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Thank you. I'm sure you got that from some about page and this IS the Internet, where they have these things called "hyperlinks". So would it REALLY have killed someone to put the parties names in hyperlinks that led to at least one fricking about page?

That said...WHAT THE FUCK PEOPLE????? What? Why? Who in the hell thought it was a good idea to turn the fricking Pi, a device designed to be cheap above all, into a fricking MEDIA CENTER? Now robotics, UAVs, remote control systems of all sorts? yeah I can see that. But looking at these things you pretty much have to massage the fuck out of your media to make it run on the thing and even then its hit or miss...why? Why would you do that?

You want an actual FUNCTIONAL media center? here you go...E350 in a nice HTPC case and there is even a free Linux HTPC build for it, couldn't be simpler. And unlike the Pi you won't spend weeks massaging the hell out of your formats, it'll play pretty much any format out of the box and only uses 18w under load and idles around 6w.

So no wonder I didn't know what this was, the thought of even attempting something so frankly pointless was simply beyond me. To use a /. car analogy this is like buying a car known for its hyper fuel efficiency and then using it to pull a boat. Sure you might get it to work for awhile but you are gonna spend more time working on the damned thing or dealing with problems than it is worth. media decoding and scaling is NOT a light task and a wimpy CPU like the Pi wasn't made for that task, not even close. Hell does it even have the broadcom decoder chip? Even if it does it'll be limited as hell for that role, it just makes no sense.

Yeah they are cheap...but also limited as hell for that function. You have to have the media in the right codec, not have it at too high a bitrate, basically you pretty much have to tailor your media to the device.

A MUCH better device for a cheap HTPC is the E350 kits. You can get the board alone at Amazon for around $70, that gives you a dual core and a Radeon GPU that'll accelerate a heck of a lot of formats, but I prefer the ones with the nice case and PSU for $125. Slap on a copy of Win 7 Home or if you want a free OS then OpenELEC has a Fusion build ready to go. You can use videos in dozen of formats, it multitasks well, its just a better system for an HTPC.

That said there are still a ton of places that the pi makes an excellent device, rocketry, robotics, UAVs, there are a ton of different jobs that this will fit and the fact they keep adding cool features like this is just icing on the cake.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100013681%204027&IsNodeId=1&name=%2475%20-%20%24100
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I found a 7" netbook for $46.99 USD here that meets your basic requirements (keyboard, display, low power consumption) with the quantities you'd need.

Combine that with a freeware solution like LibreOffice.

I'm no expert but I think this combination would serve you well.

Yeah, it's a little more than that lol
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227765
BUT it does run at 1.1GB/s so that might just be why :-D There's also a $1000 slow model, same capacity. Oh and btw, four 256GB OCZ Agility 4's in a RAID0 would be $660 and each chip in those is rumored to last 9000+ write cycles (3x Intel's).

Was about to say the same thing, but your link includes a bunch of miscellaneous adapters, enclosures, and docking stations right at the top. The brackets are all lost in the search results.

So here, FTFY

There really isn't a point in making a 3.5 inch hybrid when you can just use an adapter and use the same drive in both. There really isn't anything to gain by making hybrids 3.5 inch, they aren't going for insanely large drives anyway.

you still don't get it. your first dumb mistake is assuming everyone buys the latest and greatest. you obviously didn't read anything past what you quoted because i gave two examples that contradict you. one is my own recent experience, and here's proof of the other. took a quick trip to newegg, looked up "laptop hard drive." right next to the 1TB drives that you think are the only ones that exist is this little puppy, 160GB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148443. they do exist, and people still buy them.

I've got a wireless router to sell you. It has all these features for QoS and firewalling and it's secure and it gets 300 mbps and it's got the DLNA,I swear.

You mean this thing? (after installing dd-wrt)

On a serious note, exactly how is one supposed to purchase a drive if we cant trust anything on the product page? Just guess?

I like my Ergotron Workfit adjustable workstation.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824994123&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwords&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-_-pla-_-NA-_-NA

It has some sort of counterweight system so with hand pressure you can adjust it up and down. I usually start out my days standing, but by afternoon my dogs are tired so I just move it down and it sits at just the right height for my cushy office chair. All the other adjustable solutions that I found cost at least $1000.

