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http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124046&nm_mc=OTC-Froogle&cm_mmc=OTC-Froogle-_-Hard+Drive+Controllers+/+RAID+Cards-_-Syba-_-16124046

Hey look, its a $65 motherboard with 4 star rating capable of running an i3!

Whats that, you want to know what happens when the caps blow out after 4 years of use? Why, I go buy another $65 motherboard!

Sure is a strange sense of value folks have, thinking someone should build a rig with a $100 processor and a $100 video card and a $40 hard drive, and then drop $300 on the motherboard.

$49.99: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130593R
1155, MSI, GigE, H61 chipset (no overcloking), no USB3 nor sata3. I don't see anything wrong with it, but then again I filled my e-peen requirement years ago.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130593R

1155, MSI, no USB3 nor SATA3, nor overclocking, but apart from that, perfectly serviceable. Meets the needs of, actually would be an upgrade for, *everyone* I know.

Oh fine, $75.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157195

I don't know about that...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227664

Why not just sell a USB splitter that is designed to bring a keyboard and mouse together as a single controller so I can play these games?

USB splitter, $10 incl. shipping. Once you know, you NewEgg.

"Acer has no competitive tablet offering among the dozens of competing Android tablets." Except it does: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100013681&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=True&SrchInDesc=acer&Page=1&PageSize=20

That's how Wal-Mart does it. Best Buy's ones aren't for cost savings at the expense of the usability/reliability was Wal-Mart does, but instead to prevent price matching. You can't price match when no one else in the world sells that model.

And Best Buy had a Toshiba laptop on special for about half what it was everywhere else that I bought, and their specials usually beat everywhere else.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/ASUS+-+Laptop+/+Intel%26%23174%3B+Core%26%23153%3B+i5+Processor+/+15.6%22+Display+/+4GB+Memory+/+500GB+Hard+Drive+-+Brown+Suit/2906406.p?skuId=2906406&id=1218362797990
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220991

You can click both if you want. I looked up a Best Buy special and it was a laptop for $480, and Newegg has it for $600. So why pay more for Newegg?

Generally speaking, if you look at the total package, Apple's notebooks are competitive with the high end products from HP and Dell. Try comparing the HP EliteBook Mobile Workstation with Apple's models, for example

How bout I just compare the i7 probook with one of these, which has a better graphics card and costs $1100 cheaper?

How is that "competitive"? Im not even aware of HP HAVING a $1700 laptop-- their i7s generally run in the $1100s.

Lion's not even been out a month! Those complaints should go to software vendors, not Apple.

It goes to Apple for the exact same reason driver issues in Vista went to MS. And in this case, it actually works if you boot into 32bit mode; Apples new 64bit breaks a lot of things.

The real issue is that it doesnt "just work" across 3 OS versions. 10.5? Have to use CiscoClient, since native Cisco Ipsec doesnt exist. 10.7? Have to use native client, since Cisco Client doesnt work.

Contrast that with windows, where I could run a single mass deployment disk using WPI that magically worked across every OS version, 32 and 64 bit, going back 7 years to XP SP2.

You're comparing apples and oranges: boot vs boot + applications launch. Apple wants to move anyone onto SSD's which come as standard or as an option for every mac now, with an SSD this becomes a non-issue.

Yes, and if everyone who complained about Vista had had 2GB RAM, it never would have been as scandalous as it was. Fact is, a lot of the laptops we worked on were Lion upgrades, and were dog-slow. And the problem is, Apple kind of promises that this sort of thing doesnt happen to Macs-- except now it does, and from boot, and with very few 3rd party services necessary to start the machine crawling.

"Natural" scrolling, enough said. Nobody's perfect, eh.

That is my favorite part of OSX, actually-- I love the multitouch and the new scrolling. I was referring to a lack of an easy way of telling how many instances of an application you have open-- perhaps I was missing it. I also had several other gripes (possibly related to system prefs), but cannot recall.

