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I'm about to expand it from all on one system..to breaking it into its client server components and have one big machine in my office out of the way with tons of drive space, and use it to feed smaller boxes by each tv/stereo in the house. I'm looking to maybe get the little Acer Revo for each front end box. It looks nice and small and quiet, and I think I'm reading if you use VDPAU on it...you can use it to view HD.

I don't have wireless keyboard/mouse yet, but will add those on...wired isn't bothering me right now since I'm running off a HD projector so projector, computer and controls are all near me on the couch so, no wires running around with this setup.

When I set up the front end boxes with flat panel tvs, I'll do wireless then. But that is what I watch tv through...and just alt-tab to do real computer stuff. If I'm in the middle of a live show, I hit pause, do computer...then back, but most of the time with a DVR, I RARELY watch live tv anymore...I just don't like fscking with the commercials.

Were I to build an Atom box for the TV, I would personally go with a D510 board dual core model and a Broadcom PCIe 2d video decoder BCM70012found on Ebay for cheap. This will use very little power, be very quiet, and just as good and just as good at playing (non-3D) video as the super-hot (temperature-wise) nVidia ion systems. This is, of course, you are not using the mini PCIe slot for wireless networking. Ethernet or USB wireless ftw.

This should help http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16875995063

Tim Rosco

Looks good, but I am always a bit leery of products that have no customer reviews.

...and is just about as powerful as my Sempron desktop.

This. Is. Wrong.

Please make your way to NewEgg or Fry's immediately to renew your geek card. Seriously, man, it's all of $130 for a 2.8 GHz quad-core processor with a motherboard. It's time to move into this century...

When 3.5" go obsolete once and for all the 2.5" drives will stop costing a premium
If you don't want all that much capacity and don't care about speed then the 2.5 inch drive is already sometimes cheaper. For example looking at newegg the cheapest 160GB laptop drive ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148443 ) is $39.99 with free shipping while the cheapest 160GB desktop drive ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148511 ) is $37.99 plus 6.25 shipping.

For capacities too large to fit on one side of one 2.5 inch platter I suspect making the platter 3.5 inch will always be cheaper than adding a second read/write head.

When 3.5" go obsolete once and for all the 2.5" drives will stop costing a premium
If you don't want all that much capacity and don't care about speed then the 2.5 inch drive is already sometimes cheaper. For example looking at newegg the cheapest 160GB laptop drive ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148443 ) is $39.99 with free shipping while the cheapest 160GB desktop drive ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148511 ) is $37.99 plus 6.25 shipping.

For capacities too large to fit on one side of one 2.5 inch platter I suspect making the platter 3.5 inch will always be cheaper than adding a second read/write head.

Here are a couple of slot-mount SDD mounting frames.

But the idea of integrating a few score gigabytes of flash, with the appropriate controller and tied to a dedicated Southbridge SATA channel... brilliant! I don't know if anyone will go for it, though, except in the case of super-compact motherboards. Since losing enough flash cells means losing the entire integrated "hard drive", and therefore the full function of the motherboard. (Most motherboards don't have expendable components, like flash memory. Taiwanese knockoff capacitors notwithstanding.)

Here are a couple of slot-mount SDD mounting frames.

But the idea of integrating a few score gigabytes of flash, with the appropriate controller and tied to a dedicated Southbridge SATA channel... brilliant! I don't know if anyone will go for it, though, except in the case of super-compact motherboards. Since losing enough flash cells means losing the entire integrated "hard drive", and therefore the full function of the motherboard. (Most motherboards don't have expendable components, like flash memory. Taiwanese knockoff capacitors notwithstanding.)

Ah, but when 200 GB of storage is $20, no hard drive will ever be able to be that cheap. There is a fixed minimum cost for building a hard drive. Spindle, motor, etc. It's about $70.

This page would like a word with you. (Hopefully that link works; if not, it's a page of seven drives from WD, Seagate, and Hitachi for 160 GB drives for $50. The cheapest is $37.99.)

