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Socket 370 Motherboard: $25

Celeron 733: $32

128MB Memory: $32

nVidia Geforce 4: $47

DVD-ROM: $28

Case w/ 300W PS: $23

20GB 7200 RPM HD: $57

4 Channel Sound Card: $8

Total: $252

Of course, the XBox has a 5.1 channel sound card, but, other than that, this box would be superior. Not as cheap, though.

Socket 370 Motherboard: $25

Celeron 733: $32

128MB Memory: $32

nVidia Geforce 4: $47

DVD-ROM: $28

Case w/ 300W PS: $23

20GB 7200 RPM HD: $57

4 Channel Sound Card: $8

Total: $252

Of course, the XBox has a 5.1 channel sound card, but, other than that, this box would be superior. Not as cheap, though.

Socket 370 Motherboard: $25

Celeron 733: $32

128MB Memory: $32

nVidia Geforce 4: $47

DVD-ROM: $28

Case w/ 300W PS: $23

20GB 7200 RPM HD: $57

4 Channel Sound Card: $8

Total: $252

Of course, the XBox has a 5.1 channel sound card, but, other than that, this box would be superior. Not as cheap, though.

Socket 370 Motherboard: $25

Celeron 733: $32

128MB Memory: $32

nVidia Geforce 4: $47

DVD-ROM: $28

Case w/ 300W PS: $23

20GB 7200 RPM HD: $57

4 Channel Sound Card: $8

Total: $252

Of course, the XBox has a 5.1 channel sound card, but, other than that, this box would be superior. Not as cheap, though.

Socket 370 Motherboard: $25

Celeron 733: $32

128MB Memory: $32

nVidia Geforce 4: $47

DVD-ROM: $28

Case w/ 300W PS: $23

20GB 7200 RPM HD: $57

4 Channel Sound Card: $8

Total: $252

Of course, the XBox has a 5.1 channel sound card, but, other than that, this box would be superior. Not as cheap, though.

Socket 370 Motherboard: $25

Celeron 733: $32

128MB Memory: $32

nVidia Geforce 4: $47

DVD-ROM: $28

Case w/ 300W PS: $23

20GB 7200 RPM HD: $57

4 Channel Sound Card: $8

Total: $252

Of course, the XBox has a 5.1 channel sound card, but, other than that, this box would be superior. Not as cheap, though.

found on compgeeks:

X's drive

the usb2.0 version works well with linux. the usb1.1 version doesn't (for me, at least).

put any size notebook drive in there you want.

I just got a refurbed dell axim , 400mhz, 64mb memory model for $199 with docking station:

compgeeks

Also, ive basically had *no luck* getting this company to honor warranties or anything, so you're prolly on your own.

These guys always have pleny of sub-$200 PIII's ;)

Joysticks haven't been phallic since the war pilots who came up with the name.

Care to re-think that?

Yes, just like the laughably phallic handle on my frying pan, the laughably phallic handle on a tennis racket, or the laughably phallic bannana I had for breakfast today.

Oh come on, I'm sure the handle on your frying pan or tennis racket don't look like this.

And if your bananas do, you should seriously consider shopping somewhere else.

although they have commercially available 5.25" equalizers,
lots
of
old
automotive
equalizers
will work great in a 5.25" space.

most car equalizers are 5.75", so you have to be a little creative with cutting off that extra half inch to squeeze it into an old cdrom case. but for a cheap/free secondhand EQ (and that 1X cdrom that you were never going to re-use), its definitely worth the effort, visually and audibly.

http://www.compgeeks.com/

THIS is a good deal.

I have been using these HD racks since 2001 and I am very happy with them. A regular 3.5" desktop HD fits in one of these like a glove. I have a machine which can boot off of any of 4 hard drives. Just set your BIOS to autodetect your hard drive, and you are good to go.

Glad I'm on your foes list...

Clue to Nine... This is not for watching DVD's! Really. The DVD player does, guess what, plays DVD's. It can also hook to your PC to play MP3's, show JPG's, and possibly even DIVX files.

"The only people who'd like this would be uber-geeks"
No, the Uber-Geeks already have one. The Uber-Geeks build a computer to go with every TV so that they can do what this $250 consumer device can.

"(since most people don't rip DVD's onto hard drives, and the few who do are pretty stupid), "
Then who ripped all of the DVD's available on Gnutella?? Why is ripping a DVD to your HD a bad idea?? The same could be said for MP3's using your logic. "nobody rips CD's to their HDD, and those who do are stupid."

