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ericd@belkin.com enjoys his peace and quiet. ericd@belkin.com does not like unsolicited email. People should not send messages to ericd@belkin.com unless they are personally affected by the issue. Spammers should not illegally harvest the email address ericd@belkin.com.

ericd@belkin.com enjoys his peace and quiet. ericd@belkin.com does not like unsolicited email. People should not send messages to ericd@belkin.com unless they are personally affected by the issue. Spammers should not illegally harvest the email address ericd@belkin.com.

We have one of those 4-port DVI KVMs (F1DD104U) and I have to tell you, we've gone through at least 3 RMAs on it.

The first DVI port DOES NOT WORK at resolutions above 1024x768. On any of them.
The LCD goes absolutely fucknuts when connected to it.

It's sad. All of ours are being used 3x1 because of it.

Let's face it, Belkin sucks. Cables are way overpriced. Don't ever buy anything from them.

Bottom line, thanks to Slashdot I'm not buying my routers from Belkin (not that I'm a telecom person, but still I'd be careful if I ever had to).

This is their wireless router -- it's made for home use, not for telecomm use.

And don't just not buy routers from Belkin. Don't buy anything. No routers, no cables, no USB hubs, no keyboards, nothing. Belkin makes a great deal of stuff -- boycot all of it. There's not a single product they make that they don't have competition for.

And let them know about it too. Email them (look here for the appropriate regional sales address) and tell them that you will no longer purchase their products until they apologize for doing this, put out a patch to fix it, and promise to never do anything along these lines again. Yes, I've already sent my email.

I've got a decent number of Belkin products... they're decently made, and often available for a good price. But there's no way I'll purchase anything from them at this point if I can't actually rely on the product to do it's intended purpose. And that's what this boils down to -- you have a router that doesn't route properly.

It's not a router but, as I'm an avid gamer, I bought one of these a while back. Belkin has now firmly established that it won't provide trustworthy firmware/driver software, not just for their routers, but for any product.

Even though I don't use the Belkin Speedpad anymore (I've since migrated to this), I'll be yanking it out of my machine when I get home tonight.

Absolutely inexcusable.

Schwab

Too bad their "employment" page is broken. I guess they need a new web admin and new PR people.

1. Ya, thats annoying, but its got a hold switch
2. Mine too! wtf is with that...
3. Well, you can with itunes
4. ...you have untagged mp3s?
5. Belkin has an ipod battery backup which lets you use 4 AA batteries. A little bulky, but its great for long airplane rides.
6. Doesnt bother me
7. Ya, the "wired" remote sucks. Give me a wireless remote or dont give me one at all. I dont even use mine

Other than that, ipod rules!

Check it out. It does make your iPod quite a bit larger though.

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process ?Merchant_Id=1&Product_Id=148969

I personally get about 8 hours from my iPod. And when I need more juice I use this:

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process ?Merchant_Id=&Section_Id=201526&pcount=&Product_Id =148969

If you need to listen to music for more than 10 hours having an optional battery pack is a must, and it uses AA's so I just swap those for more power.

I don't see one offered for the Dell or Samsung player.

My main problem is that they wont add Memory Stick Pro support to this thing. Sony only makes the 256MB and higher cards in that format so I'm SOL to be able to use this toy. Then I agree that they need to fix the file transfer issue. Couldn't they also make it run off the iPod's battery? I'd much rather have than with a really small reader as opposed to this big thing that takes 4 AA batteries. I've written them vial email to add these features but they basically come back saying "we have no plans to ever add these features".

Send an email to Belkin and complain! sales@belkin.com

Yeah, I haven't been a fan of Belkin since having to use their KVM stuff back in the days of ADB. While their PC KVM stuff was far from cheap, they charged (and still charge) absolutely extortionate prices for Mac KVM equipment. Also, their solutions were sloppy-- if you wanted to switch between an ADB Mac and a PS/2 PC, it required a ridiculous mess of cables and adapter boxes with ports on multiple sides that was completely impossible to set up neatly, especially in limited space like your average office cubicle.

These days we just get an IOGear MiniView Micro and a cheap PS/2-USB "Y" adapter (and for older Macs, a cheap USB PCI card), and all of those combined cost a fraction of what we paid Belkin for just their Mac ADB KVM adapter back in the day.

The FM transmitter isn't a differentiator, it's available for any MP3 player (or any audio source for that matter). For instance, this one from Belkin. If it was built-in, that would definitely be a differentiating feature.

