This week I was watching a podcast in which the original Macintosh computer (circa 1984) was compared to today’s 20-inch iMac in three respects: CPU speed, RAM and hard drive space. The original Mac used a powerful (for that era) Motorola 68000 processor blistering along at 8 megahertz. Today’s iMac? A dual-core processor at 2 gigahertz. That 250 times more clock speed.

The original Mac had 128 kilobytes of RAM. Fixed. Not upgradeable. All the RAM you’d ever need. Today’s iMac? 512 megabytes, which is 4000 times the RAM in the original Mac. The original “computer for the rest of us” had 400 kilobytes of “hard drive” space (actually a removable disk). Today’s iMacs ship with 250 gigabyte hard drives. That’s an increase of 625,000 times.

625,000 times the storage space. And you know what? Our hard drives are somehow still full. There’s an adage that goes something like “the amount you spend increases proportionately with your income”. It’s certainly true, and that adage can be modified and applied to our modern-day computers as well.

This week I’m going to give you some tips to make your hard drive storage situation worse, not better. I’m gonna tell you how to save media files (audio, video, and movies) onto your computer that you thought you couldn’t. While I’m going to focus on Mac solutions, with a little Google-ing solutions for Windows can be found as well.

Before we begin, let’s look at the different types of media available on websites. Photos on web pages are generally quite easy to snatch – as simple as dragging the photo from the web browser right onto your desktop. Audio and video are a little more difficult. There are two types of audio and video on websites: downloads and streaming.

Downloads are pretty straightforward and easy to grab. Although you may not be able to listen to or watch the file until it’s nearly completely downloaded, once it is you simply click on the downward-pointing arrow on the right side of the player controller at the bottom of the QuickTime window. You’ll see a pop-down window with two choices: “Save as Source”, which will save the file in its original source (like .mpg); and “Save as QuickTime Movie” which will save the file as a QuickTime .mov file. You then select where to save it to, and it’s yours forever.

Streaming media, as the name implies, streams data to the media player, which immediately presents the viewer with something to listen to or to watch – no waiting. If the internet connection is fast and steady, enough information is transferred and processed to provide continuous uninterrupted playback.

Most streaming media cannot be “saved” onto the computer, as in a sense there is nothing to be saved once the streaming is complete. So how does one grab streaming audio?

I use a program called Audio Hijack Pro ($29, rogueamoeba.com). Audio Hijack Pro can “record” any sound your computer can play. You simply tell it which application (like RealPlayer, which is used for a lot of streaming audio) you’re going to listen with, click the “Record” button, and start the streaming. When it’s done, Audio Hijack Pro will save the audio to your computer in the format of your choice.

For streaming video, I use SnapzPro X ($69, ambrosiasw.com). SnapzPro X grabs individual frames of video from your Mac’s screen (as well as audio), then renders them into a high-quality QuickTime movie files.

Demo versions of both Audio Hijack Pro and SnapzPro X can be downloaded from their respective websites. Give them a try, then start looking for a bigger hard drive.