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It is missing "My Videos", "My Music" and any hint of fetching existing content from the hard disk.

You sure about that? Because I'm looking at my Microsoft Remote and it appears to have "My Music," "My Radio," "My Pictures," "My Videos" and "My TV" in that order. Personal experience with XP MCE is good, allowing me to point said folders to one or many places on my local hard drive, network drives or streaming servers (I'm not sure what the protocol is, but TVersity implements it well). Don't believe me? Check out the Remote, see the list of features or maybe look at this Guide to Burning Recorded TV shows to DVD.

Microsoft is not doing pesky Apple (or Hauppage) things and offering the users what they actually want. That is good ya know.

Most of the examples I hear are things that *nix-specific things that Microsoft does in other ways (SSH, X-Window), innovative things that MS said were going to be released with Vista that didn't quite make it (WinFS, PowerShell) or things that are easily obtained (Firefox). Another one is the removal of the HDCP system they use.

A lot of people give Microsoft crap for the Protected Video Path and all the HDCP support - but can you legally play a BluRay or HD DVD on OSX or a Linux distro? No, you can't (although, ironically, you can burn it in OSX). Sure, DRM sucks, but MS thought that the ability to play high-definition content would be important to people, so they did what they had to do to get media conglomerate approval. It's pissed a few people off, but that's the risk you get for being the first OS developer to do it. MS has taken hit and when Apple releases their own version of PVP/HDCP (and they will, unless something dramatic happens), it will pass under the radar.

I'm posted this anonymously because I don't want to take the karma hit when this post inevitably is marked as "flamebait."

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048+106791803&name=AGEIA+PhysX+Card

No matter how well they designed the card, at the end of the day price/performance is what you are looking for in a graphics card. This card delivers performance that teeters around the same performance that the 8800 Ultra gives at a much lower cost and produces about the same noise and power ratios.

ATI announced that they won't sell cards for over 500 dollars and I think that gives them a good standing in the market place. If you are willing to spend 450 dollars http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814103052 and want to upgrade in the future, then this is probably going to be best buy. I think that speaks well for ATI who hasn't even been near the market for a while.

That being said, I think if you are going to buy a video card and can wait for Nvidia's product (which is supposed to be in Feb) then I would definitely do that to see what competition they will bring.

Keep it simple, cupcake.

$240/TB / 1000GB/TB / 1000GB/MB * 50MB = 1.2 pennies

It's still just avoiding the real problem, which is that internal SATA hard disks shouldn't *need* cables at all.

SATA is designed with the connectors in the same place, so if the case is designed for them, you just slide them in. I recently bought an external enclosure, and it did this right: just slide the disk in, and push a lever. Apple, of course, is smart enough to do this with their tower, as well.

I guess the real question is: where are all the PC cases that are actually designed for SATA? You could even make a case that worked for any motherboard, using mostly-fixed cables from the case to the edge of the motherboard, so the non-standardization of motherboards is no excuse.

Wow...I mean it takes like 6 seconds to find the retail price of a 64GB SSD....

here's an example for you:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609244&Tpk=64GB%2BSSD

Look around and you'll see that price is actually a steal.

Great. Sony's upgrade is $850 to go from a 100GB drive to a 64GB SSD vs Apple's upgrade from an 80GB drive to a 64GB SSD. That changes what exactly? Those prices aren't even directly from Sony.

You're certainly aggressive, I'll give you that, and that's about all.

Have *you* actually tried this? I have. Not on an expensive blu-ray disc (which would be insane), but on a DVD-R with the same exact coating. I sacrificed one of my discs by lightly scrubbing my wood floor with the play (not the label) side. It swirled up quit nicely. Sorry folks. This ubermagic scratch resistant coating you are all hoping to make your BluRay discs indestructible doesn't exist, which shouldn't be too surprising to anyone acquainted with the laws of physics. The coating is not in fact made of transparent aluminum, and even if it were it would still scratch. That's not to say that it does not work at all. It *does* work extremely well. They are much harder to scratch than the uncoated butter soft surface, But you still need to treat the disc with care to prevent scratches. Anyone remember back when CDs first came out and everyone was saying that they were virtually indestructable? Same thing. Sorry to disappoint anyone.

For me, getting the flash drive for, say $200 extra would be OK, but not $1000.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609244 Looks pretty decent to me. Newegg 64GB SSD for 1533, 64GB SSD from Apple for 999. This may be the first Apple upgrade ever to be cheaper from the factory than DIY.

Newegg/a has a bunch of IDE to USB adapters.

I also have also a small collection of old hard drives. About a year ago, I bought an external enclosure and converted one of the larger parallel ATA hard drives into and external USB hard drive. To do that, I used a Vantec NexStar GX NST-370GX external hard drive enclosure. I now use it as a backup device for all the files that I have on my computer.