The vast majority of SSDs are 2.5" or 1.8", and there are PCIe SSDs out there. I can't speak to the quality and cost, but it's not a new idea:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=Property&Subcategory=636&Description=&Type=&N=2010150636&srchInDesc=&MinPrice=&MaxPrice=&PropertyCodeValue=4213%3A46884&PropertyCodeValue=4213%3A47725

(most SSD are 2.5", not 3.5")

PCIe "hard drives" already exist.

Here's a 1TB model: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227500
There are others in 250GB, 256GB, and 512GB capacities.

I doubt that the cost goes down much though. The PCIe interface chip isn't free, and neither is the card bracket. The PC board itself is also much larger, and has to be thicker than those used on most hard drives. The cost differences are probably a wash.

Perhaps he just needs to upgrade to a better soundcard, geared towards semi-professionals and professionals. For example M-Audio is a company known to produce produces quality soundcards with multiple input and output jacks and break out boxes.
Here's the category page: http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.family&ID=recording
You can find PCI cards, USB sound cards and even Firewire devices on that page.

Otherwise, there are still plenty of sound cards with line-in, including USB ones: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=Property&Subcategory=57&Description=&Type=&N=2010290057&srchInDesc=line&MinPrice=&MaxPrice=

What do mean when you say that? Hmm?

What do mean when you say that? Hmm?

What do mean when you say that? Hmm?

I suppose this could used for textbooks?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16858723010&Tpk=ectaco%20jetbook%20lite

$109Windows XP
$121Windows Vista
$105Windows 7
$335

This is buying the OEM copy of each in today's prices. The prices were different when they were released.

A server with this Intel Atom equipped mobo draws something like 25-35W under full load. And the performance of these D510 dual core processors is comparable to better Pentium 4 processors.

If you want a machine to play video files in any format, then may I suggest an old PC?

The problem with an old PC is that it's big and noisy, and most PC games really designed to run in situations commonly associated with a TV. Then I'm back to "one box for Theora video and one box for games". And if one doesn't have a spare old PC handy, would you recommend an ION nettop like the Aspire Revo?

i've been doing a lot of research on this to build a tiny, silent set top for media purposes. it seems like our bet bet is the ZOTAC IONITX-A-U Atom 330. It's fanless, so I've been looking at using either an off-the-shelf SSD or a cheap CF-to-SATA with cheap CompactFlash cards (which I have piles of from my cameras)

If you want a machine to play video files in any format, then may I suggest an old PC?

The problem with an old PC is that it's big and noisy, and most PC games really designed to run in situations commonly associated with a TV. Then I'm back to "one box for Theora video and one box for games". And if one doesn't have a spare old PC handy, would you recommend an ION nettop like the Aspire Revo?

i've been doing a lot of research on this to build a tiny, silent set top for media purposes. it seems like our bet bet is the ZOTAC IONITX-A-U Atom 330. It's fanless, so I've been looking at using either an off-the-shelf SSD or a cheap CF-to-SATA with cheap CompactFlash cards (which I have piles of from my cameras)

I just took a look at a toms hardware CPU chart ( http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-desktop-cpu-charts-update-1/Performance-Index,1407.html ), picked out the intel CPU that came immediately above the AMD CPU you mentioned and looked up the price on newegg ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115215&cm_re=i5-750-_-19-115-215-_-Product ) and it was $5 more.

It is the price you pay for getting the bleeding edge, AMD also has some halo models, but because they cant beat intel in performance, they cant afford to charge $1000 for their high end chips.

AMDs current flagship costs $195 and is still a heck of a performer. I'll stick with AMD for now.

lol, anyome remember the horribly overpriced Athlon 64 FX-55?

I know there are SOME people out there who have $1000 to spend on just a CPU, but until these come down a long way in terms of price, it is WAY out of my price range.

Companies? Rendering farms? At this price, I'd imagine they're not really for the average consumer but more so for companies that can consider such a purchase an asset.

That said, you do realize that the i7-975 quad core that they compared it to is also nigh $1000, right? I think showing that the same price will buy you an entirely different beast signals that quad cores are complete. The current quad cores price will come down but why would you make a more expensive quad core at Intel? The specs here show it cannot stand up to the new six core platform.

All these prices will come down, of course. So it's fun to look forward to what I'll be using in two years (I just bought a low range quad core for $140 a week ago, almost right in time for this).