... but until Griffin comes out with a new product (my money is on them) or Belkin updates its 'voice recorder' with a mic-in jack, the Mini-Disc still has the edge over the iPod as to being a great portable recorder/bootlegging device.

then again, the MiniDisc "should have" supported optical transfer from it to a digital optical in, such as the one the new G5s ship with, to really stay 'interesting'. right now, it's only useful to record. soon, it won't be useful at all. :-)

Greg

You can use with iPhoto or access it as a removable drive in both OS X and Windows. See http://web.belkin.com/support/kb/kb.asp?a=2832 for more details.

I am reading a lot about Linksys, but I don't read nothing about Belkin, who uses the same Broadcom chip in their 54 Mbit access point F5D7130 and router F5D7230-4. They both use a setup very typical to that of Linksys, as noted in some articles (including an article on how to hack the Linksys to customize its system).

If Linksys get it, Belkin surely must get it too ...

I am reading a lot about Linksys, but I don't read nothing about Belkin, who uses the same Broadcom chip in their 54 Mbit access point F5D7130 and router F5D7230-4. They both use a setup very typical to that of Linksys, as noted in some articles (including an article on how to hack the Linksys to customize its system).

If Linksys get it, Belkin surely must get it too ...

I am reading a lot about Linksys, but I don't read nothing about Belkin, who uses the same Broadcom chip in their 54 Mbit access point F5D7130 and router F5D7230-4. They both use a setup very typical to that of Linksys, as noted in some articles (including an article on how to hack the Linksys to customize its system).

If Linksys get it, Belkin surely must get it too ...

There's tons of PC joypads these days that emulate the look and feel of a Playstation controller very well these days. They're usually around the same price or cheaper, and they come with well-written software drivers and other goodies like keyboard emulation for games that don't directly support gamepads. (Which, fortunately, aren't that many anymore.)

For example, I have Belkin's N45, which buy.com has for just $16. Been working great for 2 years now, no complaints, and I don't really notice any difference switching between it and a PS2 controller. Plus it plugs in out of the box, no rewiring skills required :) I'm sure there are many other brands that are just as good.

There are several converters that cost around $6 to $15, but being a student in search of a part time job I am reluctant to spend the money and it's more satisfying to do the mod yourself."

Playing music from the portable over FM radio is a great feature that I wish was available in the iPod.

They buy a Belkin TuneCast or a Griffin iTrip.

4 buttons? How primitive. Modern users have 16-button mice, caveman!

I've had pretty much the same thing for the past 10 years. I started with a very simple one like the(Belkin 11 piece toolkit. This is a good start since you get a nice case, a box with compartments to keep extra screws etc. in and crappy tools that you can use until you get better ones.

I chucked the IC extractor, and the elastic loop is perfect for a small wirecutter and a smallish (very cheap) pair of needlenose pliers.

The socket drivers and torx T15 were good enough. You have to use them once in a while, but not so much that it's worth investing in better ones.

I found that I often need both large and small phillips and flathead screwdrivers, so I chucked the 'large' phillips from the kit and put in a 4-in-1 type where the shaft pulls out and reverses to switch between flathead and phillips, then each bit pulls out to switch between large and small. Nice comfortable handle too. The large flathead was removed to make room for other stuff.

The small phillips and flatheads in the kit are really lousy, but servicable. I chucked one in favor of a two-in one unit offered as swag by many vendors. Longer shaft has a flatheat, on the other side is a shorter shaft with a small phillips. Most versatile tool in the kit since the flathead can work larger phillips screws. (one of these is pictured in This kit.)

I chucked the other small screwdriver and used the loop to hold a small maglite flashlight (AAA size I think). This also holds 1-2 slot covers.

The parts box has an assortment of screws, jumpers (small and large), some twist-ties, etc. that I've picked up over the years.

One piece of paper and a pen for notes.

Static strap stored under pliers and wirecutters, static strap lead bundled with a twist-tie shoved next to something so it doesn't fall out.

Tweezers were useless - trashed. Needlenose pliers are much better.

The 'three pronged parts retriever' is almost worth the price of the whole kit. Very useful for holding small screws and 'getting them started' in a tight spot.

Over the years other parts have come and gone -- panduit jack crimper, mirror, cage nut tool, etc.