Later on, I assembled another Vantec external drive as an additional second backup for the contents of my computer. Most of the time I keep that second backup disk hidden in another building, somewhere else, just in case burglars or fire cause the loss of my computer and the other external hard drive.

There are also similar external hard drive enclosures with a USB interface made by other companies. Some are for parallel ATA hard drives and some are for serial ATA hard drives.

If I were to ever give one of my old hard drives to someone else or throw it away, I would wipe everything off of it by using Darik's Boot and Nuke on the drive first.

Occasionally, I have just wanted to temporarily hook up an old hard drive, to see what is on it. Fortunately, the Linux computer which I built, has a case which can easily be opened in a few seconds by pulling on the handle and removing the side panel. Then with the side panel off, I just place the hard drive on a cardboard box beside the computer and hook the hard drive to an unused 80-pin parallel ATA connector and to a power connector. I don't actually take the time to fully install it in the computer, I just leave it hooked up next to the computer and boot the computer up, with the cover off.

On all of my more recent hard drives, the jumpers were already in the default cable select position. On the older ones, some of the jumpers are set to "master" and some are set to "slave" and some to "cable select." Fortunately, most of my old hard drives have a small chart printed on them showing how to set each possible jumper position. I wear an anti-static wrist strap when working on the computer and fortunately, I don't have carpeting on my floor (which can generate static).

• Vantec Nexstar 3 NST-370GX 3.5" USB 2.0 External Enclosure and USB Hub
• Darik's Boot and Nuke

I tried something like that at first too. Unfortunately, Some usb hd drive enclosures change the way the computer recognizes drive geometry. This doesn't matter if your planning to install a blank drive or even an old drive and format it new, but if you want to reliably read data from a formerly internal hard drive it is better to use something like: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002 I haven't tested this with nexstar enclosures though, so they might be exempt.

Bullet to the hard drive = data not on the part of the platters damaged can be recovered
Remove magnets = all data can be recovered
Sledge hammer = any where from 60 to 90 percent of the data can be recovered
so on and so forth.

Let me break it down for you: To remove any chance of data recovery the platters have to be completely destroyed.

Blunt force and shock only destroys the circuitry and mechanical parts reliably. Some of the magnetic fields on the platters are damaged but with a quick disassembly and the right hardware/software the data could be recovered. The formating and files might be a bit garbled but some one trying hard enough would almost certainly be able to reconstruct large portions of the data. You're average computer geek could do it if he know what he was doing.

Removing parts of the drive only works until the platters are taken out and put in another drive of the identical model or run through special equipment.

Damaging or destroying the platters partially still leaves parts of data readable, given access to the proper equipment... something most wouldn't have.

I would suggest an incinerator or strong acid.

All that said. What is the point? Run a good secure erase software on it and call it done. Anything supporting multiple passes with guttman should do an excellent job, leaves the drive functioning, and no one without a lot of skill, hardware, and time, would be able to even tell that there WAS data on the drive before its current format, much less what that data was. As for hooking it up to the computer via USB I personally use this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002

Here is a great drive bay panel that lets you plug in drives easily: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811997006

Sitting upon my desk, containing a 250GB hard drive, is a nice(IMO) NexStar 3 enclosure.

Connect it to the computer via USB2.0. Connect the drive(no need to actually place it in the enclosure) and you're good to go.

Here's the one I have(first result, as of this writing).

Good stuff. I routinely use a similar adapter for data recovery on failing drives. The concept seems to work just fine.

The same Vantec unit is also available from Newegg, but far cheaper.

Or, if one is feeling adventurous and/or wants lots of these adapters without going going broke, there's always Ebay, via which I've always had fantastic good luck ordering insanely inexpensive electronics like this directly from Hong Kong.

So far, importing things from Hong Kong only takes about as long to get here (Ohio) as stuff does from California, and it's cheaper than UPS.

Thanks for all the responses! I learned a lot and also heard some things I never thought of.

Based on these comments, I decided to go with this.

I've always considered the Thermaltake Armor series (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133020) to be the ultimate in computer-case overkill.

Seven available 3.5 drive bays, with several more available via 5.25->3.5 converters. Plenty of fans to keep everything cool, too, and decent airflow.

An old PC full of hard drives looks cheap, but it will cost you in watts. An old PC server can easily pull 250-400 watts continuously. And don't forget this summer, when you will have to pay twice for the waste heat.

A better solution is a VIA PC1 board, plus a couple of new drives.