And also, who strayed from the duo- quad- naming methodology?! Are you insane!? Do you have any idea the marketing power that a sexa core chip could have?

Now to see what AMDs 6-core offering is like. I know that Intel destroys AMD in performance benchmarks and real-world performance, but AMD is FAR less expensive. If I was pushing an Eyefinity setup or something, then sure, I would go all out and drop a few hundred dollars or more on an Intel CPU. Considering that AMDs current flagship costs $195 and is still a heck of a performer...yeah, I'll stick with AMD for now.

Uhhh...dude? The article you linked to says they are being phased out in the future not that they are gone now, or even real soon. Just looking on Newegg under Intel shows that a good 3/4ths of the chips being sold are variations on Celeron, Core2, and Pentium D brands. That doesn't look to me like a retired chip.

And according to wikipedia not only is the Core2s not slated to be retired from manufacturing until "sometime in 2010", which would mean another year and a half to two years in the pipe, but that some of the Core2s may get rebranded as Core i3, making it an even bigger mess to tell what is what.

So don't blame me that Intel has a bazillion brands spread out all over the place. Saying they are gonna fix it "in the future" doesn't really help those of us buying and building new machines now, does it? Until Intel stops cranking out the Core2s under various names they are part of their lineup, and any discussions of Intel naming schema would have to include ALL their currently produced products, Just as I included Sempron into AMD even though they have only produced a single chip for the new line. As long as they keep making them they count.

Notice from the reviews how many people who have had this ASUS VH242H monitor more than a month have had severe problems.

Most brands (ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, etc) come with decent warranties anyway.

A three-year warranty is nice, but doesn't mean you'll get a motherboard that isn't going to destroy the CPU (or other component) because the voltage regulators crap out. Sure, you get a new motherboard, but you don't get all the other stuff replaced.

Spending $250+ on an enthusiast motherboard with all solid caps for a $500 HTPC project is absurd.

You can get motherboards with that quality of components for far less than that.

$150 will get you this board (which I have, because I want to do some light gaming on my HTPC), and nothing in this category is more than $150, and many are very reliable boards.

But, if you're only spending $500 on an HTPC, you're probably not getting things like a nice case, remote control, BluRay drive, etc., and you're relying on thousands of dollars of server somewhere else for your media storage.

Most brands (ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, etc) come with decent warranties anyway.

A three-year warranty is nice, but doesn't mean you'll get a motherboard that isn't going to destroy the CPU (or other component) because the voltage regulators crap out. Sure, you get a new motherboard, but you don't get all the other stuff replaced.

Spending $250+ on an enthusiast motherboard with all solid caps for a $500 HTPC project is absurd.

You can get motherboards with that quality of components for far less than that.

$150 will get you this board (which I have, because I want to do some light gaming on my HTPC), and nothing in this category is more than $150, and many are very reliable boards.

But, if you're only spending $500 on an HTPC, you're probably not getting things like a nice case, remote control, BluRay drive, etc., and you're relying on thousands of dollars of server somewhere else for your media storage.

Third. Really get the cheapest stuff you can find. I just built a HTPC and built it out of literally the cheapest components I could source. (That had Gigabit, etc).

Ended up with a 1.8 gHz Centrino (still more powerful than yesteryear's highend chips) and a GT220, all of which will do 1080p out with VDPAU.

And go with Newegg instead. Prices aren't THAT much different, plu they are probably one of the best tech companies I've ever had to deal with. Compared to Pricewatch when my roommate built his PC, all the parts came from different vendors (the cheapest), DOA returns were a nightmare, etc.

Step 1) Find what you 'want'. Mimimum Motherboard (Intel|AMD) requirements. PCI, PCI express, gigabit ethernet, etc. Do a Power Search. Look at a few reviews.
Step 2) Take the socket type of found motherboard. Do a powersearch on CPU type with matching socket.
Step 3) Repeat with GPU.
Step 4) Repeat with Case (& PSU if not included)
Step 5) Repeat with memory

Third. Really get the cheapest stuff you can find. I just built a HTPC and built it out of literally the cheapest components I could source. (That had Gigabit, etc).