Secondly, all current Apple laptops come with at least an i5, not an i3 like you say. When you compare the i5 HP 4530's they perform worse in nearly every benchmark, compare [laptopmag.com] yourself [laptopmag.com]. Then there's stuff like an aluminum enclosure, a lower profile, much better battery life. I'm not saying you have to like the Macbook they're not for everyone, but there's genuine value there for your extra bucks.

Ah, when I looked i was sure I saw an i3 for $1600.
Anyways, Lenovo Ideapad, i7, 4gbram, and AMD 6570m, for about $1100 less than the equivalent Macbook. And the $200 for an extra 4GB ram that Apple wants off its store is, quite frankly, obscene.
As for aluminum enclosure, that matters very little to me-- the probook I have has a magnesium alloy cover, and regardless if I drop the thing the first things to break will be the screen and drive, not the case. And my probook has about 4.5 hrs of battery-- Im not about to drop another $1100 for a slightly better battery.

but there's genuine value there for your extra bucks.

You would be hard pressed to explain to me why a worse graphics card, a different metal in the case, and 3 hours of battery (by their estimates) are worth $1100.

I think automator and applescript are pretty damn good, and again you're comparing system built-in stuff with third party Windows software which is unfair.

Autoit uses built in functions to identify which windows are which by their handle IDs. As far as I can tell, there is no way to positively ID windows and controls in AppleScript and Automater (whose "record macro" doesnt actually work with all apps). They both seemed really cool when I saw them, but then turned into huge disappointments when it became apparent that they were half-complete, and there was no real alternative to them that filled the role of "GUI automation for arbitrary programs". With Autoit, I can use native window handles and native control handles to automate any arbitrary program you give me. It is possible that with research I could figure it out, but I pulled about 60-80 hours working on automating these deployment

in portugal. this clears it. very probably, you had a cheapo distributor that wanted to make most bang for the buck, and dealt with low quality card producers.

in case you forgot - ati is not a CARD manufacturer. it is a chip manufacturer. video cards are just like motherboards - you have to buy proper quality card.

sapphire for example. or asus. you cant go wrong with these. while other brands may have problems, you may overclock sapphires to oblivion. which was what i did in age of conan for example.

fyi, that 3870 is STILL alive, and i just have given it as a primary graphics card in a 4 gig ram amd 4800 machine to my friend's sister's family. it will be the primary computer, and it plays sims 3 comfortably, for example. sims 3 is a demanding game when you choose high detail and a big town.
in addition, you may have gotten a bad batch. just like how endless people who bought new asus crosshair v (a prime mobo for new generation amd cpus) from newegg :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131735

read the reviews/feedback there. almost half of people had to RMA the board. one could say that it is due to new uefi bios that these cards are creating problems - but no. there are people who had cards that had fallen off transistors/capacitors, broken caps on arrival, and a lot of different assortment of other problems.

now, newegg is a MAJOR distributor in usa. asus is a top notch company. crosshair v is 'the' new overclock card. then, what went wrong ?

the answer is simple : the subcontractor manufacturer in southeast asia fucked up the production batch and people received a shitty batch. just like how some batch of creative xtreme music cards a shitty batch back a few years ago, and another batch had the best sound quality of any sound card back then. ( the quality of some pieces used were different).

this is how it is. unfortunately, these things happen, and will continue to happen, and in most cases, the consumers will not even be aware that they received a shitty batch.

wisest is to always use a good distributor selling products of a reliable card manufacturer. in terms of ati cards, this is always sapphire, or asus. sapphire comes first. their community forum is also very helpful and lively, and there are people doing crazy things with these cards there.

As much as I like AMD, the stock cooler that came with my Phenom II X6 was garbage. It was incredibly loud and while CPU temps were acceptable they were borderline high/critical. Contrast with the Zyman I replaced it with, which ran silently and dropped temps by 12 degrees on average. Having gone through that, I'd definitely take a discount on a high-end CPU without a heatsink and provide my own aftermarket cooling solution--I don't think I'll plan on using stock coolers anymore...

