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Why would you prevent your operating system for accounting for the possibility of filling all that RAM?

To enable it to use that ram for file cache. I tried to disable the pagefile when I upgraded to 4GB a couple of years ago, and I experienced a distinctive increase in loading times for games. This guy knows more than I do and explains it better:

If you've got plenty of RAM in your PC, and your workload really isn't that huge, you may never run into application crashing errors with the pagefile disabled, but you're also taking away from memory that Windows could be using for read and write caching for your actual documents and other files.

There are other reasons as well, the article is well worth reading.
BTW I'm on Linux when not gaming, and have a similar experience from that OS as well.

If you already have it installed, iTunes may be a simple solution.
http://lifehacker.com/software/pdf/geek-to-live--organize-your-pdf-library-with-itunes-240447.php

a stylus isn't required, but that doesn't mean it can't use one. here's one for the iphone from think geek:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/cellphone/a31f/

here's how to make your own:
http://lifehacker.com/5277112/make-a-diy-iphone-stylus-for-precision-greasy-fingers

That said, I am not a sysadmin...

You did not have to tell us that, it is quite obvious from your post.

I do not like having to patch my kernel... < to yadda, yadda, yadda >

I AM a professional Linux systems administrator and I have never had to do any of what you described over the last 15 years I have used Linux (Red Hat, Mandrake, Slackware, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Arch and various other distributions).

Maybe if you chose supported hardware you would not have this issue? You don't seem to mind having to buy supported hardware to run your precious OS-X.

I do not like having two(!) different sound systems being installed, and my system still not always have sound.

Checks current systems -- ALSA works fine for me out of the box. Extra sound system? I am a control freak so I got in the habit of building my systems up from a minimal install which means that I don't install that POS called Pulse Audio. I will admit that there are little pieces of OSS lying around but they never seem to get in the way.

Linux usability? I'm sorry it sucks. It always sucked. I used GNOME...

That is your problem there. GNOME sucks, not Linux. KDE has gotten as bloated as Windows so it is starting to suck too. Fluxbox rules!

1. It's hard. It's hard to do it right. It takes resources. It takes time. It takes expertise...

Hmmm... I am currently running CentOS on most of my multimedia boxes, mainly because I support Red Hat servers at work. Let's see, minimal CentOS install, install the RPM Forge repo RPM, yum install [fluxbox, vlc, etc.]. Not exactly rocket science there buddy!

As far as resources, if you are speaking hardware I have a P-II 300 running Fluxbox on Ubuntu in my workshop. The result is sweet, sweet music while I work on my carpentry projects. Can you even get OS-X to run on older hardware? I'll bet you need a CPU made within the last two to three years to get OS-X to install much less run.

Linux doesn't have the resources when it comes to interfaces, and everyday office software.

How many interfaces does the Mac have? One? There are plenty for Linux, it is the user's choice as to what to run. Choice is good.

As far as office software, Open Office works great for me. I even put it on my Vista laptop because the stupid new MS Office ribbon menu UI sucks big time.

There's no coherent feel, beyond shoddy. You'd think after all these years, someone would get it right, but they never have, because of #1.

All my boxes have a feel that is exactly right for me, because I know how to set them up that way. They are all internally coherent, which is all that matters to me.

I don't like having to run my computers the same way everyone else does because Jobs or Gates/Ballmer dictates that is how it has to be. And I sure as hell don't like having to pay for additional software to do simple stuff like changing the stupid Office ribbon menu UI into the old-school UI I prefer to use.

Desktop Linux can go die in an alley and rot, for all I care. Anything beyond a server, and it's worthless.

If you want to give Apple all that $$$ that is your business, I prefer to keep my $$$. Just because you are a major FAIL when it comes to setting up Linux does not mean that Linux is worthless to others.

By the way, I checked out your hacks to get MacOSX to boot on non-Apple hardware link. I don't have to perform ANY hacks to get Linux to work on my PCs.