How unenlightened, I've always wanted to put a d-pad on the thumb side of the mouse for easy weapon switching instead of reaching keys in odd spaces. Even with keyboard customization distributing the load to a hand that is more idle (the aiming hand) that merely only moves the mouse increases efficiency.

So why don't you already have such a mouse? It's not like multi-button gaming mice don't exist.

Here's a 17 button model:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826153064

(not exactly a thumbable d-pad but you could use those 12 thumb buttons as a d-pad if you wanted to)

And here's a more modest 13 button mouse:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826104377&Tpk=g700

If there's something magic about a pure D-pad on a mouse, then design it, find a chinese manufacturer to make it and you'll be rich. But probably not or Logitech would have already released it if there was demand. Just because you thought of it doesn't mean that it's a revolutionary idea that will change the nature of gaming mice.

My 5 year old mouse has 5 buttons beyond the normal 3 buttons + wheel. (and I never use the extra buttons).

How unenlightened, I've always wanted to put a d-pad on the thumb side of the mouse for easy weapon switching instead of reaching keys in odd spaces. Even with keyboard customization distributing the load to a hand that is more idle (the aiming hand) that merely only moves the mouse increases efficiency.

So why don't you already have such a mouse? It's not like multi-button gaming mice don't exist.

Here's a 17 button model:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826153064

(not exactly a thumbable d-pad but you could use those 12 thumb buttons as a d-pad if you wanted to)

And here's a more modest 13 button mouse:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826104377&Tpk=g700

If there's something magic about a pure D-pad on a mouse, then design it, find a chinese manufacturer to make it and you'll be rich. But probably not or Logitech would have already released it if there was demand. Just because you thought of it doesn't mean that it's a revolutionary idea that will change the nature of gaming mice.

My 5 year old mouse has 5 buttons beyond the normal 3 buttons + wheel. (and I never use the extra buttons).

Meh, if you are building yourself a new system it should last for years, therefor spending a few extra bucks on the board at build time is well worth it.

I'd suggest an Asrock board as they have all the nice features and their XFast USB really does kick up the speeds on your USB 2 sticks and their OC Tuner software is nice and simple to use. Really great boards all around.

In the end its a whole $34 more than the ones you posted but has Crossfire support, double the RAM slots, plenty of SATA slots and S'PDIF, its just a nicer board and if you are gonna have a machine for years I'd say its worth the $34 to have more upgrade options down the line.

You mean like this,

FM1 with latest SATA 6G, USB3, 1866 DDR3 support - $50 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138361

or perhaps for AM3+, SATA 6G, $50

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138345

Sure, you can spend about a $100 for premium board, but you can also spend $200 for a premium Intel board too.

I got an AMD board with all solid caps $65 few months ago.

You mean like this,

FM1 with latest SATA 6G, USB3, 1866 DDR3 support - $50 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138361

or perhaps for AM3+, SATA 6G, $50

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138345

Sure, you can spend about a $100 for premium board, but you can also spend $200 for a premium Intel board too.

I got an AMD board with all solid caps $65 few months ago.

Laser isn't as expensive as it used to be.

For around $100 you can have a BW HP laser.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16828115639

The quality and reliablity make it woth the extra money, even if you never recoup the $60 price difference between that and this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16828102471

Color laser is closer to $ 170. But most casual printers don't really need color, they just need a readable printout.

Laser isn't as expensive as it used to be.

For around $100 you can have a BW HP laser.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16828115639

The quality and reliablity make it woth the extra money, even if you never recoup the $60 price difference between that and this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16828102471

Color laser is closer to $ 170. But most casual printers don't really need color, they just need a readable printout.

But even if you use those opt outs on your new computer you still pay the Microsoft tax.

I know a way around that...

Come off it. I don't want to pay 100 USD to Microsoft so you think I want to pay a whole lot more to Apple?

But even if you use those opt outs on your new computer you still pay the Microsoft tax.

I know a way around that...