I used the stock cooler that came with my 1090T Black Edition (3.2 GHz) for a while. As you pointed out, it was loud and only marginally acceptable, but it DID do the job at stock speed and voltage. Surprisingly, it almost did the job at 3.6 GHz (the "turbo core" speed, although only with three or fewer cores in use), and was sufficient to show 3.8 was stable. I have since replaced it with a Cooler Master Hyper212 and added the second fan.

Even with both fans going 100% at all times (which makes very little noise), the CPU will STILL heat up and throttle itself when running Prime95 on all six cores at once when running at 4 GHz (which also necessitates a voltage bump, it'll only go to 3.8 at stock voltage). Importantly though, it neither fries nor crashes when it starts to overload. Still, while I was able to lower noise and increase clock speed with the Hyper212, it's not IMMENSELY faster. This is probably why AMD considers its stock cooler adequate. It is, if you stick to the specs. (But why would you buy a Black Edition and NOT overclock it?)

Intel heat sinks have always been sufficient to run the CPU at stock speeds. What more do you want from a stock cooler?

No, they haven't. I bought an E8400 from Newegg and installed it in a very well-ventilated case and set it to run at the precise spec voltages and frequency. With the stock heat sink and fan, the CPU would regularly hit 70C, nearly it's maximum rated temperature. I bought a replacement sink and fan (looked a little overclocker-ish but I didn't want to go halfway) and now it never gets over 48C under heavy load.

Most of Intel's sinks are sufficient, but all of them most certainly are not.

Nobody I know who builds their own PC uses the stock cooler of either Intel or AMD unless they are on a very tight budget and even then it's the first thing getting replaced.

Do you know how hard it is to find a good low profile HSF. If the stock one works, see feedback here, then why change? Then again, I build PCs for business use mainly and personal use only on occasion. In both cases, the only non-stocks I use are the custom heating solutions that come with Shuttle XPC (integrated case, PSU, and motherboard).

To me, a bigger question is why more people don't build their own PCs. It takes less time to slap the hardware together than it does to de-crapify a consumer/small business Dell PC (or HP or just about anyone else).

The place I work bought PoE "injectors." They are rack mounted equipment that just feeds power to the device. No new switch needed. Just run the Ethernet patch out of the switch, into the PoE device then from there to the patch panel.

It looked something like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833996101

But it wasn't "smart" so I can't imagine they paid anywhere near that price.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823126050

512MB DDR memory: $16
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820236106

512MB DDR2 memory: $12
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148239

So around $40 or €26 (incl. shipping) for 1GB memory. Is that really so difficult?

512MB DDR memory: $16
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820236106

512MB DDR2 memory: $12
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148239

So around $40 or €26 (incl. shipping) for 1GB memory. Is that really so difficult?

Does Newegg.com ship internationally?

Newegg.com does not currently ship internationally; we only deliver to locations within the United States and to Puerto Rico.

Most people worldwide genuinely can't pay $250+ for an operating system.

I can find Windows 7 Home Premium x64 for $95, a much more affordable amount than $250. If you have one of the few PCs that can only run 32 bit OSes, that one is $5 more.

So, why not buy a non-widescreen display, then?

Here's a calculator I wrote a while back to help compare relative areas.

These drives have actually been on the market for well over a year now, and I was (un)lucky enough to pick one up last year when my local Fry's Electronics got them in stock. While the drives themselves are handy because of the amount of data you can squeeze into them, making my macbook pro a beast of a mobile studio (at the time I was using it for music production), they seem to be prone to issues. The first drive lasted about a month, before I almost lost several weeks worth of a project I was working on due to the drive crashing. I was able to retrieve my work from the drive by mounting it externally before it became completely unreadable, and I attribute this to the high density drives not being able to handle the average bouncing around of a laptop in a backpack. When I attached the drive to one of my linux workstations, I could hear the disks spinning up but dmesg wouldn't pick up the drive and they just kept spinning endlessly louder and louder. The second drive lasted about 2 months before a similar problem occurred, though by that time I had migrated most of my work to a different workstation. I replaced the drive with the original 500gb drive my macbook came with, and I haven't had any problems since. In short, I'm not sure if the early drives off the assembly line were just prone to failure more often or if perhaps I was just extremely unlucky with the ones I procured. Either way, I am rather uncomfortable about putting any important data on one of these drives in the future until they've been on the market for a while and have been thoroughly tested.

