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For example, if we all pay for 10GB total transfer per month, and all of us decided to watch hulu at the exact point in time, the ISP would face the same problems they are complaining from now and they cannot guarantee good service to the users.

Actually, the congestion problem happens only with some types of networks and this argument is brought up constantly because monopolies don't want to invest in better networks. There's no law saying you HAVE to use the same DSL or cable connections.

They can solve the problem anytime by bringing fiber to the premises or fiber to the home. Fiber to ethernet converters are cheap nowadays: link or link

In the case of an apartment building, they can just pull fiber to the basement and inject the signal into the cable network of that apartment building. Cable modems running on DOCSIS 3 can then be used easily. Or, you can add UTP cable to each apartment.

In the case of small houses, a fiber strand can go to one house and from that house it's possible to use UTP cable (up to 100 meters) in all directions.

Both solutions would give people up to 1gbps and there won't be any congestion issues as a 1gbps fiber link is relatively cheap.

It's fairly easy to prove that the problem with Linux on vendors is in fact the drastically customized version of Linux that's sold on them, not Linux itself.

Here are customer reviews of a Linux netbook, about 95% of which mention replacing the ASUS OEM Xandros OS. Of those, almost everybody replaced the OEM OS with some form of Ubuntu, a handful replaced it with XP, one user replaced with Vista and is wondering why not all peripherals work. One person said he's tried both Xandros-OEM and Ubuntu and prefers Xandros. Linus Torvalds wasn't a Newegg customer, he publicly announced that he replaced Xandros on his Eee PC with Fedora Core.

When the great majority of users replace an OS / UI with something else, one can conclude that the OS / UI has big problems, which it does. I suspect that if XP had gotten the same kind of UI that various incompetents have foisted on Linux, people would be dumping XP just as fast.

A reasonable test of Linux v XP on netbooks would involve the regular Linux desktop UI vs the XP UI. That isn't what happened.

You can still get Linux EEE PCs at http://www.newegg.com/ . They're the ones with the SSD drives. Matter of preference, but I consider the idea of a netbook with a HD a trifle silly. I expect a netbook not only to be lighter than a laptop, but more rugged. I'd like a netbook that at least has the chance of normal operation after it gets dropped.



Agreed about the desirability of an OS-free option.

As for a netbook on which wireless does not work in the OEM configuration . . . a vendor selling it deserves anything bad that happens as a result, up to 100% returns and/or including a class-action lawsuit. That isn't the fault of Linux, that's the fault of an idiot vendor.

Because dual-layer discs are still more than twice as expensive as single-layers discs.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817507003
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817130046

For ripping DVDs, I'd rather spend the 30 minutes it takes on my old P4 system (while I'm doing something else, like food shopping, or reading a book) to shrink the DVD down to single-layer size, then burn it.

Because dual-layer discs are still more than twice as expensive as single-layers discs.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817507003
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817130046

For ripping DVDs, I'd rather spend the 30 minutes it takes on my old P4 system (while I'm doing something else, like food shopping, or reading a book) to shrink the DVD down to single-layer size, then burn it.

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of backup tapes. Or, in modern terms, NAS. Nothing replaces the obvious answer: Lend your NAS to a friend with equal quality standards for a few days, and let nature take its course. If that friend doesn't have your rip, back up the NAS to your media center and repeat until all your friends have offsite backups of each other's valuable media for disaster recovery purposes and you have what you want.

Not that I would advocate watching the backups of DVD's that you don't have purchased media for... oh, no. That would be immoral. Not quite as immoral as charging $16 bucks for Waterworld: Director's Cut or Glitter [4:3], but immoral still.

After all these years why are we even having this talk? Kids these days. /lawn, onion, etc.

Since I'm already offtopic, I might as well go whole hog: using an old computer, the free OpenFiler app and a 4 port ESATA card you can turn 4 of these NAS+eSATA devices into RAIN: a Redundant Array of Independent NAS, for 27TB of massively parallel striped redundant hot swappable SATA goodness for about 6 grand served up as iSCSI. If you've been pricing that class of storage in the enterprise lately, you should now be going... wait, what did he say? Yes, I did say iSCSI SAN for $250/TB with redundancy, failover, striped performance and a scalable architecture that goes as big as you like. Yes it includes web management, clustering, unlimited snapshots, resizeable LUNs, static and dynamic replication and all the other SAN goodness. Though I'm not quite sure about data dedupe yet, at this rate for raw storage does it matter? Data dedupe is about making the most of that precious investment. If the investment is out of petty cash you don't need that kludge any more than you need Full Disk Compression, RLE, or any of those technologies built to get around the high cost of storage. Of course it runs in Linux, and of course it's available as a virtual machine, and naturally since the software is FREE there's no per-terabyte licensing. The license doesn't expire, run out, require keys or maintenance or accounting, it doesn't require a license server and when the array needs expansion or an upgrade in technology they can't tell you that you have to upgrade to the new version and buy licenses all over again. It's all about knowing what you're doing - a lot of the Top500 use OpenFiler to serve disk to their supercomputers.

We've done considerable research on the problem of scanning documents, also, and came to the same conclusion: The new Fujitsu fi-6130 seems excellent, although we haven't tried it. That model and the 6230 are new, and there is some evidence that waiting for the second version of those models would be a good idea.

The big attraction of the fi-6130 is its speed: 40 pages per minute.

If you are interested, I suggest you download the manual. (PDF)

The manual talks about a connection for an "imprinter", which sounds as though it is a printer that works only with that particular Fujitsu scanner. That causes me to doubt whether buying from Fujitsu would be a good idea; we don't want to get involved with corporate marketing drone foolishness. Everything else, however, looks quite good.

The scanner comes with OCR software. I suppose and hope that Fujitsu did a lot of work and found the best OCR software.

The scanner software makes a PDF. The OCR software tries to recognize the words, so that the software can make a searchable PDF. Even if the OCR recognition isn't perfect, it can be very useful.

