fill this up? Or do they know something we don't - I've got Bill Gates on the phone, and he reckons NT5 is going to take up one gig. Minimum.

I don't know, but does the average punter really need six gig? Is this size in hard disks actually going to help anyone? Maybe we should start up a barter system with our spare disk space.

Okay, I'll swap my spare two Gb for two tickets to see Page and Plant - any takers?

Chris Long is a freelance IT journalist.