True for notebooks, but I've know a lot of people who've gotten mac displays and put them on PCs... Though, there is some competition now, if you don't mind spending some absurd money. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824002660 Not sure how it's image quality compares with an Apple monitor though - usually you can't do better, only get parity.

1920x1200 has always been available. Still is. And while maybe a bit more pricey than 1920 x 1080, not outrageous. Here's the result of a 7sec search:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824176346

Now, keep in mind where HD monitors came from. About 5-6 years ago, the first 1920x1200 monitors hit, and they ran in the $600 range. I bought my two 24" monitors around five years ago, thanks to a fairly unprecedented sale at NewEgg, so I could nab two Westinghouse 24" 1920x1200 MVA panel monitors for about $400 each.

The price floor dropped out because of the influx of cheap TV-type 1920x1080 panels. And yes, this may have driven the 1920x1200 panels back up a bit, but they've always been available, and far short of a grand.

That's why you can't buy a 16:9 pivot -- it'd be even more useless than 16:9 landscape is.

Apparently, I don't have the same restrictions you suggest. Took me five seconds to find one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824260054

The tall tower needed is probably one reason these aren't more popular, but it wouldn't be difficult to built a more robust swing mechanism that lifted and swung at the same time.

Then you're just as stuck as the next guy with his CPU soldered onto the motherboard

I mean yea, its so hard to find older CPUs, and older RAM types like RDRAM and DDR2, and older drive standards like IDE...

You should recheck your facts. Finding replacement parts and upgrades for older sockets is stupidly easy.

Errm, that was his point: you are stuck with old CPUs and old RAM - you may make your machine a little faster, but buying a machine two years younger will likely get you much more performance.

Then you're just as stuck as the next guy with his CPU soldered onto the motherboard

I mean yea, its so hard to find older CPUs, and older RAM types like RDRAM and DDR2, and older drive standards like IDE...

You should recheck your facts. Finding replacement parts and upgrades for older sockets is stupidly easy.

Errm, that was his point: you are stuck with old CPUs and old RAM - you may make your machine a little faster, but buying a machine two years younger will likely get you much more performance.

Then you're just as stuck as the next guy with his CPU soldered onto the motherboard

I mean yea, its so hard to find older CPUs, and older RAM types like RDRAM and DDR2, and older drive standards like IDE...

You should recheck your facts. Finding replacement parts and upgrades for older sockets is stupidly easy.

Errm, that was his point: you are stuck with old CPUs and old RAM - you may make your machine a little faster, but buying a machine two years younger will likely get you much more performance.

You're telling me that $99 is a fair price for Windows?

Then you're just as stuck as the next guy with his CPU soldered onto the motherboard

I mean yea, its so hard to find older CPUs, and older RAM types like RDRAM and DDR2, and older drive standards like IDE...

You should recheck your facts. Finding replacement parts and upgrades for older sockets is stupidly easy.

Then you're just as stuck as the next guy with his CPU soldered onto the motherboard

I mean yea, its so hard to find older CPUs, and older RAM types like RDRAM and DDR2, and older drive standards like IDE...

You should recheck your facts. Finding replacement parts and upgrades for older sockets is stupidly easy.

Then you're just as stuck as the next guy with his CPU soldered onto the motherboard

I mean yea, its so hard to find older CPUs, and older RAM types like RDRAM and DDR2, and older drive standards like IDE...

You should recheck your facts. Finding replacement parts and upgrades for older sockets is stupidly easy.

If you need PCI slots you best bet would be the ECS Board as it comes with TWO PCI plus a PCIe x16 as well as 4 SATA slots. great for building a mini, not sure what chip it uses for PCI but I think its all AMD so there shouldn't be any hassle if you wanna go Linux. Its also passively cooled so it makes a great silent office box in the corner doing all those little jobs you may need and finally it has the 9w max Brazos chip so it'll idle around 4w.

I don't like either option for shopping online.

Google sucks because they're only showing results for companies willing to pay to be listed. And the listings are filled with companies of questionable provenance and security.