It seems to me that the Fujitsu fi-6230, suggested in the parent comment, is a poor design. It combines an automatic sheetfed scanner with a flatbed scanner for a lot more money. That doesn't make sense, since the attractive feature of the sheetfed scanner is its speed. Speed is important with a flatbed scanner, but not as important, since the operation will always be manual. It seems to me that it would be better to have a flatbed scanner that is a separate piece of equipment, rather than two pieces seemingly glued together, without any logical connection, since apparently the 6250 has two imaging elements.

Be careful about using Windows Search, as suggested in the parent comment. The Windows XP version is buggy, and sometimes won't look into files that are there. We use VCOM's PowerDesk pdfind.exe program, a older version of which is free. We also use Funduc Software's Search and Replace program.

Most scanners are quite slow, don't have automatic document feeders that allow scanning of papers of widely different sizes, and don't build OCR'd indexes inside the PDF files.

One thing about this research paper is that they used only one model MemoRight GT MR25.2 in 8/16/32 GB capacities to do their testing before 2008-11-11 publication of the paper in the United Kingdom.

I'm concerned that the research test and results are largely skewed against SSDs because they used only that one model to do all their testing with based on only one price point for the SSDs.

There is a very large difference in performance between many various SSD drives based on the original flawed JMicron JMF602 chipset (stuttering/freezing on write), newer JMF602B (smaller stuttering), Samsung's chipset, Intel's chipset (fastest random writes by 4x), and the newest Indilnix Barefoot chipset (balanced sequential/random read/write). Additionally the huge drops in prices in the last 6-12 months ($1,500->$400) is a big change in the SSD arena. These price, capacity, and performance changes are going to continue fluctuating for the next few years yielding much better drives for the consumers.

I believe that the research in the paper will be shortly obsolete, if it isn't already, given the latest products on the market and price points and the Q3/Q4 new upcoming products from Intel and others.

I'm helping a friend of mine build an all-in-one HTPC / Desktop / Gaming system and I've been doing research into SSDs for the past few weeks based on reviews and benchmarks so I wanted to share my info.

Basically there are only two drives to consider and I list them below. A good alternative at this time is to purchase smaller SSDs and create RAID-0 (stripping) sets to effectively double their performance instead of buying a single large SSD. The RAID-0 article below shows great benchmark results to this effect.

Intel X25-M

The Intel X25-M series of drives is the top performance leader right now, and the 80GB drive is barely affordable for a desktop system build if you consider the increased performance of the drive.

Intel X25-M SSDSA2MH080G1 80GB SATA Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail - $383.00 USD ($ 4.7875 / per GB)

OCZ Vertex

The new OCZ Vertex series of drives with the newer 1275 firmware is the price/performance leader and they are much more affordable than the Intel drives. When you combine two of these smaller 30/60 GB drives into RAID-0 (stripping) you get double the performance at still acceptable prices.

OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX30G 2.5" 30GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail - $129.00 USD ($ 4.3 / per GB)

OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail - $209.00 USD ( $ 3.483 / per GB)

Reviews

Required Reading:
AnandTech - The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ

AnandTech - Intel X25-M SSD: Intel Delivers One of the World's Fastest Drives

AnandTech - The SSD Update: Vertex Gets Faster, New Indilinx Drives and Intel/MacBook Problems Resolved

RAID-0 Performance:
ExtremeTech - Intel X25 80GB Solid-State Drive Review - PCMark Vantage Disk Tests

BenchmarkReviews - OCZ Vertex SSD RAID-0 Performance
(Be Warned about BenchmarkReviews! Synthetic benchmark results only, no real-life benchmarks such as PCMark Vantage.)

One thing about this research paper is that they used only one model MemoRight GT MR25.2 in 8/16/32 GB capacities to do their testing before 2008-11-11 publication of the paper in the United Kingdom.

I'm concerned that the research test and results are largely skewed against SSDs because they used only that one model to do all their testing with based on only one price point for the SSDs.

There is a very large difference in performance between many various SSD drives based on the original flawed JMicron JMF602 chipset (stuttering/freezing on write), newer JMF602B (smaller stuttering), Samsung's chipset, Intel's chipset (fastest random writes by 4x), and the newest Indilnix Barefoot chipset (balanced sequential/random read/write). Additionally the huge drops in prices in the last 6-12 months ($1,500->$400) is a big change in the SSD arena. These price, capacity, and performance changes are going to continue fluctuating for the next few years yielding much better drives for the consumers.

I believe that the research in the paper will be shortly obsolete, if it isn't already, given the latest products on the market and price points and the Q3/Q4 new upcoming products from Intel and others.

I'm helping a friend of mine build an all-in-one HTPC / Desktop / Gaming system and I've been doing research into SSDs for the past few weeks based on reviews and benchmarks so I wanted to share my info.

Basically there are only two drives to consider and I list them below. A good alternative at this time is to purchase smaller SSDs and create RAID-0 (stripping) sets to effectively double their performance instead of buying a single large SSD. The RAID-0 article below shows great benchmark results to this effect.

Intel X25-M

The Intel X25-M series of drives is the top performance leader right now, and the 80GB drive is barely affordable for a desktop system build if you consider the increased performance of the drive.

Intel X25-M SSDSA2MH080G1 80GB SATA Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail - $383.00 USD ($ 4.7875 / per GB)

OCZ Vertex

The new OCZ Vertex series of drives with the newer 1275 firmware is the price/performance leader and they are much more affordable than the Intel drives. When you combine two of these smaller 30/60 GB drives into RAID-0 (stripping) you get double the performance at still acceptable prices.

OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX30G 2.5" 30GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail - $129.00 USD ($ 4.3 / per GB)

OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail - $209.00 USD ( $ 3.483 / per GB)

Reviews

Required Reading:
AnandTech - The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ

AnandTech - Intel X25-M SSD: Intel Delivers One of the World's Fastest Drives

AnandTech - The SSD Update: Vertex Gets Faster, New Indilinx Drives and Intel/MacBook Problems Resolved

RAID-0 Performance:
ExtremeTech - Intel X25 80GB Solid-State Drive Review - PCMark Vantage Disk Tests

BenchmarkReviews - OCZ Vertex SSD RAID-0 Performance
(Be Warned about BenchmarkReviews! Synthetic benchmark results only, no real-life benchmarks such as PCMark Vantage.)