I've found that most of the commercial kits (e.g. the $60 toolkits) are filled with useless things like soldering irons, or tools that are too low-quality for regular use (e.g. bad wirecutters) and the larger cases are too bulky to carry around casually. Much better to spend 12-20 bucks to get a case and some basic tools then spend the other 30-50 bucks on good tools. It's worth it to spend a few bucks on the tools you use a _lot_ (e.g.: screwdriver), while the junky tools (like the included T-15 torx) are OK since you only need to use them once in a while.

I've had pretty much the same thing for the past 10 years. I started with a very simple one like the(Belkin 11 piece toolkit. This is a good start since you get a nice case, a box with compartments to keep extra screws etc. in and crappy tools that you can use until you get better ones.

I chucked the IC extractor, and the elastic loop is perfect for a small wirecutter and a smallish (very cheap) pair of needlenose pliers.

The socket drivers and torx T15 were good enough. You have to use them once in a while, but not so much that it's worth investing in better ones.

I found that I often need both large and small phillips and flathead screwdrivers, so I chucked the 'large' phillips from the kit and put in a 4-in-1 type where the shaft pulls out and reverses to switch between flathead and phillips, then each bit pulls out to switch between large and small. Nice comfortable handle too. The large flathead was removed to make room for other stuff.

The small phillips and flatheads in the kit are really lousy, but servicable. I chucked one in favor of a two-in one unit offered as swag by many vendors. Longer shaft has a flatheat, on the other side is a shorter shaft with a small phillips. Most versatile tool in the kit since the flathead can work larger phillips screws. (one of these is pictured in This kit.)

I chucked the other small screwdriver and used the loop to hold a small maglite flashlight (AAA size I think). This also holds 1-2 slot covers.

The parts box has an assortment of screws, jumpers (small and large), some twist-ties, etc. that I've picked up over the years.

One piece of paper and a pen for notes.

Static strap stored under pliers and wirecutters, static strap lead bundled with a twist-tie shoved next to something so it doesn't fall out.

Tweezers were useless - trashed. Needlenose pliers are much better.

The 'three pronged parts retriever' is almost worth the price of the whole kit. Very useful for holding small screws and 'getting them started' in a tight spot.

Over the years other parts have come and gone -- panduit jack crimper, mirror, cage nut tool, etc.

I've found that most of the commercial kits (e.g. the $60 toolkits) are filled with useless things like soldering irons, or tools that are too low-quality for regular use (e.g. bad wirecutters) and the larger cases are too bulky to carry around casually. Much better to spend 12-20 bucks to get a case and some basic tools then spend the other 30-50 bucks on good tools. It's worth it to spend a few bucks on the tools you use a _lot_ (e.g.: screwdriver), while the junky tools (like the included T-15 torx) are OK since you only need to use them once in a while.

I got tired of all the noise my '486-66 PC was making, so I decided to move the machine further away from my desk. I went down to Fry's and picked up some VGA/keyboard/mouse extension cables, cut a hole in the wall, and ran the cables through the wall. With the machine in the other room, I could barely hear it.

But if put my ear to the wall, I could still discern a hum. And my CPU temp was still consistently above 20C. I considered freon cooling, but that's bad for the environment. I then tried water cooling, but zebra mussels clogged my water pump.

Then ZAM! I thought of Arctic Cooling. So I called up Belkin and ordered 3000 miles of VGA/keyboard/mouse extension cables and ran them along the Alaskan pipeline. I wanted to place the '486 as near to the north pole as possible, but financial constraints forced me to put it outside a raindeer herder's shed in Nome.

When I first hooked everything up, there were some minor glitches to work through. Timber wolves had chewed through the VGA cable in the northern Yukon. This was easily fixed with my trusty portable butane solder gun and Kevlar heat-shrink tubing.

Back in my home office. I couldn't hear the PC at all. And CPU temps hover at just about -18C most of the year.

Now about that faint buzzing produced by my monitor...

take your ipod, and its radio transmitter; mix liberally with a radio receiver and a lovegety. you now have a 10-30 foot sphere of sharable personal soundtrack.

Wires are where it's at.

No problem getting the specs. You want CAT5e? CAT6? RS-232? How about some coax?

Be it twisted pair, fibre optic, stranded, or even tin cans on a string, wires are the future.

Pulling wire is the most fulfilling home improvement project you can undertake.

When you realize you can have gigabit capability in any room in the house, even the never-used bathroom in the addition, let me tell you, it's a great feeling.