I have Kids, Kids destroy DVD's. I rip my DVD's to the HDD and then burn them to SVCD. This alone has saved me two extra purchases of Snow White. Now when you figure that Disney DVD's only enjoy limited release, this also means that I can rip DVD's rented at Blockbuster, borrowed from a friend, etc... In many cases after the DVD/Video has ceased to be available. (And it also means that I would not have purchased Snow White again, We simply would not have that movie anymore. My daughter's favorite movie.)

I also have recorded lick videos and teaching tapes. It is much easier to use them (as they are networked) split them up into individual licks, rewind and fast-forward, etc...

Quite frankly, what other means do you have of backing up the content of a DVD?? Now, if you think back-ups are stupid, then I am simply arguing with a moron. Or perhaps you think Ceasar should get another 20 sheckles every time a DVD gets scratched, or a VCR eats a tape.

The fact that you see no use for this product is a symptom of your limited imagination, not a failure to deliver a desirable feature. Had you read the article, it has ethernet (which most people do have on their PC's.) and wireless is an option.

"money to blow on huge hard drives to store movies, broadband to download those movies"
Yep, who could afford it?? This HDD would only store some 1,000 movies in DIVX format. For shame. That's after we leave room for WinXP. One would need the resources of a Bill Gates to have an IDE RAID of these...

1,000 DVD @ $15ea. = $15,000

Really though, I can't even think of 1,000 movies I'd like to keep. But I have all the Mr. Show, South Park, and Duckman episodes. Much of this simply is not available on DVD.

As far as broadband, if you don't have it yet, please turn in your geek keys on the way out. I would keep Broadband just for the always on connection. Subtract the cost of a second phone line, etc...

So, for the Joe who has his TV hooked to his stereo, and the crappy OEM Labtec speakers still on his PC, this might be a good product for him to listen to his MP3's on his stereo, show vacation snaps from his digital camera to his friends, or even show the AVI of his wedding on the TV.

None of this requires Broadband or a Huge HDD. But most people unaccustomed to creating any thought or content of their own generally see devices like this as a tool for only enjoying others creative output.

Again, read the article before you post. I'm not even sure that this thing will play a DVD across the network, why would you need that when the darn thing is a DVD player??

~Hammy

I picked up a creative labs remote unit for about $11 after shipping. It is serial - which was what I was after. Now if I could only find where my little one left the remote! (grin)

At compgeeks

> For another 50 bucks, can I not get an industrial strength handheld?

Or for $20 less.

I'm working on a home theater project myself, and have a Remote Control on the way.

I've seen the mod on the web, however, and it was a clever hack. Slashdotted now, but the flat pannel monitor had a goofy resolution he worked around with drivers. It would work if you did LAN parties... but I would rather pipe svideo (or a dvi out) to something that gave me a bigger picture for watching movies.

Course, the point of modding is usually because you can (grin)

Since nowhere in your post did you mention that it must be a fast machine, and your desired goals are very light-weight, just buy a cheap, slow Pentium machine from Ebay or a place like this.

Save energy how you can, if it's important to you. Toss the CPU fan, and keep the heatsink. GlobalWin makes some huge Socket7 heatsinks which are suitable for this, all of which come with easily-removed fans screwed to them.

I've got a P133 which has been running various incarnations of Windows (now 2k) for years, with only a quiet PSU fan and a modest 6.5gig Seagate drive which spends most of its life spun down. It's nearly silent, doesn't make much heat, and I don't even think about its power consumption.

Configuring hdparm/apmd/kernel/BIOS to put the system to sleep would be good. As long as you don't let it drop into suspend mode, it'll come right back to life as needed.

Avoid hardware that you don't need. Don't use a sound card, find a slow/old/efficient video card. Keep things simple.

If you're worried about the reliability of a used machine, don't be. Remember, only the moving parts are subject to wearing out in normal use. Of these moving parts, you'll be completely eliminating the CPU fan. You can buy a nice new Sunon or Panaflow fan to replace whatever comes with the PSU, either of which should last a long, long time (the last dead fan I replaced was a Sunon that I've had spinning for 8 years).

All that's left is the hard drive, and you'll probably want to buy a couple of new ones no matter what you do, anyway, so that you've got two of them that match for your RAID.