Amazon sucks because their search engine is the worst. Sure, if you want to buy a specific book, it's fine. But search for a type of product, and they'll give you a lot of results that do not match the search terms, and they'll price sort based on Amazon Marketplace vendors that charge $0.01 for the product and $100 for the shipping.

The best is if I can go to a specialized store, such as NewEgg, and pay using PayPal, because then I limit the number of evil companies that have my credit card. Otherwise, if I know exactly what I want, then Amazon has my credit card on file, too, and has good shipping. Too bad I don't know the other industries very well.

lol, it's the circular plug. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131848

your problem wasn't the Drobo, which can be connected with eSATA or GigEthernet. The problem is using crappy "eco friendly low power" green drives. If you concern is performance, then don't get the slowest most energy efficient drives you can find. Get yourself some 10k RPM drives with 64MB cache. Like these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236243

And then use a RAID 5 setup in the Drobo.

You buy one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816322007

populate it with 4GB drives and create two RAID5 (or one RAID6) array, then you've got 24 or 28 TB of backup space, without having to change drives or break up your backup into smaller chunks.

But really, your backup methodology is broken; you need to organize the data into manageable chunks because aside from a large dedicated backup server/SAN, there is no reliable (don't tell me tape is reliable) backup solution for a such a large quantity of data in a single chunk.

What I do for backups: in my 24-bay server I have eight large drives in a (HARDWARE) RAID5 array (were 4TB drives available at the time I'd have gone RAID6) and rsync the virtualized server contents to that, then archive them into tarballs, and send copies of them across the LAN to another server that is running (HARDWARE) RAID5 as well. Every once in a while I back up the critical data (source, scripts, financial data, production web sites, /etc, and so forth but not the program binaries nor system binaries which are easily recreated or reinstalled, respectively) to optical media and external hard drives.

So what I have in summary is:
* Massive server with a backup array separate from the production array
* Separate backup server running another array (again, using a quality HARDWARE RAID controller. Safeguard your data and don't bother with Intel, Adaptec, Promise, or Highpoint "hybrid" RAID)
* Periodic backups of non-recreatable data to USB drives and optical media that are moved off site.

You can even get add-on cages for you existing case like this one. Big advantage is that you can fit 3 drives in 2, 5.25" slots, which very rarely have much use anymore, yet most cases seem to still have 3 or 4 of them. You can get other models that will fit fit 5 drives in 3 bays, or have 1 in 1 depending on your needs.

Agreed. Best thing I ever did was get a computer case with a SATA sled bay, like one of these. It won't help with breaking up the files, but a plain SATA connection will be many times faster and many times cheaper than getting external USB drives (because you don't have to keep paying for external case + power supply). After you copy it over, you just store the bare drives in a nice safe place.

This assumes it's a one-time or rare thing. If you do want access or the backup process is a regular thing, then an NAS or RAID setup is probably more convenient so that you don't have to keep swapping drives in and out.

Bullshit detected.

What the hell do you run, that you can fill over 100GB just with apps (not talking data - So for example, I need MSSQL on my box for dev purposes, but I sure as hell don't install 500GB of actual DBs on the system drive). The games, you have a somewhat valid point in that you still need to at least pay attention to their size and how many you have installed at once, but hardly valid to cry "bullshit".


...Riiight. Show me the $60 SSD drive that will hold Win7, Photoshop, and more than a couple of modern games.

Will 128GB do it for ya?. Not the exact model I have, but the same size - And I have a lot of shit installed. Win7, Office, VS2012, MSSQL2012, hundreds of smaller one-off tools, a handful of games... And have well over half the system disk free.

Win7 64 bit recommends 20GB, but realistically uses around 12GB. Office 2010 takes 3GB. The CS6 "Master Collection" (for you millionaires in the Slashdot audience) takes 14.5GB. VS2012 takes 10GB.

As for a few games, hey, you got me. That spare 80+GB will "only" fit a dozen or so. So for the use case of "hardcore gamer and developer and graphic designer on a shoestring budget", you absolutely should not use an SSD, because it takes just too much work on top of the rest of your busy schedule to uninstall older games.

Can you show up as ANY 3TB 2.5" 7500 rpm drives for any price? It doesn't exist.