One thing about this research paper is that they used only one model MemoRight GT MR25.2 in 8/16/32 GB capacities to do their testing before 2008-11-11 publication of the paper in the United Kingdom.

I'm concerned that the research test and results are largely skewed against SSDs because they used only that one model to do all their testing with based on only one price point for the SSDs.

There is a very large difference in performance between many various SSD drives based on the original flawed JMicron JMF602 chipset (stuttering/freezing on write), newer JMF602B (smaller stuttering), Samsung's chipset, Intel's chipset (fastest random writes by 4x), and the newest Indilnix Barefoot chipset (balanced sequential/random read/write). Additionally the huge drops in prices in the last 6-12 months ($1,500->$400) is a big change in the SSD arena. These price, capacity, and performance changes are going to continue fluctuating for the next few years yielding much better drives for the consumers.

I believe that the research in the paper will be shortly obsolete, if it isn't already, given the latest products on the market and price points and the Q3/Q4 new upcoming products from Intel and others.

I'm helping a friend of mine build an all-in-one HTPC / Desktop / Gaming system and I've been doing research into SSDs for the past few weeks based on reviews and benchmarks so I wanted to share my info.

Basically there are only two drives to consider and I list them below. A good alternative at this time is to purchase smaller SSDs and create RAID-0 (stripping) sets to effectively double their performance instead of buying a single large SSD. The RAID-0 article below shows great benchmark results to this effect.

Intel X25-M

The Intel X25-M series of drives is the top performance leader right now, and the 80GB drive is barely affordable for a desktop system build if you consider the increased performance of the drive.

Intel X25-M SSDSA2MH080G1 80GB SATA Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail - $383.00 USD ($ 4.7875 / per GB)

OCZ Vertex

The new OCZ Vertex series of drives with the newer 1275 firmware is the price/performance leader and they are much more affordable than the Intel drives. When you combine two of these smaller 30/60 GB drives into RAID-0 (stripping) you get double the performance at still acceptable prices.

OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX30G 2.5" 30GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail - $129.00 USD ($ 4.3 / per GB)

OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail - $209.00 USD ( $ 3.483 / per GB)

Reviews

Required Reading:
AnandTech - The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ

AnandTech - Intel X25-M SSD: Intel Delivers One of the World's Fastest Drives

AnandTech - The SSD Update: Vertex Gets Faster, New Indilinx Drives and Intel/MacBook Problems Resolved

RAID-0 Performance:
ExtremeTech - Intel X25 80GB Solid-State Drive Review - PCMark Vantage Disk Tests

BenchmarkReviews - OCZ Vertex SSD RAID-0 Performance
(Be Warned about BenchmarkReviews! Synthetic benchmark results only, no real-life benchmarks such as PCMark Vantage.)

The pricing structures that I'm talking about are Apple prices and... let's call them... sane prices.

Here's a quick example, since you asked:
4.0 GB of RAM (2x2GB) SO-DIMM, 1066MHz DDR3 (PC3-8500)
Apple store $200
Newegg (highest price) $69.99

Feel free to find more on your own. Try comparing hard drives if you'd like. I haven't checked myself and maybe I'm wrong, but I have a hunch you'd find another good example. I hope you understand what I mean by Apple's pricing structures.

Now... how about providing a link regarding your statement about the record labels deciding what price Apple was going to set for music in iTunes? I mean, if you're going to call someone out, certainly you are prepared to back up your own statements as well...

I'm sorry to say that this guy is dead on. As of this post, of the nearly 50 netbooks Newegg sells, only 4 do not have Windows preinstalled.

Make sure you consider the placement of the machine to minize dust/pet dander from entering the machine.

Below is a working parts list for what you need

Case + PSU: Rosewill R363-M-BK Micro Black Ultra High Gloss Finished ATX Computer Case with 400W ATX 2.2 12V Power Supply

Mobo: ASUS M3N78-VM AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 8200 HDMI Micro ATX AMD

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750 Kuma 2.7GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache 2MB L3 Cache Socket AM2+ 95W Dual-Core

RAM(x2): Kingston 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)

HD: Patriot PE32GS25SSDR 2.5" 32GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk

CD: LITE-ON Black 22X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 22X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM SATA 22X DVD Burner

Windows XP Professional

Veterinary Practice Manager

Office 2007 Small Business

Make sure you consider the placement of the machine to minize dust/pet dander from entering the machine.

Below is a working parts list for what you need

Case + PSU: Rosewill R363-M-BK Micro Black Ultra High Gloss Finished ATX Computer Case with 400W ATX 2.2 12V Power Supply

Mobo: ASUS M3N78-VM AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 8200 HDMI Micro ATX AMD

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750 Kuma 2.7GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache 2MB L3 Cache Socket AM2+ 95W Dual-Core

RAM(x2): Kingston 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)

HD: Patriot PE32GS25SSDR 2.5" 32GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk

CD: LITE-ON Black 22X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 22X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM SATA 22X DVD Burner

Windows XP Professional

Veterinary Practice Manager

Office 2007 Small Business

Make sure you consider the placement of the machine to minize dust/pet dander from entering the machine.

Below is a working parts list for what you need

Case + PSU: Rosewill R363-M-BK Micro Black Ultra High Gloss Finished ATX Computer Case with 400W ATX 2.2 12V Power Supply

Mobo: ASUS M3N78-VM AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 8200 HDMI Micro ATX AMD

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750 Kuma 2.7GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache 2MB L3 Cache Socket AM2+ 95W Dual-Core

RAM(x2): Kingston 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)

HD: Patriot PE32GS25SSDR 2.5" 32GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk

CD: LITE-ON Black 22X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 22X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM SATA 22X DVD Burner

Windows XP Professional

Veterinary Practice Manager

Office 2007 Small Business

Make sure you consider the placement of the machine to minize dust/pet dander from entering the machine.