That all said, I'm not exactly sure how this is Ask Slashdot material -- even if it's not something Google easily spits out answers for. Since specifications are so decisively absent, and cost is a factor, there's no way in hell you're going to listen to any of our suggestions, as none of them will be nifty enough or cheap enough for whatever purposes you actually end up using the thing for.

I strongly suspecct that you're either lost trying to figure out what kind of horsepower you need for the software you haven't picked yet, or that you already have a good idea of what you want and are looking for some sort of devine Slashdot Affirmation of your unspoken decisions. But you didn't ask us for software advice, or moral support - you asked us about hardware.

Running a glorified bulletin board for a small household is not a difficult task for a computer -- I had hundreds of users dialing into my 10MHz XT a decade ago, and things were plenty fast. WWIV under DOS, FWIW. In other words, the slowest computer capable of running Linux is more than fast enough for your purposes.

Find yourself a nice 386SL notebook, and be happy. The one I have here draws less than 12 Watts at full tilt, and the hard drive spins up in less than 2 seconds. Powersaving features are built-in, and the box supports killing the power to unneeded accessories. I just put Slackware 8.1 on it tonight, and things are looking good with a $2 PCMCIA network card. I bet an old Tandy/Northgate/AST/Blue Dolphin/Honeywell/AT&T/whatever 386 would work just as well, with a slight power-efficiency disadvantage.

And if you think you need anything faster than a 7-year-old Pentium desktop with RAID or a 10-year-old notebook for your family to write notes to eachother not more than several times a day, call Dell and buy yourself a new Optiplex or Dimension or whatever it is that they're hawking these days.

Or, stop complicating life by making things so simple, and invest in a corkboard and some scrap paper, plus a few moments to consider a proper location in which to put them.

Nearly any cheap hub you can find today will be running on 5VDC internally.

Even expensive hubs, like the (older) 10/100 Kingston rackmount that I have here runs at 5VDC internally, despite its direct connection to 120VAC. Even the fan is 5VDC. (and, yes, that did take some time to find a replacement for, but the bearings in the new Sunon are doing justfine, thanks.)

The wall-wart they come with will deliver a stiff 5 volts, or 7.5 volts, or 12 volts, or whatever. First thing that happens inside of the hub is that it goes through a regulator to bring things down to 5VDC, and this regulator cares not about what the voltage is (within reasonable limits), as long as it is >=5VDC.

[note: some hubs may have low-voltage AC power supplies. avoid these unless you feel like modding them to bypass the internal AC -> DC conversion.]

So. What you need is a way to get 5 volts in a portable fashion. Something like this keyboard power tap would make a smooth way to do it.

All you'd need, given the above, is a durable-looking portable hub and a length of wire with appropriate connectors. You've already got the former, and RadioShack will provide the latter. Or, just cut and splice your existing wire into the adapter. There's a thousand ways to go about it, and they're all sensical and easy.

If you suspect that your laptop won't supply sufficient power from its keyboard port to power a hub, as some posters have suggested might be a problem, look to Ebay for an all-in-one kit labeled as a "USB Cell Phone Charger."

USB supplies - you guessed it - 5VDC. Current is spec'd to be something like 500 milliamps, or 2.5 Watts, so you might get pinched if your hub is inefficient about its power draw. (If in doubt, have one of your technologically-inclined LAN-buddy friends measure it.)

If you feel like it, grab one of those USB cables you've got in a drawer, and hack it into a power supply for a hub.

I've got a tiny 4-port 10baseT Netgear hub here with what I'd like to say is the same connector as my Nokia cell phone, FWIW. They've probably also got 6- or 8-port versions that are the same. (it's also small, lightweight, and made of steel - great for throwing into a backpack.)

Else, run it from its own battery supply. Feed it with 6 D cells in series, and it'll outlive any laptop which happens to be connected.

Other people have suggested sources for seriously low-power ethernet hubs, so I'll skip that research.

Just don't make the project any harder than it needs to be. You've probably, between you and a few friends, already got everything you need to make it work.

Personally, for my uses, I'm use the computer for the latter purpose and have been quite happy running Linux on a cheap Cyrix 300 MHz system. I do lot of surfing, writing, and spreadsheet analysis with StarOffice (actually, I've just upgraded to OpenOffice 1.0). However, I have built a number of systems in the past and have found these links are a must:

Pricegrabber

Pricewatch

CNET's price comparison site

Techbargains (if you are patient enough to wait for that perfect machine to be affordable)

Your time is really worth the money, and when it comes down to it, those cheap systems from Dell, Compgeeks, or Walmart are actually worth the heartache that you may encounter later when you find out that the motherboard you bought has spotty USB support in Windows 98. And if you add up how much you'd spend to make a comparable system, you'll find out that you're only saving a miniscule amount, if that. But again, if you wanted a high-end machine, then building your own will definitely be worth the time and effort to find the right parts and putting them together.