The drive mentioned in the article has not been out for over a year. The drive you likely bought is this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136545 That drive is 12.5 mm high, not 9.5. They are indeed prone to issues; at work, we have purchased 11 of them for custom NAS servers and 2 of them have been DOA.

Recently, Western Digital stepped out and announced their new 1TB 9.5mm Scorpio Blue 2.5-inch notebook drive. The announcement was significant in that it's the first drive of this capacity to squeeze that many bits into an industry standard 9.5mm, 2.5" SATA form-factor.

Samsung announced theirs back in early June. It's been coming in and out of stock since then. I last saw it on Newegg a couple weeks ago, though curiously it's now marked as deactivated.

Do you not have the internet where you are? Here, if you don't count the out-of-stock ones, you have 11 monitors to choose from: Newegg is this cool new website where you can buy computer stuff

No. I obviously do not have "Internet" where am I at right now. Fucking douche...

Since you are the master of the Internet, please find me a quality LED monitor for a reasonable price (less than $250) at resolution that is higher than 1080P. Thanks for showing me a link to monitors of old technology that I have no interest in. But I'm probably at fault by not implicitly stating LED in my original post. /sadface

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007617+600012686&QksAutoSuggestion=&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Configurator=&IsNodeId=1&Subcategory=20&description=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&AdvancedSearch=1&srchInDesc=

Link to neweggs 2560x1600 monitors, all are IPS panels, but are 30" and they are $1200-$2500.

Do you not have the internet where you are? Here, if you don't count the out-of-stock ones, you have 11 monitors to choose from: Newegg is this cool new website where you can buy computer stuff

Eh.. I work for a large IT organization, and all the new programmers are getting these... Well almost... Ours don't have the luxury of 2 gig of ram...

And you know what.. that's actually plenty for the client machines. The bottleneck is the servers and network speed. A lot of data has to move over the network because the clients aren't thin....

That $200 Best Buy special? It's plenty beefy enough to run most workstations' applications these days. Maybe display, keyboard and mouse, support contracts and software licenses make up the difference, but $5600 worth of equipment for a single workstation purchased in 2010 or 2011 sounds awfully high to me, unless it's a specialized workstation used for something like high resolution 3D medical imaging or drafting or something.

An average of 3500, including all the paper-pusher PCs? That makes no sense. It's almost like someone set the budget back in 1996 and never reviewed it....

It's interesting I don't disagree that DVD-r is cheaper, but look how cheap flash memory has gotten, here are 8gb microsdhc for 2 dollars a piece: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220493&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&PageSize=10&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&IsFeedbackTab=true#scrollFullInfo And they are smaller than the stamp needed to send a DVD through the mail.

The specific drives they recommend are $130 each (Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 HDS5C3030ALA630 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145490R ), $5850 for 45, ~1% failure rate vs. the 5% they were getting from other drives.

Backblaze, which runs 16PB of disk storage has tested drives, here is their recommendation:

We are constantly looking at new hard drives, evaluating them for reliability and power consumption. The Hitachi 3TB drive (Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 HDS5C3030ALA630) is our current favorite for both its low power demand and astounding reliability. The Western Digital and Seagate equivalents we tested saw much higher rates of popping out of RAID arrays and drive failure. Even the Western Digital Enterprise Hard Drives had the same high failure rates. The Hitachi drives, on the other hand, perform wonderfully.

Newegg has them for $130 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145490R

You can buy 68 internal drives (2TB each) for the low price of $5439.32 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152245 I'm not a hardware expert, but I imagine you could connect them somehow for less than $1944.68.. ($7384 - $5439.32)

The problem with 'one larger screen' is that the screen costs $1100. A quadruple-head setup, however, can be done with commodity panels for around $500.

in fact take your pick.....
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100006740%20600004347&IsNodeId=1&name=18.4%22%20and%20larger

gobs of them to choose from.