Below is a working parts list for what you need

Case + PSU: Rosewill R363-M-BK Micro Black Ultra High Gloss Finished ATX Computer Case with 400W ATX 2.2 12V Power Supply

Mobo: ASUS M3N78-VM AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 8200 HDMI Micro ATX AMD

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750 Kuma 2.7GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache 2MB L3 Cache Socket AM2+ 95W Dual-Core

RAM(x2): Kingston 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)

HD: Patriot PE32GS25SSDR 2.5" 32GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk

CD: LITE-ON Black 22X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 22X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM SATA 22X DVD Burner

Windows XP Professional

Veterinary Practice Manager

Office 2007 Small Business

Make sure you consider the placement of the machine to minize dust/pet dander from entering the machine.

Below is a working parts list for what you need

Case + PSU: Rosewill R363-M-BK Micro Black Ultra High Gloss Finished ATX Computer Case with 400W ATX 2.2 12V Power Supply

Mobo: ASUS M3N78-VM AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 8200 HDMI Micro ATX AMD

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750 Kuma 2.7GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache 2MB L3 Cache Socket AM2+ 95W Dual-Core

RAM(x2): Kingston 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)

HD: Patriot PE32GS25SSDR 2.5" 32GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk

CD: LITE-ON Black 22X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 22X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM SATA 22X DVD Burner

Windows XP Professional

Veterinary Practice Manager

Office 2007 Small Business

Make sure you consider the placement of the machine to minize dust/pet dander from entering the machine.

Below is a working parts list for what you need

Case + PSU: Rosewill R363-M-BK Micro Black Ultra High Gloss Finished ATX Computer Case with 400W ATX 2.2 12V Power Supply

Mobo: ASUS M3N78-VM AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 8200 HDMI Micro ATX AMD

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750 Kuma 2.7GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache 2MB L3 Cache Socket AM2+ 95W Dual-Core

RAM(x2): Kingston 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)

HD: Patriot PE32GS25SSDR 2.5" 32GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk

CD: LITE-ON Black 22X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 22X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM SATA 22X DVD Burner

Windows XP Professional

Veterinary Practice Manager

Office 2007 Small Business

$150 gets you a super low power device that hovers around 24 watts.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856167032

Add a cheap 3.5" hard drive and a 1 GB DIMM for $50 and you got yourself a killer computer for $200 that well exceeds his previous hardware.

If you are worried about the thing failing, buy him a spare system for another $200 and load an exact mirror image on the system with all the software ready to go. Backup all the data to the SD flash memory slot and just move that SD card to the spare if you need to use it.

You've used a little more than $400 and you're saving him money on power costs.

I picked up a fanless VIA Eden board for exactly this reason - running legacy DOS applications for the next X years. I chose fanless so that it won't overheat if the two quiet fans I stuck in there fail.

(With a case)

It's running Ubuntu Linux with VirtualBox installed and Win98SE inside that.

One piece of advice for you - if you have a parallel port licensing dongle for your DOS software, pick virtualization software with "Parallel port passthrough", like VMWare. VirtualBox is free, but last I checked it doesn't support direct access to parallel port devices.

I would think the most likely parts to fail are the HDD, memory, and fans. Pick up at least one backup stick of RAM. I would buy two HDDs, and either RAID them, or have a cron job backup everything at the end of the day.

Go for Hitachi or Western Digital drives. Hitachi ones are supposed to be very quiet. Don't bother with SSDs or flash - they cost too much for what they offer, and may not warn you when data starts getting corrupted. I prefer backup scripts to RAID so that stupid on-board controllers reading SMART data can warn you in big red text upon POSTing. With Hardware+Software RAID, you often don't get that benefit until one drive completely fails.

If these computers are going to be internet connected, make sure you stick a good firewall in front of them. My favourite is a WRT54GL (or similar router) running Tomato or another open firmware varient.

I've only ever had to virtualize single workstations, so I'm not sure how well VirtualBox will work for getting two virtual OS's talking to each other - but I firmly believe this is the safest and most manageable way to go. They don't make a lot of Win95 compatible hardware anymore(if any), and in 15 years, DDR2 memory may not even be available anymore. Virtualized, you can upgrade the hardware if you need to.

Oh yeah - replace your PSUs before they fail, every half-decade or so. It'd suck if the PSU took a stick of RAM with it when it goes. ;) One $30 PSU every 5 years is probably cheaper than one day of downtime when it fails.

I picked up a fanless VIA Eden board for exactly this reason - running legacy DOS applications for the next X years. I chose fanless so that it won't overheat if the two quiet fans I stuck in there fail.

(With a case)

It's running Ubuntu Linux with VirtualBox installed and Win98SE inside that.

One piece of advice for you - if you have a parallel port licensing dongle for your DOS software, pick virtualization software with "Parallel port passthrough", like VMWare. VirtualBox is free, but last I checked it doesn't support direct access to parallel port devices.

I would think the most likely parts to fail are the HDD, memory, and fans. Pick up at least one backup stick of RAM. I would buy two HDDs, and either RAID them, or have a cron job backup everything at the end of the day.

Go for Hitachi or Western Digital drives. Hitachi ones are supposed to be very quiet. Don't bother with SSDs or flash - they cost too much for what they offer, and may not warn you when data starts getting corrupted. I prefer backup scripts to RAID so that stupid on-board controllers reading SMART data can warn you in big red text upon POSTing. With Hardware+Software RAID, you often don't get that benefit until one drive completely fails.

If these computers are going to be internet connected, make sure you stick a good firewall in front of them. My favourite is a WRT54GL (or similar router) running Tomato or another open firmware varient.