The Chip Merchant is a very good retailer from my personal experience. I have purchased a lot of stuff from them without a problem.

Another place to check out is The Computer Geeks if you don't mind not-quite-new parts.

Keep in mind that building your own computer isn't always as easy as it seems. YOU are the tech support. When stuff goes bad, you're the one fixing them. If stuff fails, you've got to track down the manufacturer (not always easy) for warrantee claims.

For local shops I like Fry's. They are just huge.

For parts I like to try Computer Geeks first. I have ordered from them many times in the past. One time they sent me the wrong scsi card, I told them about it and they sent out the new one immediatly. I had two cards for a few weeks until UPS came to pick up the old one. I just thought it was nice that 1. they sent out the new one before receiving the old one and 2. They paid shipping to return the old one.

My latest server I built from Google Gear After shopping around I decided it was cheaper to ship it all from one place, and Goole Gear had the best all around prices I found.

I recently built a pc and found good deals at www.compgeeks.com and www.computerra.com. Both had good prices and good shipping. Computerra had a better selection but you can get cheap used stuff from compgeeks.

Newegg - GREAT prices on parts
CurrentCodes - The best coupon code site
Computer Geeks - sometimes has REALLY good deals on systems and components
DealHunting - Has a lot of deals and coupon codes, very handy
PriceWatch - good for seeing how good a deal you're getting ... beware some of the vendors who are cheapest have horrendous shipping.

Since it sounds like speed isn't really an issue with your projects, you can get relatively cheap USB-to-Parallel and USB-to-Serial converters. Buy a bunch of them if you want and throw them on a USB hub. I know first hand that the USB-to-serial is compatible with Linux (at least kernel 2.4.x) -- not sure about the other one.

Since it sounds like speed isn't really an issue with your projects, you can get relatively cheap USB-to-Parallel and USB-to-Serial converters. Buy a bunch of them if you want and throw them on a USB hub. I know first hand that the USB-to-serial is compatible with Linux (at least kernel 2.4.x) -- not sure about the other one.

I'm not sure when you got these prices, but certainly not today. I just checked pricewatch right now and the prices aren't as low as when you supposedly checked:
$ 92.00 GeForce 3 Ti 200
$103.00 800 Mgz P3 (133Mhz FSB)
$ 29.00 Biostar M6VCF from compgeeks
$ 56.00 Maxtor 20.0GB from Inca City
$ 9.00 Realtek 8193 10/100BT from Microtech Computers
$ 30.00 SB Live! 5.1 a decent 3d sound card from Deal Sonic
$ 53.95 Afree 10x DVD-ROM from Access Micro
$ 12.00 64MB PC-133 house brand=generic from Alpha International Inc
Total: $384.95 (most prices include s/h) However, I believe the GF3 that is in the X-Box was specially designed for the X-Box but is similar to the GF3 Ti 500 than that Ti 200. Which means you have to add $64.00 on to the total: TOTAL: $384.95 + $64.00 = $448.95 That, however, doesn't even include an OS. So since what's in the X-Box is an NT5 (~= XP) you'd have to add about $180 on to that price. Then, you'd need at least one game pad which is $9.00 from compgeeks but wont be as good as MS's or Logitech's gamepads which are $20+. TOTAL: $448.95 + $180.00 + $9.00 = $637.95 I'd figure on $650.00 for an equivalent system, but you'd need a monitor to install everything initially and once XP is installed, you could switch it over to use the TV-out.

