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Which would you rather have?
A 4k display or an Aston Martin DB7 convertible?

I don't usually plug products, but this has really been an awesome buy for me. I have linux installed on the 8GB version and it's hardly noticeable when in the laptop and runs well. Has survived daily use for months now.

Buffalo 5mm Flash Drive

Something like that?

That's some very cheap media, lol. I mean, even for cheap media, that is cheap. :) I don't really do -R, so I was just going by the AllMediaOutlet price of 30cents per Ritek DVD+R disk basically. Then another 10 cents per disk to put it into a 500 disk wallet album, etc. Obviously there is the time cost of me getting up and switching the disks as well, using the sharpie, and dealing with the inevitable bad disks. That's how I calculated my costs. Any way you slice it, pretty soon it will be cheaper to just leave it on hard drives, and save the 20 minutes per disk (I always verify my burns).

Also, keep in mind that more and more, people are getting 720p BluRay rips that are 8.5GB, and Dual Layer media is easily $1.30 per at least from my usual sources.

Of course you then have to deal with all the drives, but a 1TB drive takes up a lot less space than 250 dvd's. And there are those new docking stations:
http://www.geekstuff4u.com/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=&products_id=630

And I agree that flash drives will have a price disadvantage for a number of years, but I think the convenience, size factor, power issues (no need to spin a disk, or need to take up that space in a laptop, etc.) will quickly push the market in that direction. And your friend can always just copy the movie off the flash drive onto a cheaper harddisk.

Won't happen overnight, but seems inevitable to me.

http://www.geekstuff4u.com/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=&products_id=630 Eject the hard drives like they are a tape.

Sorry about the self reply, but you can find some of these products here http://www.geekstuff4u.com/

I can't find it now, but I remember a device that would take a bunch of SD cards (like, 4 slots) and would combine them into a big disk that had (I believe) SATA on it. So, you would take a bunch of these cheap 2GB SD cards, and it would make one big disk out of them all.

http://www.geekstuff4u.com/product_info.php?manufa cturers_id=&products_id=492

Not it, but close. Also way too expensive.

Neither's exactly right. The mini isn't designed to be portable, so there's no docking interface. It's also bigger and heavier than some ultra-ligth laptops, and it has fans. Because it's not designed to be portable, the ergonomics aren't 360 degrees. Turn the thing upside down and that's obvious. I was imagining something like this, but without the display, keyboard, touchpad and battery. It weighs 2.2lb with all that stuff, so fiture maybe 1.5lb without.

A USB drive would work, except that the USB interface somewhat nukes the drive's performance and requires additional cpu usage to manage the communication. A portable Raptor-X with FireWire 800 would be nice. The issue there is that if I'm going to have a single OS installation running on multiple hardware profiles, the OS had better have support for it. Another poster indicatd Windows does. If that's true, then the "really fast portable hard drive" solution migt just work. All that's missing is a smallish desktop case with a nice "slot" interface for the drive, so I wouldn't have to fool with cables. I'm imagining something similar to the old "slot" interface used for 8-track tapes.

Sounds like you would be better suited getting a Zaurus imported from Japan. As they support both american and Japanese input. The latest model is sl-c3100. You can find it here. http://www.geekstuff4u.com/product_info.php?manufa cturers_id=&products_id=210

My apologies for the delay. The only site I found with it in stock is here:

http://www.geekstuff4u.com/product_info.php?manufa cturers_id=&products_id=256