The procedures listed on that page ARE system administration tasks and relatively advanced ones at that. Besides, I th

This whole "Mac goood", "Linux baaad" idea when it comes to interfaces and usability is just mindless propaganda. Most people aren't in a position to check this for themselves because Apple is a closed off product that's not really well suited for casual exploration. You need special hardware just to run their stuff.

Well, anyone can go into an Apple Store, or ask to borrow someone's mac. Also there are plenty of hacks to get MacOSX to boot on non-Apple hardware. So that's really a canard. Anyone can check it out, you just have to want to.

So "Mac Usability" becomes a myth bolstered by fanboys that need to buy into the cult and then justify their choices.

Nice try. Just because someone doesn't bother to take the effort to find out for themselves, doesn't automatically make it a myth. I've never bothered to go to northern Canada and see if the Magnetic North Pole and Geographic North Pole are actually different, but that doesn't make it a myth.

Let me tell you my story. I ran Linux as my primary OS from 1994 to 2005. At no point during those 11 years did I ever have a system that supported all of my hardware. At no point. I used it because, I'm a unix guy. I like the shell. I like scripts. I like that everything is a file. Unix lets me do my work. That said, I am not a sysadmin. I do not like sysadmining. I do not like having to patch my kernel just let get my digital camera to work. (Incremented a hex value in a #define in unusual_devs.h so that my Sony DCF-707 would be mounted as a usb storage device.) I do not enjoy having to manually load a kernel module just to get my printer working, because it fails to be autoloaded. I do not like having a print driver that makes every photo come out pink, and then buy a print driver, only to have the photos still come out pink. (Canon i850. Printed perfectly under windows. The only think I ever used it for, well that and Warcraft III.) I do not like having two(!) different sound systems being installed, and my system still not always have sound. (I loved how I'd get "No ALSA devices found" during boot, but could only adjust my volume through alsamixer.)

Fuck. That. Shit.

I got a 17" Powerbook G4, and all my hardware worked. And you know what? I got a terminal, and X11, and XEmacs, and gcc, and everything else I wanted too. It's quite simply a better unix. (I've since upgraded to a 17" MacBook Pro.)

Linux usability? I'm sorry it sucks. It always sucked. I used GNOME during the 1x days, and it was full of incomprehensible and cutesy options. "Xyzzy Goodness = 0.42," and my personal favorite, "Clock," "Digital Clock," "Another Clock," "Clock with Mail Check." The GNOME folks couldn't say "no," and got a shit. Havoc Pennington and the rest of the GNOME "usability" team, took the message as "no options" instead of "too many options," and subsequently removed everything from the 2.x tree, in the quixotic quest to make it simple for people that have never used a computer before. (It's now 2010. It was 2001 when they started that quest. Even tribes deep in the Amazon and New Guinea had computers then. These folks simple no longer existed.) It still sucks, only now it sucks because you simply can't do the things you used to be able to. KDE? Well KDE4 is quite simply a clusterfuck

The reason why Linux usability sucks, is two fold.

1. It's hard. It's hard to do it right. It takes resources. It takes time. It takes expertise. Linux doesn't have the resources when it comes to interfaces, and everyday office software. It just doesn't. Sun is dead. Novel, never had much resources devoted to it. Usability isn't really something you can do right one weekend a m

there are (or soon will be) numerous alternatives that are not as tightly locked.

Sure. Like the Nexus One. Not only is the SDK free, easy to program (java), flexible (you can replace most of the built in apps) but the phone itself isn't locked. Watch this video if you don't believe me ... the shipping phone doesn't need a "jailbreak" because you can simply run an officially provided command and after informing you that you void the warranty, the phone will let you reflash to any OS (it changes the bootup logo to make it harder to resell trojaned/warranty voided phones but that seems reasonable).