I've only ever had to virtualize single workstations, so I'm not sure how well VirtualBox will work for getting two virtual OS's talking to each other - but I firmly believe this is the safest and most manageable way to go. They don't make a lot of Win95 compatible hardware anymore(if any), and in 15 years, DDR2 memory may not even be available anymore. Virtualized, you can upgrade the hardware if you need to.

Oh yeah - replace your PSUs before they fail, every half-decade or so. It'd suck if the PSU took a stick of RAM with it when it goes. ;) One $30 PSU every 5 years is probably cheaper than one day of downtime when it fails.

Don't look now, but there are already netbooks on the market for "about $200". In fact, here's one for $249.99.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220270

Don't laser printers compatible with Free operating systems still cost more than the early termination fee?

Yep. HP and Samsung makes some cheapo lasers that work with Linux, but they run non-Free drivers. If you insist on running only Free software, you will pay more for the printer.

Going off this list: http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/printers

HP LaserJet P1005 (non-Free) is $79: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16828115079
HP LaserJet P2055dn (Free) is $299: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16828115365

So yeah about $220 more, but at the same time the Free one is a much more powerful printer - 35 ppm vs 15 ppm, 1200x1200 vs 400x600, etc. The manufacturers save a fair amount of money by moving all the processing to the host, so really only workgroup printers support Postscript in hardware.

On the other hand, an old HP LaserJet 4 or 5 will be cheap on eBay and support Postscript in hardware.

If the only reason you have to print is to print out bills, then yeah I could see getting paper bills as an option - it depends on your motive. If you're trying to stay away from paper because you don't want to waste physical resources, well, you're just shifting the printing to someone else. The company's printing will no doubt be more efficient, but then you have to add transportation to your house, so I'm not sure you're actually conserving anything.

If you're just trying to save money and not buy printer/paper/toner, then paper bills will help you do that. So will mooching off a friend's/workplace printer, but I'm not sure I'd recommend that long term. :)

I get PDFs from the utilities/banks and just print them as needed (which is usually never). I traded my USPS post office box for a mail scanning/forwarding service (http://www.earthclassmail.com, they're awesome) so the few paper bills I get are actually turned into PDFs for me. About $140 a year (depends on volume of mail); by comparison a PO Box is $132 (depends on location, size).

Don't laser printers compatible with Free operating systems still cost more than the early termination fee?

Yep. HP and Samsung makes some cheapo lasers that work with Linux, but they run non-Free drivers. If you insist on running only Free software, you will pay more for the printer.

Going off this list: http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/printers

HP LaserJet P1005 (non-Free) is $79: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16828115079
HP LaserJet P2055dn (Free) is $299: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16828115365

So yeah about $220 more, but at the same time the Free one is a much more powerful printer - 35 ppm vs 15 ppm, 1200x1200 vs 400x600, etc. The manufacturers save a fair amount of money by moving all the processing to the host, so really only workgroup printers support Postscript in hardware.

On the other hand, an old HP LaserJet 4 or 5 will be cheap on eBay and support Postscript in hardware.

If the only reason you have to print is to print out bills, then yeah I could see getting paper bills as an option - it depends on your motive. If you're trying to stay away from paper because you don't want to waste physical resources, well, you're just shifting the printing to someone else. The company's printing will no doubt be more efficient, but then you have to add transportation to your house, so I'm not sure you're actually conserving anything.

If you're just trying to save money and not buy printer/paper/toner, then paper bills will help you do that. So will mooching off a friend's/workplace printer, but I'm not sure I'd recommend that long term. :)

I get PDFs from the utilities/banks and just print them as needed (which is usually never). I traded my USPS post office box for a mail scanning/forwarding service (http://www.earthclassmail.com, they're awesome) so the few paper bills I get are actually turned into PDFs for me. About $140 a year (depends on volume of mail); by comparison a PO Box is $132 (depends on location, size).

I didn't read the hothardware article. Did they specify at which resolutions which card wins? Did they test with the newest 185 Nvidia drivers? They're moderately slower than the 182's.

Anandtech, my personal favorite reviewer (none of that 1 paragraph/page + 100 page article nonsense *cough tomshardware cough*) tells a different story.

In case you don't feel like clicking-- 4890 takes the cake hands down on 24" and sub 24" displays (1920x1200 resolution and lower). At 2560x1200, it's a tossup.

Considering you can buy the 4890 right now and the GTX275 won't be available for 2 more weeks, I think it's pretty clear which card to get.

I don't know specifically what type of RAM is used in a particular Mac model, but I browsed around on Newegg and found what appears to be the same stick of RAM you linked, but in 2GB format -- $25.99. Upgrading a Macbook from 2GB (2x1GB) to 4GB (2x2GB) costs $100. Even if we're being generous and taking the retail prices of two sticks of RAM and not offering any sort of discount for removing the two 1GB sticks, we're talking nearly a 100% markup. $50 may not be a ton of money when you're talking about buying a $1000+ laptop, but when there's very little reason for the price to go up that much I'm not sure what else we should call it other than getting ripped off. What am I paying for here, other than it being placed in an Apple computer?

I don't think Kingston or Hynix are really cheap brands. Each brand has its cheap lines and expensive lines, eg. here is a completely reasonably priced Crucial dual channel kit. Really though, most of the "high end" stuff is either over-priced or triple channel stuff for Core i7 motherboards, which are ridiculously expensive themselves, or FB-DIMMs, which are really only useful in servers.

Of course the price is going to be similar. He's comparing the Macbook to laptops with similar specs, but that are specifically targeted at businesses. Compare it to gaming laptops with similar specs, and those other laptops come in at about $1,500-$2,200. Here's a great example. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220412

I don't know about you, but given the choice between that Asus model I linked vs. the 17" Macbook, I'll go with the Asus every time. But then of course, I'm also able to fix any problems Windows throws at me, so I'm never spending money on software repairs - just like Mac users.

Apple's standard RAM pricing ranges from the 'moderately acceptable' to 'insane' depending on a number of things.