I'm not sure when you got these prices, but certainly not today. I just checked pricewatch right now and the prices aren't as low as when you supposedly checked:
$ 92.00 GeForce 3 Ti 200
$103.00 800 Mgz P3 (133Mhz FSB)
$ 29.00 Biostar M6VCF from compgeeks
$ 56.00 Maxtor 20.0GB from Inca City
$ 9.00 Realtek 8193 10/100BT from Microtech Computers
$ 30.00 SB Live! 5.1 a decent 3d sound card from Deal Sonic
$ 53.95 Afree 10x DVD-ROM from Access Micro
$ 12.00 64MB PC-133 house brand=generic from Alpha International Inc
Total: $384.95 (most prices include s/h) However, I believe the GF3 that is in the X-Box was specially designed for the X-Box but is similar to the GF3 Ti 500 than that Ti 200. Which means you have to add $64.00 on to the total: TOTAL: $384.95 + $64.00 = $448.95 That, however, doesn't even include an OS. So since what's in the X-Box is an NT5 (~= XP) you'd have to add about $180 on to that price. Then, you'd need at least one game pad which is $9.00 from compgeeks but wont be as good as MS's or Logitech's gamepads which are $20+. TOTAL: $448.95 + $180.00 + $9.00 = $637.95 I'd figure on $650.00 for an equivalent system, but you'd need a monitor to install everything initially and once XP is installed, you could switch it over to use the TV-out.

I bought a SoundFeeder SF100 from BestBuy for $10. It has a 1/8" plug for sound input (soundcard, anyone?) and a cig lighter plug to power itself. I replaced the internal antenna with a 1/4 wave piece of wire, soldered an old cig. lighter adapter socket I had lying around to a HDD power cable / fan adapter....

And now my computer directly powers my FM transmitter. Put a second soundcard in dedicated to the SF, and now I have XMMS crossfading through my playlist, all over the house.

$10 SF100
$9.50 Soundcard from compgeeks.com
$2? Cig.lighter splitter to cannibalize

Beats the hell out of the cost of the Ramsey FM25, which is bulkier and doesn't work any better without a seriously improved antenna.

A-friggin-greed!

If you want a 16 meg MP3 player, cheap digital camera, and sexy handheld organizer, here's ($31) your ($93) answer ($199).

Oh, and if you're still whining about pocket space, fine($52). STILL under $400.

A-friggin-greed!

If you want a 16 meg MP3 player, cheap digital camera, and sexy handheld organizer, here's ($31) your ($93) answer ($199).

Oh, and if you're still whining about pocket space, fine($52). STILL under $400.

Id rather buy on Pricewatch or ebay, ubid or my favorite Computer Geeks

Ive see complete systems for 500 bux, or Imacs for 600. Add some ram and a new video card, very very useable. Hell, I bought some e-computers for some people for 400 bux with rebate, (no msn rebate, straight cash). Picked up a monitor for 99 bux at a local Computer Stop and they where set.

It helps to know what and where the deals are, Dell, Gateway, etc are NOT good deals. They are average deals. Side note, Want sticker shock? Check out PC's for hardcore gamers, AlienWare or Falcon NorthWest

Id rather buy on Pricewatch or ebay, ubid or my favorite Computer Geeks

Ive see complete systems for 500 bux, or Imacs for 600. Add some ram and a new video card, very very useable. Hell, I bought some e-computers for some people for 400 bux with rebate, (no msn rebate, straight cash). Picked up a monitor for 99 bux at a local Computer Stop and they where set.

It helps to know what and where the deals are, Dell, Gateway, etc are NOT good deals. They are average deals. Side note, Want sticker shock? Check out PC's for hardcore gamers, AlienWare or Falcon NorthWest

Both compgeeks and CSO have laptops right now, Geeks have two under Thinkpad PIIs for under $500 and CSO has some (dead ones) for $249.

I've been building my cluster from various remaindered/cast-off/refurbished machines I find. Computer Geeks is a good source.

Load balancing is frelling difficult, but I've been doing some solid parallel programming work that translates nicely to "real" clusters. I'd love to buy one of the Rocket Calc boxes -- but I can make a darned nice box for a lot less money with more processing power, if I'm willing to have cables and such all over the place.

The only real cluster-related problem I have is my lovely wife. She's one of those people who want things to "match" (so why in frell did she marry me?), and my "heterogenous" cluster just isn't very aesthetic. She just doesn't understand that the cluster's job is to compute, not to look pretty!

Then again, the Rocket Calc machines are attractive, and the color would go with the living room furniture...

...any portable player capable of playing Ogg Vorbis. Is there one, and if so, what is it?

Also, here's a really cheap MP3 player...in more ways than one.

Yeah, I used styrofoam and duct tape to mount an extra HD on a machine once. Worked pretty good (of course, it was an oooollllddd and veeerrry slooooow HD so I doubt it heated up much). If you need a 5.25" floppy, the guys over at compgeeks.com have them for $5.

the neo25 is a regular old usb-drive with mp3 decode hardware and an lcd display on it.

you can copy TO and FROM it with zero issues. and recently, you can even use it with linux now that there's an update to the firmware (works with 2.4.latest kernel just fine!)

the computer-geeks (store) has them for sale for $122. I paid close to $300 just a year ago. the only downside of this unit is that its bad on batteries (li-ion only lasts 2 hrs or so). and don't use 5400rpm 2.5" notebook drives with this unit; there's not enough power to spin the drive up! stick with the slower 4200rpm notebook drives (30gig works well).