Companies with a lot of sedentary work, if they could find it profitable to encourage the physical health of their employees (through insurance costs and lost productivity), should abandon the strictly desk/chair office model with various kinds of workstations that can provide for exercise. (Liability would be an issue, but then it always is.)

The geek cycle concept isn't particularly new: http://lifehacker.com/203760/exercise-while-you-work-with-the-geek+a+cycle-tm

Standing workstations, reading stations for cardio, appropriate alternatives for the disabled for fairness's sake, and company shower/laundry facilities could reintegrate physical aspects into what has become mostly intellectual activity. I find that my focus for certain tasks is enhanced if I'm exercising during it --particularly reading challenging material while on the treadmill.

Gym currently don't seem the most conducive to work, but they are often designed with tons of distractions --blaring music to get you "pumped", treadmills with monitors playing only brain candy entertainment fare, lighting too poor for reading, etc. Put a cardio machine into an office setting and it takes on a different character.

There is a hack to make Flash stay fullscreen when it lose focus, but that involves some hex editing (or trusting someone providing a patch)

More info : http://lifehacker.com/5419028/keep-flash-videos-in-full-screen-on-dual-monitors

Boxee's a fork of XBMC, with "a new look and social flair". Kinda like Flock vs Firefox (anyone remember Flock?)

lifehacker: Vintage Ad Browser Provides Classic, Cheesy Marketing Images

* Remote desktop and VPN are your best friends. Learn them, live them, love them.

I'd like to point out Teamviewer for quick, minimal-setup user assistance. It's come in handy a couple times for me and work acceptably even halfway around the world. I believe they charge for corporate users.

There are quite a few options nowadays to meet this sort of need. Fog Creek Copilot is Joel Spolsky's entry into this space.

It's faster, according to Lifehacker.

It's my understanding that with the new settings, the user is prompted via a wizard to either use the new default or keep the settings the way they are. Once you have completed the wizard, you can then make more granular changes. At least that's what I remember reading on Lifehacker

I mean, and this isn't even hypothetical, if no Notepad came with Windows, there'd be many, dozens of alternatives with marginally more features. This was the case even when Windows just came out, that applications with hardly more features were on the market. I don't know about the state of calculators, but certainly Notepad and Wordpad killed an entire marketplace.

Worst Example Ever.

And that's not including universal text editors like emacs and vi (as gVim). The examples I just threw out are considered the best in a big market, not the only replacements for notepad. Source

Installing OSX on a Linksys router, now that'd be impressive.

(You can already install Linux, of course - http://lifehacker.com/178132/hack-attack-turn-your-60-router-into-a-600-router)

Sure, in a survival situation having the wristwatch allows you to tell time for a longer period of time but then again, do you really need to tell time in a survival situation.

In a survival situation, an analogue wristwatch can be used in conjunction with the sun as an emergency compass:
http://lifehacker.com/289805/use-your-wristwatch-as-a-compass

you might try this lifehacker assuming you can get to a gui based browser like ff or konqueror.

Here, fixed that for you.. :) http://lifehacker.com/348653/install-os-x-on-your-hackintosh-pc-no-hacking-required/

I would direct any professor to this link: http://lifehacker.com/323554/stop-death-by-powerpoint I have my executives go through this before attempting to create their presentation.

Uh, except the poison update in question is for 10.6 Snow Leopard, not 10.5 Leopard.

Apology accepted.

Take your pick: you can either have the law trying to fuck you or corporations trying to fuck you.

I'll take option 3: none of the above. What makes you so complacent?

Check out this lifehacker post:
http://lifehacker.com/5391308/build-a-silent-standalone-xbmc-media-center-on-the-cheap
The Acer AspireRevo is $199 & seems to do it all.

A recent Lifehacker article suggested the $200 Acer Aspire Revo. Pros: 160GB HD, HMDI output, Gigabit ethernet, reportably plays 1080p, runs XBMC. Cons: single-core, 1GB RAM, no built-in expandability, WiFi or IR.