The 4GB > 8GB pricing is overpriced, but not as far off standard market value as you might think. The iMac only has two slots, meaning 8GB RAM requires 4GB sticks; even on Newegg they're $360 each, and straight from Crucial they come in at $490. That puts Apple's upgrade at about $300 overpriced - certainly unpleasant, but then so's Crucial's.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152096
MSI Wind U100-001US Love Edition Pink Heart Intel Atom N270(1.60GHz) 10.0" WSVGA 1GB Memory 160GB HDD Netbook - Retail

Actually, it's not uncommon for large RAM arrays to have "row repair" and "column repair". The RAM array has more rows and columns than are required to provide the rated capacity. During manufacturing testing, they remap some of these to work around defects and increase yield. So, if you're still seeing faults after the production tests have mapped away the obvious faults, I think you're signing yourself up for a bit of pain.

As I recall memtest86 would output a report of the failing locations that you could give to the Linux kernel, telling it what locations to use and to avoid.

Seems like a colossal waste of time to me. If you're not concerned about performance, then it's a question of how much your time's worth. You can get 2GB for $23 and probably less if you spent more than 5 seconds looking like I did. If you spend more than a couple hours futzing with your flaky system to remap all your bad RAM, even if your time is only worth minimum wage, you quickly cross the "worth it" threshold.

Quote all you want...your ignoring that what you buy from Tiger Direct/Best Buy/New Egg for $35 for 80GB or $100 for 1TB IS NOT THE SAME ANIMAL as a server drive.

A 1TB server drive costs $160.

A respectable "non-server" 1TB drive from the same manufacturer costs $130, with the rock-bottom cheapest 1TB drive being $90.

So, over the cheapest drive, you pay about 50% premium to get a good "consumer" hard drive, and about 75% premium to get a server-class drive. So, how does this explain the 300% premium charged by Apple?

Quote all you want...your ignoring that what you buy from Tiger Direct/Best Buy/New Egg for $35 for 80GB or $100 for 1TB IS NOT THE SAME ANIMAL as a server drive.

A 1TB server drive costs $160.

A respectable "non-server" 1TB drive from the same manufacturer costs $130, with the rock-bottom cheapest 1TB drive being $90.

So, over the cheapest drive, you pay about 50% premium to get a good "consumer" hard drive, and about 75% premium to get a server-class drive. So, how does this explain the 300% premium charged by Apple?

Quote all you want...your ignoring that what you buy from Tiger Direct/Best Buy/New Egg for $35 for 80GB or $100 for 1TB IS NOT THE SAME ANIMAL as a server drive.

A 1TB server drive costs $160.

A respectable "non-server" 1TB drive from the same manufacturer costs $130, with the rock-bottom cheapest 1TB drive being $90.

So, over the cheapest drive, you pay about 50% premium to get a good "consumer" hard drive, and about 75% premium to get a server-class drive. So, how does this explain the 300% premium charged by Apple?

I got a Wind a month ago and the first thing I did, and I seriously mean first thing, was install Ubuntu (8.04) on it as a second boot. Last week I clobbered the restore partition and Windows entirely and now it's all Ubuntu.

I got the version without bluetooth. Last week I managed to take the adapter I got for it, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833242001 and put it inside where the stock adapter would go. There was even a harness for it taped inside of the unit, so I just cut down the wires I needed and soldered it to the male end of a USB connector. I even put a piece of foil and tape over the adapter to keep noise from interfering too much with it.

I love the simple hacks they did with Netbook Remix, it makes things feel so much simpler, and when I get the touchscreen mod that'll go good with it.

I know, not much on topic, I'm just excited about my laptop.

...the cost of RAM eclipse the cost of the rest of your PC by 20-fold or more

And that, my friends, is why you shouldn't buy Intel processors supporting DDR3 only (Core i7 or Nehalem-based Xeon). For large memory config, DDR2 is cheaper and motherboards with lots of slots are more common (try to find one with 32+ DDR3 slots: it does not exist !). Check this out: a config supporting 128GB at about 1/6th the cost of the one referenced in TFA ($50k):

• PSU Corsair 1000HX 1000 Watt: $218
• Mobo Tyan S4989WG2NR: $872
• 4 x CPU Opteron 8350 HE Quad-core 2.0 GHz: 4 x $917
• 32 x 4GB DDR2-667 ECC Registered: 32 x $84
• Case + HDD + GPU: say about $300 for a simple tower case
• Total: $7746

Your assuming they had all that in stock. NEVER trust someone saying they have product X at price Y till you have it. I've seen provantage and other suppliers, except newegg so far, say they have it at price X but then you have to wait 3 months for it to show up at that price.

...the cost of RAM eclipse the cost of the rest of your PC by 20-fold or more

And that, my friends, is why you shouldn't buy Intel processors supporting DDR3 only (Core i7 or Nehalem-based Xeon). For large memory config, DDR2 is cheaper and motherboards with lots of slots are more common (try to find one with 32+ DDR3 slots: it does not exist !). Check this out: a config supporting 128GB at about 1/6th the cost of the one referenced in TFA ($50k):

• PSU Corsair 1000HX 1000 Watt: $218
• Mobo Tyan S4989WG2NR: $872
• 4 x CPU Opteron 8350 HE Quad-core 2.0 GHz: 4 x $917
• 32 x 4GB DDR2-667 ECC Registered: 32 x $84
• Case + HDD + GPU: say about $300 for a simple tower case
• Total: $7746

I have this router, it does ipv4 and ipv6 dual-stack and the built in VPN features are great.

Indeed, a 120GB Zune can be had for $234 where a 120GB iPod Classic can be had for $249. I'm sure the $15 price difference is the difference between paying your rent on time or not.

Fiber is 100mbits where? Japan? Last I heard of promises were 50mbits, and that even that was the language of "up to" not "actual/realistic". Bluray will truly use 50 megabits a second, not "up to 50". Difference there. so I agree, uncapped. However, how often have you heard of an uncapped connection? We've had capped connections longer than the issues of packet shaping. Certainly not getting better.

Lans' are 100megabits? Wha? You can buy an 8 port gig switch for 40 bucks (25 AR).