Ended up with a 1.8 gHz Centrino (still more powerful than yesteryear's highend chips) and a GT220, all of which will do 1080p out with VDPAU.

And go with Newegg instead. Prices aren't THAT much different, plu they are probably one of the best tech companies I've ever had to deal with. Compared to Pricewatch when my roommate built his PC, all the parts came from different vendors (the cheapest), DOA returns were a nightmare, etc.

Step 1) Find what you 'want'. Mimimum Motherboard (Intel|AMD) requirements. PCI, PCI express, gigabit ethernet, etc. Do a Power Search. Look at a few reviews.
Step 2) Take the socket type of found motherboard. Do a powersearch on CPU type with matching socket.
Step 3) Repeat with GPU.
Step 4) Repeat with Case (& PSU if not included)
Step 5) Repeat with memory

Third. Really get the cheapest stuff you can find. I just built a HTPC and built it out of literally the cheapest components I could source. (That had Gigabit, etc).

Ended up with a 1.8 gHz Centrino (still more powerful than yesteryear's highend chips) and a GT220, all of which will do 1080p out with VDPAU.

And go with Newegg instead. Prices aren't THAT much different, plu they are probably one of the best tech companies I've ever had to deal with. Compared to Pricewatch when my roommate built his PC, all the parts came from different vendors (the cheapest), DOA returns were a nightmare, etc.

Step 1) Find what you 'want'. Mimimum Motherboard (Intel|AMD) requirements. PCI, PCI express, gigabit ethernet, etc. Do a Power Search. Look at a few reviews.
Step 2) Take the socket type of found motherboard. Do a powersearch on CPU type with matching socket.
Step 3) Repeat with GPU.
Step 4) Repeat with Case (& PSU if not included)
Step 5) Repeat with memory

$105 Win 7 Home Premium 64bit (I hope 105 is close enough for you, but just in case.)

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2552182&CatId=306

$90 Win XP sp3

How about a Windows license so that apps and games that don't work in Wine still work?

It isn't quite $100, and I'm not sure about the restrictions this time, but: Windows 7 Home Premium is $104.

http://www.keepassx.org/

+

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820241103

Chuck Swiger on the freebsd-questions mailing list pointed out that some USB flash drives have write-protect switches:

PQI U339H 8GB Flash Drive (USB2.0 Portable) Model BB18-8039R0151 - Retail

I see several pages of mail in rebates. Since almost all rebates are shady or fraudulent, I would see New Egg is knee deep in fraud.

http://www.newegg.com/HelpInfo/ReturnPolicy.aspx#29 Newegg will refund open box items, but won't replace them (presumably because they may not have enough stock to replace it)

Yes, because 15k RPM SAS drives are OH so inexpensive, right?

Starting out at 1.9$/GB for a 73.5 GB drive is certainly inexpensive. Especially when you have to pay an insane 9.332 cent/GB for a 750 GB hard drive.

By your definition, you could NEVER EVER use RAID on expensive hard drives. Which obviously means that you are an idiot.

Yes, because 15k RPM SAS drives are OH so inexpensive, right?

Starting out at 1.9$/GB for a 73.5 GB drive is certainly inexpensive. Especially when you have to pay an insane 9.332 cent/GB for a 750 GB hard drive.

By your definition, you could NEVER EVER use RAID on expensive hard drives. Which obviously means that you are an idiot.

But everybody can afford a NAS today.
http://www.amazon.com/D-Link-Network-Attached-Enclosure-DNS-323/dp/B000GK8LVE
Here is one for only $175 from Amazon just add drives.
If you are Mac shop just pick up an Airport and add a USB drive and you have a NAS.
And if you do have a spare machine that can load up with drives you have the option of running say.
FreeNAS or OpenFiler. Now that FreeNAS has ZFS support I have to say that I find it a very interesting option. If you need a Heavy duty NAS with LOTS of drive space this one could be very interesting.
Combine this one of AMDs new 890GX based motherboards and then pick the CPU that has the power you need.
For example this Motherboard http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128435
Has 6 6Gb Sata ports 2 3Gb sata ports and one ATA connector for you Optical drive if you need it.
It also has two USB 3.0 port for external drives.
A total of 3 firewire ports and 12 USB 2 ports as well.
The mother board and CPU will run you less than $300. The most expensive part would be the power supply, case, and filling it with drives.