For $320, the Revo's big brother also has dual-core, 2GB RAM and built-in WiFi.

How about Everything (assuming the server is Windows & NTFS)? Works well for me (quickest desktop search I've found yet), and can either run locally or connect to an ETP server. The site seems to be down right now, but here's the original Lifehacker article where I found it. Incidentally, I never heard of ETP til I started using it. Anyone know if it's an Everything-specific protocol?

Seriously. Have you tried it? A major improvement over every vendor slopping their own clunky interface together, the only thing I've used that comes close is the Network Manager in Ubuntu. Otherwise Windows XP is rather spartan in value and the best part of Vista (the Windows Sidebar) can be backported to Windows XP but needs to run in two instances of memory!

Truthfully there really isn't anything not possible in Windows 2000 you'd need to upgrade for that isn't an external limitation imposed by Microsoft in gambit to force upgrades. The lack of updates? That's a choice Microsoft made in order to force people to "upgrade" to Windows XP and higher. This includes system components like Direct X and driver issues by corporations seeking people to purchase new hardware, while not wanting to support older hardware that still works. Much of the above is artificial though and can be worked around by way of using modified dll thunking to get those things running on Windows 2000 despite supposedly not being capable of performing in that operating system.

Meanwhile I've found I can pretty much get all the features of Windows XP and Vista by upgrading to Linux and making use of Wine to run some of my applications and by using more and more native Linux applications as I go on. This way I get all the cool toys (Compiz with Virtual Desktops is something you'll never want to give up once you start using it) and still stay within reasonable memory usage. I have an entire gig of RAM on my desktop and my netbook--I have yet to see either exceed 500mbs despite doing things that would easily have me hitting the swap file in Windows XP or 2000.

So there are options forward, but if Windows 2000 works for you and you don't need cleartype or use WiFi you shouldn't upgrade until you hit the application availability and lack of security updates wall. Personally I think it sucks we should have to make these kinds of choices at all, but at least with Windows 2000 you still have those options. Once Microsoft decides to stop activating our copies of Windows XP I expect there will be a lot of people in for a world of hurt!

--bornagainpenguin

Actually, it has been shown to be cheaper to build your own Mac.
 

Your comment is a non sequitur.

The link you provided might show that it's cheaper to build your own Mac than to buy one from Apple. However, since the same PC you built would run Windows, then it is necessarily the case that it cannot be less expensive to build a Mac; at best it costs the same.

Now the point that you are missing is that the Mac supports far less hardware than Windows supports. If there exists at least one component that is not supported by MacOS but is supported by Windows, and that component is cheaper than any comparable component suppored by MacOS, then it must be the case that it is cheaper to build a PC.

I'm reasonably certain it's been shown a number of times that if you build a PC with the exact same hardware as a Mac, you'll end up with a PC that costs about the same.

Actually, it has been shown to be cheaper to build your own Mac.

I'm only addressing your Hardware comparison. In reality, there are more things that go into the value of a "computer solution" than just the hardware components: software availability/quality for your own needs, support, design/appeal, etc.

This looks like an attempt to monetize a botnet. What, exactly, do the people running their "client" get out of this? Do they know they're sucking bandwidth, and possibly being billed for it, on behalf of someone else?

I run a web spider of sorts. And I know the people who run a big search engine. Reading the web sites isn't the bottleneck. Analyzing the results and building the database is. Outsourcing the reading part doesn't buy you much. If this just did a crawl, it would be of very limited value. That's not what it does.

What they're really doing is offering a service that lets their customers run the customer's Java code on other people's machines in the botnet. That's worrisome. There are some security limits, which might even work. Supposedly, all the Java apps can do is look at crawled pages and phone results home. Right.

This thing uses the Plura botnet. "Plura® is a grid computing system. We contract with affiliates, who are owners of web pages, software, and other services, to distribute our grid computing code. We utilize the excess resources of peripheral computers that are browsing the internet when such browsing leads to a web page of one of our affiliates. That web page has imbedded code that allows the visitor to participate in the grid computing process. We also utilize embedded code in software and other services to allow such participation." Not good.