For about $400, though, you can get a 3TB 3.5" 7200 rpm drive with a five year warranty:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148759

The warranty is really the big price driver, though. For $200, the warranty is 2 years.

Just build two computers a couple months ago and used the case linked below for both of em. Probably the best case I've ever used for building computers.

I was upgrading from a Cooler Master Stacker 830 to this and at first I thought I would miss the huge case but never gave it a second thought after I put the PCs together.

Fractal Design Arc Mini http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352008

They do make cases like that if you go with MicroATX boards (same features as full ATX, just less PCIe slots). Something like one of these sounds like what you want.

Pizza box case

Cube

They do make cases like that if you go with MicroATX boards (same features as full ATX, just less PCIe slots). Something like one of these sounds like what you want.

Pizza box case

Cube

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1019078

it'd cost crazy money

What's 'crazy money' in numbers (and currency)?

The problem of course is my Steam folder is already over 100Gb and my regular games folder adds another 60Gb or so, so obviously games on the SSD would be right out.

Unless you think SSDs are too expensive for their size, an OCZ Agility 3 240GB will speed up boot and especially your games quite a lot.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227727
If it's still too small, perhaps use this one solely for games and get a small SSD just for Win 7 (if you want the faster boot). It's not like one more SSD makes more noise or wastes a lot more power.

I was interested in one, once, but you can get a much more powerful Android phone for the same price as a Pi

Really? Without a contract? I wouldn't mind a link to one.

I was curious about this as well and his claim actually isn't as far off as you might think. Amazon's got prepaid phones that support HDMI output starting around $220. Personally I've got about $90 into my Pi, counting the SD Card and case. If you also want WiFi that's another twenty bucks, plus another $13 for a powered USB hub since the Pi itself can't put out enough juice. A phone's still more expensive, but isn't too much more when you consider it'd also have a built-in display, battery, and GSM or CDMA radio.

I was interested in one, once, but you can get a much more powerful Android phone for the same price as a Pi

Really? Without a contract? I wouldn't mind a link to one.

I was curious about this as well and his claim actually isn't as far off as you might think. Amazon's got prepaid phones that support HDMI output starting around $220. Personally I've got about $90 into my Pi, counting the SD Card and case. If you also want WiFi that's another twenty bucks, plus another $13 for a powered USB hub since the Pi itself can't put out enough juice. A phone's still more expensive, but isn't too much more when you consider it'd also have a built-in display, battery, and GSM or CDMA radio.

If I compare the price of a Mac mini, which includes the OS, to the price of a stand-alone Windows OS license, I'd rather buy the Mac mini.

Mac Mini: "Now starting at $599" (source: Apple)
Windows 7 Home Premium license: $99.99 (source: Newegg)

PCs including Windows 7 can be had for as little as $300 retail, and something like this beats a mac mini hands down.

No, Apple is far from "free" with their "free" offer. Neither is Microsoft, but much cheaper.

gcc and other free offerings are, of course, free.

MSI 880GMA-E45 AM3 AMD 880G

ATI Radeon HD 4250. It looks like it originally came out in 2010. The 210/220 was 2008/2009 ish.

the ram usage is a misconception*. it is not freenas/nas4free vs ubuntu that is so much the issue. it is that zfs basically needs 1Gb of ram per 1Tb of space. in my personal case, this meant i was limited to about 16tb of space. i chose my raid card specifically to be able toadd in this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816401184 later so i would have needed a motherboard that supported 64GB of ram, putting med to high en server stuff. sure as it sits now, i have debian running, and uses such a small fraction of my 8Gb of ram it never concerns me. but i lose all the cool features zfs provides. *i want to be fair, freenas with no zpool/zfs will use very little ram. in practical terms zfs with 4+ 2Tb drives will consume all the ram a "normal" desktop bord would have.

Looks to me almost exactly like the one I used when I still lived in the States.

And you still think those things were just surge suppressors, eh?

Oh, really? Guess you've never seen a surge-suppressing power strip with sockets for phone and Ethernet to protect those lines as well?

Looks to me almost exactly like the one I used when I still lived in the States.