Although I see the latest Toshibas are a tiny under 18" screen

Offline HD has replaced tape for almost every application. It is so much cheaper and more reliable.

Lets do a quick comparison.

Price:
SATA 2TB drive: $80, or $0.04/MB
SATA 1TB drive: $54, or $0.054/MB
LTO5 3TB tape: $68, or $0.023/MB
LTO4 1.6TB tape: $25, or $0.015/MB
Even if you drop the "compressed vs native", LTO4 is still $0.03/MB, about 75% of the cost of sata at its best.

Durability:
SATA connector: rated for 50 connections
LTO-5 tape: rated for 5000 loads/unloads

Complexity:
LTO5 tape: spool of magnetic media
SATA drive: Spinning platters, motor, controller, read head. Very sensitive to bumps during operation.

You go with your disk-backup; Im sticking with tape. Enjoy your added costs of removable drive chassis.

Offline HD has replaced tape for almost every application. It is so much cheaper and more reliable.

Lets do a quick comparison.

Price:
SATA 2TB drive: $80, or $0.04/MB
SATA 1TB drive: $54, or $0.054/MB
LTO5 3TB tape: $68, or $0.023/MB
LTO4 1.6TB tape: $25, or $0.015/MB
Even if you drop the "compressed vs native", LTO4 is still $0.03/MB, about 75% of the cost of sata at its best.

Durability:
SATA connector: rated for 50 connections
LTO-5 tape: rated for 5000 loads/unloads

Complexity:
LTO5 tape: spool of magnetic media
SATA drive: Spinning platters, motor, controller, read head. Very sensitive to bumps during operation.

You go with your disk-backup; Im sticking with tape. Enjoy your added costs of removable drive chassis.

Well here is a link to newegg for 27 inch monioors that support 2560x1440 http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007617+600030620+600012694&QksAutoSuggestion=&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Configurator=&IsNodeId=1&Subcategory=20&description=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&AdvancedSearch=1&srchInDesc=
The cheapest is 839 not counting rebate but they all seem to be right around $999 with NEC at 1349 So with the display acting like a docking station as well as a monitor it looks pretty dang good to me at $999. In fact right in the same price range but with more features. You can buy cheap 27" monitors but they are just 1080p resolution. Which on a 27 inch monitor would be pretty bad.
The Mac Book pro isn't that badly priced for a quality professional notebook. Trust me I have seen Windows notebooks that sell for more that are not as well made.
People complain that Apple is expensive but the truth is they just don't offer a product in every product line.
Apple lacks an easy to expand mini tower for gamers and enthusiasts. I would love to see a Mac Mini with maybe one or two PCIE slots in a tower case for the same price. Not going to happen because that is a market that Apple isn't interested in.
Apple also lacks a sub $999 notebook. I would have loved to see Apple push out a new MacBook with an i3 and DVD and maybe a few more USBs for $599-$799. I think it would have been ideal for students.
The Mac Mini is actually really interesting. In many ways I can see it as the prefect machine for a lot of home users. It is tiny and not to shabby of a performer. Get a monitor with both DVI and HDMI and stick in a kids room. Use the HDMI for a Cable Tuner and the DVI for the Mini. Combine it with a wireless keyboard and you have a nice small TV plus computer setup not unlike the old Commodore 64 back in the day. Yes it will cost the average home user more than that $399 tower but frankly just a few vists from the geek squad to decrapify and clean malware will take up the difference.

Trayless SATA - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817998041 - This isn't the exact brand I used, but this is the style. Do some comparison shopping. The case I use for each drive is the ADIDT HS-1 for 3.5" HD. I bought them off ebay for about half of newegg's price. I couldn't find them listed at the moment on ebay, but there are plenty of hits on the web.. hit google and you'll see the pics.. assorted colors. They're stackable too and have spaces for labels. This is a strong case -- it takes two fingers for me to open the snap. I also print numeric tags with a label maker to stick on the drive for identification in the corner. 1 TB hard drives - http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007603%20600003269&IsNodeId=1&name=1TB%20and%20higher - my pick is the Western Digital Green drives.. read up on their soft seek technology which made them the quietest drive at the time I researched them. They come in consumer and RAID versions. The consumer version works well for both applications and costs less. For the cost savings using this method, you can double up in drives which is a given for storing any data -- always have at minimum two copies. Because they're just plain drives, you won't need special hardware to read them if your PC is destroyed by natural disaster or stolen. Store one set off-site... safe-deposit box works good. Encryption is a plus http://www.truecrypt.org/.