The main infection vector is apparently the Digsby chat client, which comes bundled with various crapware. The Digsby feature list does not mention that Plura is in their package.

This thing needs to be treated as hostile code by firewalls and virus scanners.

I run "brightside" to enable hot corner actions in X.
http://lifehacker.com/263508/add-screen-actions-with-brightside

So throwing the mouse onto one corner of the screen locks X and puts on a pretty screensaver, another corner puts the display on standby, and one corner disables the screensaver for when I'm watching movies or slideshows or something like that.

At some point, I recompiled brightside to use xscreensaver-command instead of gnome-screensaver-command, but I eventually gave up on that.

I also use xbindkeys + xbindkeys-config to configure some of the extra keys on my multimedia keyboard to do things like that too.

http://lifehacker.com/5308039/repel-flies-with-a-bag-of-water

Actually, iTunes has the ability to use multiple libraries. Start up iTunes on a Mac while holding down Option, or Shift in Windows, and it will let you choose from an existing library or create a new one. See here for more info.

From all I heard the Snow Leopard disk is a full install of OS X, and not an upgrade. I might be wrong though, I'm going mostly on hearsay.

There is no must upgrade.

This might be true as far as official Apple software goes (actually isn't this release killing Rosetta support?), but Apple also adds very small API (which don't effect OS operations in any noticeable way) changes that third party developers pick up and run with, and promptly stop supporting older versions of the software. Quicksilver did this about a month after Leopard came out, so basically you drop out of the upgrade cycle if you don't go spend $X on an new OS release that is pretty much the same as the last one. A couple of the big editors did the same, as did a couple GTD apps. Its not official, but it still puts pressure to upgrade on the consumer.

Most people would be best off upgrading every OTHER release, since the changes are generally rather small. Compare Tiger -> Leopard, to XP -> Vista, or Vista -> Win7, or ever between most Ubuntu or Debian major releases.

That said, I'll probably pick it up as well. $30 for a OS isn't bad, and I've been meaning to convert my Mini into a media center/hub.

I just downloaded GV Mobile with Cydia. Looks good to me so far.
http://lifehacker.com/5324596/gv-mobile-available-for-free-on-cydia

@ethana2

http://lifehacker.com/348653/install-os-x-on-your-hackintosh-pc-no-hacking-required

http://www.hackintosh.com/

http://gizmodo.com/5156903/how-to-hackintosh-a-dell-mini-9-into-the-ultimate-os-x-netbook

Here is a good resource for this kind of stuff:
http://lifehacker.com/tag/career/

Yep. There's absolutely no way to use an iPod under Linux

Now, don't you start your whining about your precious Ogg and FLAC or-anything-else-support neither!

Now STFU, you fucking Troll...

What filesystem do you plan on using for your shared /home?

My OS X partition uses HFS+ Journaled, the home partition is HFS+, and when I install Ubuntu Studio I'll format it's partition then. I'd use HFS+ Journaled for the home partition but Ubuntu doesn't support it.

do you put your OS X /Applications on the primary partition?

With Disk Utilities I created three partitions on my HDD, the first 30GB, the last 30 GB as well, and the rest of the space taken by the partition in the middle. I installed Leopard on the first, then setup the second as the home partition. When I install it I'll install Ubuntu Studio on the third. For the OS X apps I installed them in the OS X Applications folder.

I want to do the same thing but couldn't find a filesystem that both supported well enough to hold my docs.

If you're going to install Linux on a Mac may I suggest you do your research and create a roadmap or strategy for installing Linux first? I spent months doing my research, however I had specific things I wanted to do. If you're using Ubuntu check out the Ubuntu on Macs page. Also check out the Ububtu forums. Be aware that how it's installed depends on the Mac model. As for your question about file systems check out how to create a shared home partition between Linux and OS X.