Jamp3

I bought one of these but haven't tried it yet. it won't be a super fast/modern one, but it should work ok.

I've had good luck with mylex DAC960 style controller. linux support is VERY stable with these. in fact, while mucking around inside my pc, I accidentally pulled out a 4wire molex power connector to one of my raid drives (oops!). doing a tail -f of /var/log/messages showed that the controller saw a drive go offline and started rebuilding the pack, all in the background, to a spare mounted raid drive! quite impressive.

given the price of hardware scsi raid controllers today, its hard to justify ide or software raid..

Compgeeks says they'll arrange to re-ship any packages delivered by UPS and subsequently stolen. This implies to me that UPS must factor in the theft potential when deciding whether it's worth their drivers' time to spend 3.5 extra seconds knocking on your door and seeing that the package actually gets into your hands. Certainly there's some amount of insurance involved, and I'm sure UPS eats the loss when a vendor makes this sort of promise.

As another poster pointed out, however, the question remains -- why do they casually leave $1000+ computer deliveries unattended but still make you chase down a $50 book delivery?

> The Rio Volt by Sonicblue is the greatest of the CD/MP3 players and has upgradable firmware.

Ah yes, the Rio Volt, also known as the Soul Digital Media Player before Sonicblue started marketing it under their brand. You can find the Soul DMP at http://www.soulplayer.com/dmp.html. Apparently the latest firmware update adds ASF support to the MP3, WMA and standard CD audio that was there when I bought mine. Hopefully they'll be adding OGG support too.

For those of you who can't get the Rio Volt outside North America, you may want to look at the Soul DMP instead -- same beast, different colour. The "buy" link on the Soul site sends you to http://www.easybuy2000.com/ where they've got the Soul tagged at US$129. They also imply that they will ship overseas. (From the bottom of the page, "Overseas shipments will NOT receive the AC Adapater, and will therefor get a $5US discount on their purchase price.".)

(No, this isn't an ad, just a pointer. I've never dealt with EasyBuy2000 nor directly with Soul. I picked up my DMP from Computer Geeks when they stocked it a number of months back.)

A $122 shell that you can put any size laptop hard drive into. 20GB drives sell for just a tad over $100 on PriceWatch. With shipping and handling, total of $250. Probably no Linux drivers, but it's USB instead of Firewire (which I don't have). Seems like a cheaper alternative. Especially if you have an old laptop laying around that you can cannibalize the hard drive off of. Anybody got one? What's the UI like? Thinking of getting myself one for the holidays.

I think a pretty good example of this is Silicon Investor. Anyone can browse around, but only paid members get to post. Also, paid members can pass notes to each other in private. You can set your own bookmarks for other subscribers so that you can check what so-and-so posted today. Also, on SI, threads last forever. You can choose to show only threads with recent activity or you can dig around in -- and post to -- antique threads that haven't seen activity for years. You also can in effect set up a kill file -- every post has a little hyperlink "Ingore this person". @siliconinvestor.com email is available. They have deals set up with brokerage houses and various other information sources. For example, you can get a free premium membership sponsered by National Discount Brokers if you want to set up an account there. Premium members also get access to an advanced search engine.

It seems to me that /. could create such premium content and services to justify a subscription fee. I should think that the private message passing would be quite popular -- you can contact a poster in private without knowing thier real email. The "Ignore this person" links would be quite useful. There could be premium slashboxen with various functions; e.g. stock tickers, auto-refresh (or perhaps streaming video) Jennicam :-), /. member-only "blue light specials" at Computer Geeks, registration-free links to the New York Times, better searching and filtering, member-only ftp sites for the latest distribution ISOs, mozilla builds, etc.

But I really don't think that I'd pay just to get rid of ads. Also, I serioiusly think that there should be free lifetime memberships for charter subscribers -- say, anyone with a UID lower than maybe 100 or so ;-)

You can get a very cheap refurbished computer at Comp-Geeks. I've had very bad luck with the monitors, but the other hardware has been fine.

Anyone feeling brave enough to actually try it, now that they're dumping them as surplus?