Of course I have gigabit capability, but not enough bananas for a 32 ports of gigabit switching goodness on my rack. But even my 10mbit/100mbit hybrid of discarded switches from the office beats the unreliable 802.11 bulldink.

WAP, Shmap.

Wires are where it's at.

Playing the iPod on my car stereo (actually a CD player) was my biggest hold-out for getting an iPod. Then Apple listed the Belkin thing on their main page, I clicked for info, and was cursing my computer because I knew I wouldn't make it through the day being $450 poorer.

It's real simple. You plug it in to the audio jack, and tune your stereo to one of 4 low frequency channels. Belkin has more info on it than Apple does. It's not really iPod specific, but very handy (not to mention the look of it) for iPod. I think it runs on 2 AAA batteries.

Here's Belkin's page on that product.

-Alex

• The Belkin High Speed Internet Modem cable attaches your modem or home phone to your telephone wall jack and transmits 10 times faster than any normal telephone cable for a clean, and clear transmission.
• 24K gold plated RJ11 contacts provide maximum conductivity to keep data from getting lost.

This is a $70 parallel cable. People will leap at the chance to buy a printer cartridge that turns itself off.

"Gold is one of the most sought after metals in the world. So we have added this precious metal to our top of the line GOLD series IEEE 1284 printer cable, making it the fastest parallel data transfer available."

How can you argue reasonably with people who go for that?

String cables.

Wireless stuff is all a big fad that'll end as soon as its proven how much cancer it causes.

Wires and cables are where it's at.

I have a Nostromo n45 dual analog USB gamepad. I picked it up at buy.com for $16. It works great and is very flexible. The only thing I had issues with was the looseness of the analog sticks. They work great but they are not as tight as the ones on a real PS2/PS1 analog controller. Once you get used to it, it is fine.
For car racing games I am more picky. I have found the fine control of a large analog flight stick is easier then a smaller analog stick for steering. The more realistic the physics model is of the game , the more a twitchy or jumpy joystick hurts the game play, trying to play Gran Turismo (good game) with a digital controller (bad thing) is a perfect example. I've also tried various steering wheel combos but did not like any of them. The best controller I ever had for racing was a handheld racing wheel that was shaped similar to how you would hold a fishing rod. It had high density foam around a spring return wheel on top, an analog trigger like control underneath (accelerate) and a analog button on top for the left thumb (brake), plus a few other digital buttons for e-brake, horn etc.. Whatever company made it (Interact?) had a PSX version and one for the PC but it was not USB. I wish I could find something like this in USB now.

What you want is a Nostromo n50 Speedpad.

This thing is positively orgasmic. Four toggleable modes for every control. Ten keys. A D-pad. A wheel. Completely configurable. Any set of keys. For example, my D-pad does jump+forward, jump+back, etc etc, one key mode does movement, another mode does orders (while holding down the previous key pressed), yet another mode does taunts, and still another mode does acknowledgements.

Hot damn. I love this thing. A Speedpad positively screams "awesome" when you bring it to a lan party. I nearly pissed myself when I saw it at the Belkin booth at MacWorld New York.

> Easily accessible USB ports is my main gripe about this idea

Look here and here and here.

Or is anyone else sick of hearing about 802.11 and 3G wireless?

Let's see some articles about wires!

Cat3, Cat5e, Coax, Fiber, Copper strands, it makes no difference!

Wires are where it's at. Less NET, more WORK.

This is what we use at work.

Have you looked at Belkin's Nostromo n50 Speedpad? I use this for most games and it work pretty well once you get used to it.

Belkin

Lots of great products for all budgets.

I've started small and built on my setup over the years. Finally needed to move away from the humming mass of metal and electricity.

OmniView(TM) SOHO Series 4-Port KVM and a OmniView(TM) CAT5 KVM Extender. Setup was able to switch between four computers well. Great picture and never had a problem with keyboard and mouse (PS/2 or USB) at distances past 200 meters. Windows, linux, BSD, whatever...

Total setup was $498US.

You mean like one of these.

Excerpt from page:

Belkin OmniView MATRIX2 Series KVM Switches deliver the reliable performance and centralized control to two administrators to manage medium to large server environments. Each Switch gives two system administrators control over multiple-platform computers from both consoles. Offering both PS/2 and USB support, the MATRIX2 Series provides superior features such as computer naming and selection through On-Screen Display (OSD) and hot keys, as well as easy manual switching with direct-access port selectors and active-port LEDs. Daisy-chaining up to 16 MATRIX2 KVM Switches expands your control over servers and computers. Two seven-segment displays indicate the administrators' active computer's BANK address for daisy-chained units.