One thing about that page though is that there is an easier way to tell OS X, Leopard, where to put the home folder. In System Preferences open Accounts. If you have to click on the padlock in the lower left corner of the window and type in an admin name and password to unlock it. Once you are able to make changes [ctrl] click on your account and elect "Advanced Options". Where the window says "Home Directory" clink on "Choose" and navigate to where you want the home directory. Now you'll have to be logged into each account to make the changes for each user, I don't know why logging in as an admin can't do it but when I just tried it didn't allow me to make changes to other users. You may also have to manually move all of the user files from the old place to the new one.

And if you want to dual or multi-boot you can use the same browser and email profiles in each OS, if you're using Firefox, Thunderbird, and Pidgin you can use a single data store. When I said above that I took months of research because I wanted to do specific things, it was stuff like these. Now I still need to find out how I can run OS X as a guest in Ubuntu, it's no problem running Ubuntu as a guest in Leopard, there are a number of guest or virtual OS options.

Falcon

Looks like this was picked up on lifehacker, in a sort of recursive posting...

http://lifehacker.com/5322055/ditch-the-secrecy-when-vetting-ideas

"So you're sitting on an idea you consider to be a gold mine, but you're hesitant to share for fear that someone will run off with your gem. Here's why you shouldn't be overly concerned about having your intellectual property stolen."

• 2000 - dual headed Win98 w/ 2x S3 Virge
  • Worked surprisingly well, but no frills(didn't have real 3D yet and everything loaded on the first monitor).
  • TV card completely failed to work in 2 head mode (an ISA overlay-only card)
• 2000-2003 - dual headed PowerMac 6500 with a Rage2 and Voodoo5
  • Supported dragging opengl windows between cards, even if the frame-rate on the ATI was 1/1000th the 3dfx.
  • PowerMac's built-in TV did overlay when on ATI card, but when the TV window was dragged to voodoo5 it went into a blitting-mode which made the colors look a bit washed out and ate my CPU(still pretty seamless considering it worked).
• 2003-2007 - three headed 1.7Ghz Linux Box with an S3 Virge and a dual-headed Geforce4MX
  • Not quite as seemless(if the S3 was combined in Xinerama to the Geforce, then accelerated OpenGL only worked on the first screen...
  • Kept S3 in it's own X session and dual-screened the Geforce4MX monitors with Xinerama
  • BT878 TV card that could either be put into overlay mode and work on first monitor, or blitting-mode and work on both and eat my CPU(not as seamless as Mac, but still decent)
• 2007-2009 - Macbook w/ GMA950 (occasionally with extra monitor)
  • OpenGL works on both monitors...
  • TV now runs through a HD-Homerunner and MythTV(from my old Linux desktop). MythFrontend on MacOS works on both screens nicely...
• 2008-2009 - Stock Dell, Vista w/ dual-headed Radeon(work computer)
  • For some reason Office 2007 doesn't play nicely with dual-monitors on this computer. Any application with the ribbon interface scrambles the toolbar if I remote-desktoped into this computer.
  • The screens would randomly trade places on restart... sometimes the left would be #1 and sometimes it was #2...
  • I tried a number number of app-switchers, all the second toolbar apps had serious issues, but I do like 'My Expose' http://lifehacker.com/software/expose/download-of-the-day-my-expos-vista-235893.php

There are 97 articles at lifehacker that talk about cable management. Surely one of them would have what you need.

http://lifehacker.com/search/Cable%20management/

Lifehacker.com has a bunch of great ideas for cable management: http://lifehacker.com/364054/top-10-ways-to-get-cables-under-control

http://lifehacker.com/5299994/rain-gutters-as-cable-management-tools A simple, elegant, cheap solution - hang a couple rain gutters on the wall and just let the cables fall into them...

