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You could of course open your mind and take into account programs that others use too before accusing the parent of spreading rumors!

"Open my mind"? The parent said that you could count the number of apps that support 64-bit Windows on one hand, which is patently false, because I use more applications than I can count on one hand. What other people use doesn't even matter.

There are two issues here - the original said "You can count the number of apps that currently support 64 bit windows on one hand." this is cynical but true. Most 32-bit apps can run in emulation under x64 XP but thats different.

I see, so if you change the definition of "support 64 bit windows" to mean "has a natively compiled 64-bit version", then somehow that makes his argument true. Just for the sake of argument, let's pretend that it's impossible for a 32-bit application to be supported on 64-bit Windows. Off the top of my head, here's a few programs I use that have native 64-bit versions:
All of my drivers, obviously, and because I'm nice we'll count them as one program.
Logitech's mouse control center.
Half-life 2.
7-zip.
Avast Anti-virus.
Java.
Motorola's phone tools.
(we're over one hand now, but I'll go on a bit more)
PeerGuardian.
We'll lump some of MS's applications together: Internet Explorer, Windows Defender, Outlook Express, etc.
Daemon Tools.
Firefox.
And more, but this is getting tiring. Here is a list of some native 64-bit applications that popped up as the first link on Google. I hope your hands have lots of fingers.

Look, I know it's popular to hate on 64-bit Windows here on Slashdot, but the fact is that there are lots of native 64-bit applications out there, and the vast majority of existing 32-bit applications work perfectly unless they try to install drivers.

agee with Mr Coward there... laptop drives are not my choice... good power management is.

If all you wanted to know about was how to power down the hard drives, Google would have given you the answer very quickly. Just use hdparm to set the spin down time, it has done a great job of keeping my laptop 100% silent the last 5 minutes.

You seem to have gotten plenty of good answers to this part of your question:

advice on processor/mainboard combos, low power HDDs and a distro with the best power management

Laptop hard drives are low power, and are a good answer to the question you asked. If you want lower power you will be paying a premium, it is as simple as that. I did not do exhaustive research, but a quick google search turned up these links:

Desktop HD specs

Laptop HD specs

Both drives are 7200 RPM. The desktop drive requires 10.6 W for read/write and 1.3 W when sleeping. The laptop drive needs 2 W for read/write and 0.1 W in standby (my math says it needs 10 times more to sleep than standby, I must be reading something wrong). I would imagine a good 4200 RPM laptop drive beats a 5400 RPM desktop drive by a slightly better margin.

The largest laptop hard drive I can find on pricewatch is 120 GB. Four of those would likely require 20% less power when running, and 10 times less power in standby as a single 500 GB desktop drive. I think the biggest advantage in your case is the standby power consumption. You can almost leave a single laptop hard drive running for every desktop hard drive that is asleep.

If I wanted low power and redundancy... I would probably JBOD a bunch of mirrored pairs of laptop drives. Since each pair would be tacked onto the end of the previous pair the odds should be in your favor that only one pair would be on at any given time (assuming you are only working with one video file at a time). If you set your spin down times to a minute or so, it would work pretty well.

120 gig laptop drives are about 200 bucks, 500 GB desktop drives seem to be about 360 bucks. That puts laptop drive only a little more than twice as expensive as desktop drives. In my JBOD setup it is likely that you would average 1/5th the power when running, and less than 1/10th the power at idle if you went with the laptop drives. If you really want to save power that doesn't sound expensive to me.

Here is a question for you. Wouldn't you save a good bit of juice by somehow running DC straight into the PC, instead of going from DC-AC and then back to DC in the power supply? I recall this making a pretty big difference in efficiency when I was thinking about putting a PC in one of my cars. I am entirely ignorant of what you have to work with in a solar powered home, so this may not be at all easy.

Furthermore, why aren't Sparkle or Antec power supplies tested?

Maybe because the test was conducted in Germany? And Tagan is widely regarded as some of the best around (example review) in Europe? (Though not so easy to find in the U.S. yet, a few places have them.)

So, people will be forced to buy programs coded by M$ if they want to keep teir PC running?
This could be a tactic(windows hidden settings

I was wondering when/if someone was going to mention Nforce 2.

Here is a page with good info about the sound on an Nforce 2 motherboard. http://www.3dvelocity.com/reviews/nforce2/nforce_2 .htm

All of that looks impressive for ON BOARD sound, and I really think that 99.9% of the people out there would find that this is good enough.

It will .