Of course you have to be willing to spend the cash to get one, about $800.

like the belkin matrix? that can connect 2 displays to any of 128 computers?

You also have to get special equipment to extend the monitor cable so that it shows up clear if you put the box in another room.

...uhhhh, maybe a little EXPENSIVE, but hardly special equipment. I got sick of my new boxes getting louder and louder and finally chose a simple solution. Extension cables for the monitor, audio, keyboard, mouse and USB. My box now sits 30-40ft away in another room, and my workstation is peaceful once more.

No flicker, no ghosting. Picked them up from Belkin .

I have a few USB kvm switches in my home

I believe it's exactly the same as this model from IOGear, although that's not the name on the box. They cost just over $100 and switch 4 computers each.

On the back, there's a USB port and a video port for each computer. Then there's another port for the monitor and 4 ports for any USB peripherals. I use a sun type-6 usb keyboard, a microsoft optical usb mouse. I believe this should work with a mac too.

Now here's the reality of working with this setup: when you switch between computers, the USB devices are disconnected on one system, then enumerated on the new system. On windows, you get the busy cursor for about 2-3 seconds before the mouse and keyboard become active. On linux or solaris, you get a bunch of new devices in the log appearing or disappearing every time you switch over. Also, on redhat, it seems that if I boot the system without being switched to the keyboard and mouse the window system may not start until you log in and say startx.

Now belkin makes a USB & PS/2 kvm switch. It will even switch audio as well. I bought one of these, only to find out that I can't use my USB keyboard. What it does is accept a PS/2 style keyboard and pass those signals on to computers that need PS/2, and pretend to be a USB keyboard for the other systems. This could eliminate the switching problems (the systems never see a disconnect/reconnect), but you don't get the benefit of a USB keyboard.

Also, for what it's worth, Network Technologies makes a bunch of KVM switches. I had one of their rack-mount switches a while back and it worked fine. I could use a sun type-5 keyboard and mouse with lots of suns and PC's.

I recently set up two Belkin OmniView SOHO series KVMs at work. One of the stations required a Mac and an IBM PC. We used the PS2 version and PS2-to-USB adapters for the Mac. It works pretty well; the only issue I've seen is that the mouse sample rate seems low on the Mac, but that might be the fault of a crappy wheel mouse (I'm used to opticals by now). Note that Belkin has USB solutions in the SOHO series, so that might be something to consider.

I prefer the Belkins over the Linksys KVMs because the cable management is sooo much nicer. The cables come out of the Linksys at right angles, ewwww.

I recently set up two Belkin OmniView SOHO series KVMs at work. One of the stations required a Mac and an IBM PC. We used the PS2 version and PS2-to-USB adapters for the Mac. It works pretty well; the only issue I've seen is that the mouse sample rate seems low on the Mac, but that might be the fault of a crappy wheel mouse (I'm used to opticals by now). Note that Belkin has USB solutions in the SOHO series, so that might be something to consider.

I prefer the Belkins over the Linksys KVMs because the cable management is sooo much nicer. The cables come out of the Linksys at right angles, ewwww.

If you don't already have at least a basic video switchbox or basic HDI-15 & dual ps2 KVM, you might as well throw the money and do it right.
We're doing this at the office for some secretarial luser who needs both a W2K and Mac box. We picked up one of the Belkin Omniview SOHO 4's and had no problem hooking it up to both platforms. I've also heard that it works with linux (at least on a RH7.0 install someone had...YMMV)

My Belkin F1DS104T disagrees with you. It has PS/2 inputs and four ports of PS/2 or USB (your choice per-port) goodness. It also supports 1600x1200 resolutions at 85Hz without blurring. Oh, yeah - I got it for about $130 from Pricewatch, and I'd consider that to be pretty reasonable for a very high quality piece of hardware that works perfectly 100% of the time.

I've got a Belkin ErgoBoard, which has worked very well for me. The hand positioning it encourages is much more comfortable for me than the MS Natural keyboards, and the keys have good feedback to them. Belkin lists it for about $40, I found mine for $25.
The one thing I don't like about it are the power and suspend buttons on the upper right. Disabled them by opening up the keyboard and sticking a piece of paper between the membranes.