I think this is a nice DIY example as well: http://lifehacker.com/software/workspaces/hack-attack-the-cordless-workspace-sort-of-179911.php

They occasionally post clutter-busting suggestions over at www.lifehacker.com. The original links from this one no longer seem to work, but I thought it was brilliant:
http://lifehacker.com/237789/diy-under+desk-gadget-mount
Basically, mount a peg board on hinged stand-offs with hasps to lock it in the 'up' position, and then mount all the small peripherals and cabling to the bottom of the desk. May not be completely child proof, depending on the size of your children and the extent of the cable fasteners you use.

I've always wanted to try the "pegboard under your desk" arrangement. It sounds like a functional solution to keep the clutter under the desk, not on top of it.

http://lifehacker.com/237789/diy-under+desk-gadget-mount

Of course, I'd have to get off my lazy ass to give it a shot so I'm not holding out hope of it happening any time soon...

Ghost Virtual Machine gives 15gigs of Amazon.com data storage and right now if you use the promotion code of "launch" you get 10Gigs more as a bonus for 25Gigs. If you want to give me a referral my id is orion_blastar there, and each person you referred grants you 5Gigs more in a bonus.

Google Docs also has document storage but does not give as much as G.ho.st does. The Ghost Virtual Machine can access your Google Docs drive as well.

Here is a review of the top 5 online cloud storage sites so you can take your pick.

MyBloop offers unlimited free storage, but I am not 100% sure of that or their privacy policy.

Lifehacker talks about using your Yahoo Mail account for unlimited storage and also that Google's GMail almost offers the same service as well.

And this Lifehacker article.

http://lifehacker.com/5316845/pirate-bay-to-start-charging-users-monthly-fee

I cracked my own network in minutes using this method. Can someone point me to a less complicated method?

When I need to get into just about any secure network, this hacking multitool is what I use: CB G.Freeman.

It can crack arbitrarily high amounts of encryption when applied to the proper segment of the network. It works very well, often only taking seconds to provide you with the authentication you require. It also can do wonders on conventional locking systems.

Enjoy!

I cracked my own network in minutes using this method. Can someone point me to a less complicated method?

These days it seems absurd to talk about running Photoshop or AutoCAD through a web browser... But in another dozen years it may make perfect sense.

I don't think you have to wait a dozen years... I'm sure that none of these options are equal to the full power of Photoshop right now, but with the direction things are going, it could happen before too many years go by: http://lifehacker.com/5307419/five-best-online-image-editors

I'm IT for a small consulting company, not unlike your home.

a) RAID is not a backup; a backup is more important than RAID
b) which file system to use is a critical decision
c) Don't mix OS, Applications or Data on the same file system

Plan A: Don't use RAID at all. Use a single disk with 3 partitions (OS, Apps, Data) and mirror them automatically, nightly, weekly, whenever you fill like it. Weekly is a good trade off for a home system and lets you have a complete recovery should the system get infected by a virus, but you don't notice it for a few days.

Plan B: Setup a NAS device with 2 disks, mirrored. No RAID in the PC. Keep your data on the NAS. Whenever something important changes, backup the PC to the NAS.

If you weren't stuck with Windows, you'd have many, many other options, like

1) setting up an OpenSolaris ZFS as a file server and performing snapshots of your RAID-Z (or mirrored, or RAID1+0) protected data. ZFS is very impressive replacement for a LVM and FS, but not worth using unless it is inside the kernel (Linux doesn't like the license, so it won't be anytime soon).

2) setting up a Linux server with mdadm as a file server and running RAID-whatever-you-like and a good, solid, proven file system like JFS or XFS.

As for backup software, there are many choices. I like rdiff-backup if I'm not on a ZFS backup server receiving remote snapshots from each of the production servers. Lots of good ideas for home backup here: http://lifehacker.com/search/backup/

I agree with you that hardware RAID is a hassle for home users. Software RAID leaves control of your data with you, not some card maker. I've been burned too.