At this point in time I would say that everybody can afford a NAS of some kind. And frankly if you are willing to roll your own you can build some monsters for pretty cheap.

MP3 playback gave longer battery life over WMV, can't say about Vorbis as I've honestly never come across a Vorbis player...

The problem with the OGG formats is the classic "chicken or the egg" problem. Nearly no support in hardware...

I don't think there even IS a single device with hardware Theora support, is there? OGG being "free as in freedom" really isn't gonna matter much if nobody supports it, and I haven't seen hardware manufacturers rushing to add it to their bullet point lists.

You lose all credibility with nonsense like this. My Sansa Fuze plays ogg (flac too, but anyone who puts flac files on a 4gb flash device is taking it a little far). My dear departed iAudio X5 played ogg and flac. A fucking shitload of audio players play ogg. Go ahead, ask me why.

"Why, Risen?"

I'll tell you why. Because it's patent-free, unencumbered, and an easy bulletlist item to put on a device. No, maybe they "don't give a shit about freedom," but they do give a shit about easy.

http://www.drobo.com/products/droboelite.php

Each Drobo has 8 bays of 2TB drives for a total of 16TB. And 255 Drobos can be linked together over Ethernet to create a single virtual volume of 4 Petabytes.

To back it all up, just buy more Drobos and store those in a separate location. They're too big for a safe deposit box, so your home is just as good as anywhere else (assuming your home is different than your office) -- or a temperature-controlled storage unit if you don't like that idea.

If you can afford it, I recommend the backup strategy I use, which involves four complete sets of the data. The main one is online. The second is always connected to the network and receives a backup nightly via xxcopy (yes, I manage a file server in Windows -- shoot me). The third is on-site but not connected to the network and gets rotated with the second weekly. The fourth is off-site and gets rotated to on-site quarterly.

If you're really wed to the idea of off-line archival storage, get these for each customer -- get two so you can have two sets of data in case one goes bad:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822154428

You don't really need /home to be fast (although velociraptor drives and RAID are nice)

Although there are a few usage scenarios where the 300GB Velociraptor is still the clear winner, the 2TB Caviar Black generally does better in most real-world situations.

When you factor in the $0.80/GB vs. $0.14/GB, the 2TB Caviar Black is the clear price/performance winner for rotating magnetic disks.

You don't really need /home to be fast (although velociraptor drives and RAID are nice)

Although there are a few usage scenarios where the 300GB Velociraptor is still the clear winner, the 2TB Caviar Black generally does better in most real-world situations.

When you factor in the $0.80/GB vs. $0.14/GB, the 2TB Caviar Black is the clear price/performance winner for rotating magnetic disks.

Not terribly hard to find. Not $300, either.

Why do people bother using 'old' with P4 and especially a 286, 386, C64? Is is that there are 'new' ones that you can just buy on the market? Seems redundant.

I'm pretty sure the older you are the more often you use 'old' to describe things (I am, in fact, considered a 'dinosaur' in programming parlance). That being said, yes you can buy them new if you were so inclined.

It may have been, the only thing I can find online that is roughly the same is this one at Newegg. The one I saw at Walmart was about $60 cheaper, but it didn't have nearly as big a HDD either.

Apple Pricing ... PC Pricing ... now which is better? Oh yeah, the PC one has twice the onboard memory, and costs less than half the price.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883103228

I bet these with the right config would work nicely. It's a shame they come pre-installed with XP.

I'm using the Patriot Torqx m28 that I got at Fry's. Peppy doesn't begin to describe it. I'm seeing 8800 small random read IOPs with Iometer, and 28000 sequential. Compare this with about 180 IOPs for a 15k SAS hard drive - it's over 40 times as fast. Boot time is well under 30 seconds. My Core2duo laptop is usable for work again, and I can finally work with virtual machines in a reasonable manner.

Any one you get is going to be better than spinning disk, but the newer ones really are much better and more durable.