Two very simple but practical suggestions for geeks who already have a lot of toys spread all over their home (I got both for myself during the past year, and they've helped me clean up my living room a bit, and were well worth it):

First, the cheap one: a $20
video/S-video switch (the SVS1000, not the AVS500 on that page) to connect more things to the TV. I've got my N64 and Dreamcast going through it, and will probably also route one or two of my VCRs through it. Simple but handy. But a warning: if you give one to an uber-geek he may complain that the box degrades the video quality noticeably; I didn't notice any image degradation at all with Mario Kart 64, which was my main concern. I just picked up one of these when I bought a Dreamcast after they came down to $50, since my TV didn't have any more free inputs.

Second, and much more expensive, a KVM switch, to share one keyboard/monitor/mouse among multiple computers. I got myself a Belkin OmniView SE 4-port (they claim list price around $260, but I'm pretty sure I got mine quite a bit cheaper) and I'm really happy to have reclaimed so much room on my desk; now I'm able to pile up so many more papers than before!

Lately when Christmas approaches, I've started wondering where I can make room for any more stuff I get. These two things have given me a bit of extra room and helped me organize all the wires a bit.

Belkin makes EXACTLY this sort of device. In fact, the box is labeled "USB Switch". I saw it yesterday when I was going to pick up my Mac OS X 10.1 CD's at CompUSA... (Hey, I don't like CrapUSA either, but they had the CD's...)

I was thinking to myself, "Hey, cool, a switched fabric for USB! Now my subwoofer won't share bandwidth with my digital camera!" But that isn't what they meant. :-)

Good luck!

--DM

"I challenge someone here to rough up some specs for a US$140,000 general purpose PC rig, running whatever OS is appropriate for its purpose."

Alright, I'm bored, I've got some time to kill...let's see how close I can get.

[A couple hours pass]

Alright, I suppose I could keep adding things onto this, but I won't. I got it up to $10,103.46, though. It's a multimedia workstation designed for graphics and digital video editing, high-performance gaming, DVD playback, and DVD authoring, with all the accessories.

• Case: PC 60 Aluminum w/3 Case Fans and Window Kit, $229.99
• Power supply: Antec PP403X 400W Power Supply $84.10
• Motherboard: ASUS CUV4X-DLS w/SCSI $333.62
• Processors: 2 x Intel Coppermine PIII 933mhz $398.00 ($199.00 ea)
• Processor fans (x2): Antec Heavy Duty CPU Fan $33.54 (16.77 ea)
• RAM: 256mb Kingston PC133 DIMM $156.64
• IDE cable (x2): Rounded $25.98 ($12.99 ea)
• Floppy drive: Compaq LS-120 internal IDE $127.99
• DVD/CD-RW Drive: HP CD-Writer 9900ci 12x10x32x DVD 8x $349.99
• DVD Decoder: Creative Labs Dxr3 $79.99
• CD Drive: Creative Labs CD-ROM Blaster 52x $49.99
• DVD-RAM Drive: Panasonic LF-D201U SCSI-2 $649.00
• SCSI Cable (x3): Rounded $38.97 ($12.99 ea)
• SCSI Hard drive (x2): Seagate Cheetah73 73GB U160 $1576.00 ($788.00 ea)
• RAID Controller: Asus PCI-DA2100 SCSI RAID $609.00
• IEEE 1394 Card: Belkin F5U501 PCI $79.95
• Video: VisionTek GeForce3 64mb AGP $389.99
• Monitor: Samsung 18" Syncmaster TFT LCD $1891.00
• Sound: Creative Labs SBLive X-Gamer $99.99
• Speakers: Creative Labs/Cambridge SoundWorks DTT3500 Dolby 5.1 Digital $299.99
• Printer: Epson Stylus 2000P Inkjet Printer $869.99
• Scanner: HP ScanJet 6300Cxi 1200dpi $387.36
• Mouse: Razer Boomslang 2000 $82.99
• Mouse Pad: 3m Precise Mousing Service $8.49
• Keyboard: IBM Preferred 104-key Black $59.00
• Joystick: Microsoft SideWinder Force Feedback 2 $109.00
• Steering Wheel: Microsoft SideWinder Force Feedback Wheel USB $159.00
• Game Pad: Gravis Eliminator GamePad Pro $26.99
• UPS: APC Smart-UPS 1000 XL $577.92
• Operating System: Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional $319.00

That's right, Win2K. I know we all love linux in here, Win2K is actually a decent OS, especially for all of the tasks I've specced this out for.

--