Meanwhile, I do agree with the rest of what you said. There is no real improvement here in general, I'm just saying being able to play all the games off a local network with only one host would be nice for consoles which aren't really friendly to that idea right now. Mostly because they're more locked down than any other DRM that exists. It's "you want to play more than 4 people/more than one game at once, you need more consoles".

The no piracy claim tells me that this is vaporware, really. Cloud computing as a whole is vaporware and it's own form of not so subtle DRM, remote VM's are not.

I'd love a BMW or a office 2007, but that is not one hour overtime, it's almost half month of wage.

I presume you mean Office 2007? For me, Office 2007 Pro (or Ultimate) is slightly over half.

The biggest thing that you have to watch out for with VMWare ESXi is the hardware compatibility list. You will run into trouble with two major components: RAID controllers and network adapters.

The network adapter solution is simple: buy the most plain-jane Intel PCI or PCIe adapter that you can find. Examples of ones that are known to work right out of the box are the Intel PWLA8391 GT (single-port PCI) and the Intel EXPI9402PT (dual-port PCIe). I own both of these and can personally confirm operation with the latest version of VMWare ESXi.

The drive controller situation is both complicated and -- more importantly -- expensive. Overall, Adaptec seems to be the most well-supported controller hardware out there. I have tried LSI controllers, but they often don't play well with desktop boards. Unfortunately for experimenters, the built-in RAID on practically every Intel motherboard is completely unsupported in RAID mode. Obviously no enterprise environment would be using on-board RAID like that, but it would be nice to have for experimentation.

Which brings me to my favorite storage solution for ESXi: Openfiler. Openfiler is an open-source NAS/SAN solution based on rPath Linux. It turns any supported PC into a storage applicance, and can share its storage in a plethora of ways. In the case of a virtualization effort, it has two major things going for it: it supports any storage controller that Linux supports, and it supports iSCSI and NFS.

If, say, you do have a machine sitting there with Intel on-board RAID, you can install Openfiler there. While the hardware might not work under ESXi, it'll work great for Openfiler. Even better, Openfiler also supports Linux software RAID which can be superior when it comes to disaster recovery (no need to have a specific controller card to see your data). With this in mind, you'll be able to get Openfiler running on just about any hunk of shit box you have sitting around.

Once you have Openfiler set up, you can take the next step in virtualization-on-the-cheap: installing ESXi on a USB flash drive. There are a number of tutorials on the web for this (just google 'ESXi USB flash install'), but the basic process amounts to extracting the drive image from the ESXi installation archive and simply writing it to flash with dd (on Linux) or physdiskwrite (on Windows). Once this is done, you can plug the flash drive into nearly *any* recent x86 hardware and it will boot ESXi. A really neat feature that you get along with this is the ability to substitute hardware with ease, and upgrade to later versions of ESXi simply by swapping the flash drive.

Once you have ESXi installed, create an iSCSI volume on your Openfiler box. Then, use the VMWare management software to connect the ESXi box to your Openfiler iSCSI volume. You can then create virtual disks and machines from the actual USB-flash-booted VMWare host, all of which will be stored on your Openfiler machine. You may also want to try experimenting with NFS instead of iSCSI. There are a couple proponents of this out there that say under certain circumstances it's even faster than iSCSI. It also makes backing up your virtual machines a little simpler since an NFS share is generally easier to get to than iSCSI from most machines. Another cool aspect of the Openfiler-based configuration is that you will get access to another whiz-bang feature of VMWare called vMotion. Since the VMs and their disks are stored centrally, you can actually move the VM execution from one ESXi box to another - on the fly.

In all, this is a great way to get your feet wet in virtualization because you can have a pretty sophisticated setup with very basic commodity hardware. If you want to go the extra mile and get really fancy, put a dedicated gigabit NIC (or two, bonded) in each box and enable jumbo frames; the SAN will be more than fast enough most anything you'd like to do.

Good luck!

The biggest thing that you have to watch out for with VMWare ESXi is the hardware compatibility list. You will run into trouble with two major components: RAID controllers and network adapters.

The network adapter solution is simple: buy the most plain-jane Intel PCI or PCIe adapter that you can find. Examples of ones that are known to work right out of the box are the Intel PWLA8391 GT (single-port PCI) and the Intel EXPI9402PT (dual-port PCIe). I own both of these and can personally confirm operation with the latest version of VMWare ESXi.

The drive controller situation is both complicated and -- more importantly -- expensive. Overall, Adaptec seems to be the most well-supported controller hardware out there. I have tried LSI controllers, but they often don't play well with desktop boards. Unfortunately for experimenters, the built-in RAID on practically every Intel motherboard is completely unsupported in RAID mode. Obviously no enterprise environment would be using on-board RAID like that, but it would be nice to have for experimentation.

Which brings me to my favorite storage solution for ESXi: Openfiler. Openfiler is an open-source NAS/SAN solution based on rPath Linux. It turns any supported PC into a storage applicance, and can share its storage in a plethora of ways. In the case of a virtualization effort, it has two major things going for it: it supports any storage controller that Linux supports, and it supports iSCSI and NFS.

If, say, you do have a machine sitting there with Intel on-board RAID, you can install Openfiler there. While the hardware might not work under ESXi, it'll work great for Openfiler. Even better, Openfiler also supports Linux software RAID which can be superior when it comes to disaster recovery (no need to have a specific controller card to see your data). With this in mind, you'll be able to get Openfiler running on just about any hunk of shit box you have sitting around.

Once you have Openfiler set up, you can take the next step in virtualization-on-the-cheap: installing ESXi on a USB flash drive. There are a number of tutorials on the web for this (just google 'ESXi USB flash install'), but the basic process amounts to extracting the drive image from the ESXi installation archive and simply writing it to flash with dd (on Linux) or physdiskwrite (on Windows). Once this is done, you can plug the flash drive into nearly *any* recent x86 hardware and it will boot ESXi. A really neat feature that you get along with this is the ability to substitute hardware with ease, and upgrade to later versions of ESXi simply by swapping the flash drive.