Trayless SATA - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817998041 - This isn't the exact brand I used, but this is the style. Do some comparison shopping. The case I use for each drive is the ADIDT HS-1 for 3.5" HD. I bought them off ebay for about half of newegg's price. I couldn't find them listed at the moment on ebay, but there are plenty of hits on the web.. hit google and you'll see the pics.. assorted colors. They're stackable too and have spaces for labels. This is a strong case -- it takes two fingers for me to open the snap. I also print numeric tags with a label maker to stick on the drive for identification in the corner. 1 TB hard drives - http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007603%20600003269&IsNodeId=1&name=1TB%20and%20higher - my pick is the Western Digital Green drives.. read up on their soft seek technology which made them the quietest drive at the time I researched them. They come in consumer and RAID versions. The consumer version works well for both applications and costs less. For the cost savings using this method, you can double up in drives which is a given for storing any data -- always have at minimum two copies. Because they're just plain drives, you won't need special hardware to read them if your PC is destroyed by natural disaster or stolen. Store one set off-site... safe-deposit box works good. Encryption is a plus http://www.truecrypt.org/.

Well, my personal fave router that I'm saving up for is this nifty ASUS one. At $129 it isn't from the cheap end of the spectrum, but even the one I have now supports dual band and USB at a more wallet-friendly $90, fully half the cost of the Apple kit, and comes with DD-WRT stock.

In either case, the most blaring flaw in your logic is that if the backups don't work, you'll know it VERY quickly at the backup phase. This is extremely preferable when contrasted with finding out in the restore phase. See, if there's an issue at the network or configuration level, the backup software won't be able to point to it in the first place, so when you perform your backup, it'll generally error out immediately, or not begin the backup process in the first place.

Personally, I've already done the bleeding obvious steps in this article - I've got a 3.5TByte FreeNAS where Acronis is humming along and backing up my household computers just wonderfully. It cost more than $200, but it greatly exceeds the capabilities of Time Machine in that it is also a great centralized management unit and is fault tolerant...plus all the ZFS wonderfulness of snapshotting, block level deduplication, etc.

I'd dare say that the ultimate issue with the article is that it wasn't designed for the slashdot crowd. It was designed for the general populous who isn't as acutely aware that there are alternatives to Time Machine. On the other side, the steps were very generic and broad, so it isn't really written for them, either :/

Well, my personal fave router that I'm saving up for is this nifty ASUS one. At $129 it isn't from the cheap end of the spectrum, but even the one I have now supports dual band and USB at a more wallet-friendly $90, fully half the cost of the Apple kit, and comes with DD-WRT stock.

In either case, the most blaring flaw in your logic is that if the backups don't work, you'll know it VERY quickly at the backup phase. This is extremely preferable when contrasted with finding out in the restore phase. See, if there's an issue at the network or configuration level, the backup software won't be able to point to it in the first place, so when you perform your backup, it'll generally error out immediately, or not begin the backup process in the first place.

Personally, I've already done the bleeding obvious steps in this article - I've got a 3.5TByte FreeNAS where Acronis is humming along and backing up my household computers just wonderfully. It cost more than $200, but it greatly exceeds the capabilities of Time Machine in that it is also a great centralized management unit and is fault tolerant...plus all the ZFS wonderfulness of snapshotting, block level deduplication, etc.

