Thursday, June 16, 2016

Financial lines of defense

One must have multiple lines of defense to call upon in need of any financial situation. I will list this order from the first line of defense to the last:
1. Credit card of self
2. Credit card of spouse (for this you both should have an add on card of each other)
3. Cash from ATMs drawing on your various bank accounts
4. NEFT/ RTGS/ IMPS transactions drawing upon the bank acccount funds
5. Taking short term loan from family and friends
6. Short term Fixed deposits in banks
7. Medium term fixed deposits in banks
8. Mortgage of physical gold to raise funds in emergency
9. Stocks or tax free bonds sold in the market/ Mutual funds
10. Selling physical assets (gold, land, building) though this will take time.
These are as per liquidity provided and the amounts available from the various sources.
These various financial instruments should be used to get the optimum level of returns for the risk and while not compromising liquidity.

Saturday, June 4, 2016

Big Hard disk companies skimp over providing data

I wanted to buy an external hard disk drive and had a tough time finding basic data to compare and choose the product. I wanted to buy among the big hard disk drive companies Western Digital and Seagate products, but their information on their website is grossly inadequate.
They provide so many varieties in the segment of portable external hard disk but do not provide sufficient information to distinguish one from another within this category.
Have a look at the information on their websites:


First, the real idea of portable is missing. I was looking for the dimensions of the products.
Second, the weight of the product is missing.
Third, their backward compatibility to the old operating systems is also missing. Will they work with Windows Vista? I cant say.
Fourth, what technology are they using? Are they mechanical or solid state devices?
Fifth, at what speed do they run? 5400 rpm or 7200 rpm? The faster they run, the hotter they get.
Sixth, WD speaks about the backup software in it. But what is the difference between these? Where am I supposed to look for it?
Seven, what is the power consumption of these hard disks? There should be some examples or range of numbers. Nothing is available.
Eight, I have seen some external hard disks being connected to laptops with two usb drives in the past as they need more power to run. I cant make out whether they need single USB or two USB ports to run.

Some of these are very technical, but some are very basic for usability and trade offs while buying a product.
The sad part is not only are these available on the website, these are also not available in the outer box of the external portable hard disk I bought. WD fortunately had the OS compatibility printed on it.

Hard disk companies talk of providing TBs of data but skimp on providing even some basic bytes of important data.