Once you have ESXi installed, create an iSCSI volume on your Openfiler box. Then, use the VMWare management software to connect the ESXi box to your Openfiler iSCSI volume. You can then create virtual disks and machines from the actual USB-flash-booted VMWare host, all of which will be stored on your Openfiler machine. You may also want to try experimenting with NFS instead of iSCSI. There are a couple proponents of this out there that say under certain circumstances it's even faster than iSCSI. It also makes backing up your virtual machines a little simpler since an NFS share is generally easier to get to than iSCSI from most machines. Another cool aspect of the Openfiler-based configuration is that you will get access to another whiz-bang feature of VMWare called vMotion. Since the VMs and their disks are stored centrally, you can actually move the VM execution from one ESXi box to another - on the fly.

In all, this is a great way to get your feet wet in virtualization because you can have a pretty sophisticated setup with very basic commodity hardware. If you want to go the extra mile and get really fancy, put a dedicated gigabit NIC (or two, bonded) in each box and enable jumbo frames; the SAN will be more than fast enough most anything you'd like to do.

Good luck!

You say you want to go "cheap", that you don't want to spent too much money, yadda yadda... and then you go on to mention things like "cheap" shared disk and "cheap" blade servers?

What you realistically need and want are two different things.

I'd suggest a cheap quad-core AMD Phenom II system with 8G or so of RAM. Nothing too fancy. that I assume you're going to be running a Windows host OS, or VMWare ESX. More RAM will be needed for the Windows host OS, obviously.

Absolute lowest-end hardware you'd want to look at getting is an AMD Athlon 64 x2 or Intel Core (IIRC) based system. In other words, you want/need the VT support, or it'll be purely an emulated environment, and substantially slower than native (30%?), not just marginally (10%?).

I recommend AMD hardware because it's got a better price/performance point, and because unlike the other stuff in the "reasonable midprice" range for Intel, it's got the memory controller/north bridge integrated into the CPU (for newer gen stuff). I'd say go Phenom or Phenom II without any hesitation.

With a CPU like this, there's no reason you couldn't build a full system for around $450-500, sans storage. You could probably find a suitable "starter"/deal system for $300 from TigerDirect that'll do the job just fine with a little more RAM and another drive.

For disk, just go with an SATA RAID card (LSI are good) and 3 1Tb disks. That's about as cheap as you'll get and still have room to work.

You can find lots of used servers on eBay that you can mess around with. Sun's v20z servers are pretty cheap and have a decent amount of power.

A lot of the stuff I've run across is rack mounted and keep in mind that rack mounted servers are loud in most cases. So it may not be the best thing to play around with in your home or office.

You don't really need any special CPU to mess around with virtualization, you won't get "full" virtualization but I don't think that will stop you. For more info check out, this page.

I'm currently running a number vm's in my desktop using Sun'x VirtualBox (xVM) whatever they're calling it now. Even within some of the solaris VM's I'm running solaris containers so I'm doing virtualization upon virtualization and my processor doesn't have Virtualization technology support.

If you want to do full virtualization look for server class CPUs. Xeons and Opterons. Using Newegg's power search there is an option to filter by CPU's that support virtualization technology.

If you're primary focus is Oracle RAC, you may want to look at Oracle VM which is Xen based.

I've done this comparison a number of times. There are cases where the Mac is within $100, but I've never seen it lower. (*Usually* when it's 1,500USD or more)

If you want to compare laptops, I'd compare ASUS notebooks to them. ASUS is probably the biggest reason notebooks with dedicated graphics are coming down for everyone. XPS is for the most part a joke, as is Alienware (which is also now Dell owned) comparing price/performance with ASUS. Apple may make a better comparison there. (Dell has Intel graphics on some of the XPS series, yeah, that's useful for gaming, at least stick in a low end ATI or Nvidia)

Heh, I was going to compare them, but Alienware's site is too slow and is timing out. Says great things when you are technology company.
Comparing this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220483 for $1300
15", 2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo, Nvidia 9800M GS, 4GB, 1680x1050 Display, 320GB SATA 7200 rpm drive
Apple's MacBook Pro, starts at $1999, configured to be similar, $2,224.00
15" 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, Nvidia 9400+9600, 4GB RAM (+100), 1440x900 Display, 320GB SATA 7200 rpm drive (+125)
(Prices ignore shipping and such, and aside from those mentioned, are default options)

Uh, Windows Vista Ultimate Edition is less than $300 at Newegg.

And that's the full retail version. It can be had for less than $200 if you don't care about the twenty minutes of useless support you'll be missing.

What 3rd party software are you including that bumps up the price by almost 100%?

ddr3 + x58 board kills any deal on a 920 until there are mobos in the 150$ price range and ddr3 in the 100-150$ for 6gig.

6GB DDR3-1066 @ $81
6GB DDR3-1333 @ $94 (on sale for $85)
6GB DDR3-1600 @ $100 (on sale for $90; needs 1.65v instead of 1.5v)

But it looks like i7 mobos currently start at $200 ($190 cheapest on sale), so maybe you're half right.

ddr3 + x58 board kills any deal on a 920 until there are mobos in the 150$ price range and ddr3 in the 100-150$ for 6gig.

6GB DDR3-1066 @ $81
6GB DDR3-1333 @ $94 (on sale for $85)
6GB DDR3-1600 @ $100 (on sale for $90; needs 1.65v instead of 1.5v)

But it looks like i7 mobos currently start at $200 ($190 cheapest on sale), so maybe you're half right.

ddr3 + x58 board kills any deal on a 920 until there are mobos in the 150$ price range and ddr3 in the 100-150$ for 6gig.

6GB DDR3-1066 @ $81
6GB DDR3-1333 @ $94 (on sale for $85)
6GB DDR3-1600 @ $100 (on sale for $90; needs 1.65v instead of 1.5v)

But it looks like i7 mobos currently start at $200 ($190 cheapest on sale), so maybe you're half right.