I'd dare say that the ultimate issue with the article is that it wasn't designed for the slashdot crowd. It was designed for the general populous who isn't as acutely aware that there are alternatives to Time Machine. On the other side, the steps were very generic and broad, so it isn't really written for them, either :/

Not an E-350, but I think it's forgivable for $345: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834246115

Close enough? Sure, Windows 7 Starter, and only an Atom, but the N455 is roughly on par with a Intel Pentium IV 2.40GHz.

Other than a few minor mistypings (SDD instead of SSD, pci-e instead of PCIe), I see nothing wrong.

I thought a long standing goal of PC manufacturers was to do away with moving parts. I dont think fans will go away anytime soon as long as they are cheap to replace. From the comments hear I'd assume this heatsink spins on a platter essentially taking the place of the fan. What do you do when it fails? Can you replace it for less than $10?

True. These are the handheld models. They look pretty nice, albeit not cheap for some (e.g., the DR-2d costs $449 or so). Newegg by Zoom for $299. I have no particular experience with either of these, but $100-400 seems typical for hand-held solid-state sound recorders, rather than the "voice" ones that are pretty variable in quality. There seem to be plenty of options to replace MiniDisc recorders. I'm kind of surprised it took this long for MiniDisc to go extinct.

Own a computer with a PCI port? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815166006

I literally just had an argument with a Best Buy employee over this the other day. Me and a friend went to the mall because I needed some emergency thermal paste for a PC build I was doing (I was visiting friends 5 hours from my house and had forgot some). I went to Best Buy because they had some for $10 (probably the cheapest thing in the store). After buying the paste, we hung around in the store while my friend's brother went and got a haircut. My friend and I went to the cable section and he asked me about HDMI cables for his HDTV. He showed me the cable he bought (Insignia for ~$40) and asked if it was good. I said it was fine, but that he over paid even for that. I then proceeded to pick up a Monster cable that was only 4 feet long and cost $129 and explain to him that this cable and that cable were the same. A Best Buy employee then came over and started a conversation with me.

Best Buy Employee: "Can I help you with anything?"
Me: "No, I'm all set."
BBE: "I see you have a Monster HDMI cable there. What kind of TV do you have?"
Me: "Oh I am just explaining to my friend that there is no reason to spend over $100 on a 4' cable when a $5 online will do the same thing"
BBE: "Well that isn't true. That cable will give you superior sound and video quality. It also has Ethernet over HDMI capability and compatibility for 3D"
Me: "Well I'm sure it does all of that, but any cable will do that for you as long as it is rated for HDMI 1.4 spec."
BBE: "It will but that cable will give you better picture quality because it has gold connectors and better shielding"
Me: "No, it really won't. Unless you have your TV inside a power transfer station with unshielded electrical cables, you will not really need to worry about interference. And picture quality will not be better regardless of what cable you are using."
BBE: "You are giving your friend bad advice. This cable is better and will give you better -"
Me: *interrupting him* "If I hooked up the same exact TVs to the same exact source with my cable and this cable, not only would they be the same quality, but my cable would be 15' longer and be able to connect across the room where as this is only capable of connecting to a device close by, and my cable will have cost around $5-20 and this one costs $129. I'd bet you any amount of $ that the difference in picture and sound quality would be indistinguishable."
BBE: "I'd take that bet, but only if I saw the cable you were going to use first"

We then went to the computer in the department and I went to Newegg and showed him this cable. He said "Right but that is a nice shielded cable like this one". And I said "Yea, but look at the length and the price." He then basically dismissed what I was saying and said that the Monster cable was still superior.

I wonder if they train people to be this ignorant? Or could places that sell cables for this price just attract people who buy into the BS?

Just did some research....
500GB SAS 6gb drive for $125
2TB SAS drive for $260

As for SSDs...
http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=2021&Tid=11691&name=Enterprise-SSD
What on that page looks even remotely comparable? I see several SSDs in the "multi-thousand" range, none of them hitting 2TB.

Just did some research....
500GB SAS 6gb drive for $125
2TB SAS drive for $260

As for SSDs...
http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=2021&Tid=11691&name=Enterprise-SSD
What on that page looks even remotely comparable? I see several SSDs in the "multi-thousand" range, none of them hitting 2TB.