The "$60 PC 1" will only pull 20 watts at max. Combine this with 2 "$250 terabyte drives" mirrored, and a small low wattage "$35 case" and the "(Free) Linux" of your choice,

You will have a reliable Terabyte server for less than $700, that only pulls as much power as a small appliance bulb.

I'm not a computer genius by any stretch and this setup can be done by anyone who knows how to use Google to learn stuff. But like I said, given that I'm no genius, maybe I'm just missing the gist here. I've never tried to stream anything over the network and maybe that requires more advanced software, I don't know. My XBOX 360 takes care of my media access as I have it pointed to all the places I have stuff stored and it works like a charm over my THX stereo and HDTV.

I would get a nforce 570 SLI / Ultra board with dual gig-e ports with teaming and tcp/ip off load.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138059
this costs less then the one you picked

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130048

Also alot of the upcoming am2+ nforce board will have tcp/ip off load as well.

you still need a load end video card even a low end pci one will work + you have open pci-e slots for pci-e raid cards if you need one.

I would get a nforce 570 SLI / Ultra board with dual gig-e ports with teaming and tcp/ip off load.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138059
this costs less then the one you picked

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130048

Also alot of the upcoming am2+ nforce board will have tcp/ip off load as well.

you still need a load end video card even a low end pci one will work + you have open pci-e slots for pci-e raid cards if you need one.

I just got a Thecus N2100 NAS for our office, and it rocks. It runs linux, so you can do whatever you want with it if you know how, but even if you don't (like me), it is still really easy to use. It holds 2 HDDs and i've mirrored them for safety, set up all the computers in the office to connect to it (on 2 different wired networks... it has 2 network ports, and can even be modded for wireless), and even set up FTP access for when i'm at home. It also functions as a USB print server that has some quirks but should be great for normal use, acts as an iTunes sharing device (shows up in the itunes shared computers sections), supports UPnP, and pretty much anything else you can throw at it. It was $275 or so without drives, and i love it! Oh, and it's also super silent. -Taylor here's the URL: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822102012

Firewire is hardly dead. (firewire stuff.) I know people who rely on it for serious media work. But for most consumer applications, where you don't need a lot of sustained throughput, USB is just as fast, a lot cheaper, and easier to integrate into things like cameras and MP3 players.

Did somebody say "DVRs"? Those work best with eSATA.

Wal-Mart, actually. I already had a couple of TOS-Link cables, and then I saw that at Wal-Mart, and couldn't leave the store without it. The good news is that it is about $10-$15.

Newegg had them, but they are out of stock.

They are called "RCA HD6HPL Optical Cable with Halo Connectors" for the 6-foot version, and the 3-foot version which apparently costs the same is the "RCA HD3HPL Optical Cable with Halo Connectors"

Another cool thing about this cable is that they connector isn't rectangular, which if you have ever tried to plug a TOSLINK cable into the back of something you will appreciate.

There are in fact manufactures making motherboards with HDMI connectors. This is one I just bought for a basic media PC I'm in the process of putting together. You can search around Newegg and find more. They aren't all that uncommon anymore, and as you can see not too terribly expensive.

P6NGM-FIH

There are nVidia and ATI cards with HDMI outputs or adapters as well. I have seen nVidia 8600's with them on the web, as well as 7600's, and ATI X1600's I think... you have to search a little but you can find them.

What does HDMI get me? Well, in my case at least (don't know if it is true of all TV's), I need to use an HDMI connector to get 1080p resolution on my TV. Other connectors support up to 720p/1080i. If you've never looked at a computer screen rendered at 480i or 1080i (the i is for interlaced) I'll tell you now that it will make you insane in no time. Straight lines have a habit of flickering really badly because every other line is refreshed (odds and evens) at a time.

With 480p, 720p, and 1080p (p is for progressive, and is refreshed from top to bottom if I'm not mistaken) everything becomes better. 480p gives you a screen thats smaller than 640x480 and is very tough to work with, though I have done it by shrinking fonts, etc. It is kind of funny to look at a huge television screen with a tiny resolution like that. Anyway, 720p gets much better, and 1080p is just the icing on the cake.

This little project was inspired from loading Linux on my PS3. It's just that it's too damn slow. You can't even play a DVD full screen without it bogging down (when under Linux, the PS3 OS plays DVD's and Blu-Ray discs just fine.) Less intensive processing work OK, but with less than 256MB or RAM and Sony's Hypervisor in the way, it just tends to drag...

Once I get the PC up and running the plan is to be able to do anything from surfing the internet, streaming audio from pandora.com or similar, watch DVD's, or movies from Netflix (though that would require a VM to use their damn Windows only client) and maybe get World of Warcraft running under WINE (which is does quite fine) so that I can engage in some raids on the 60" big screen, just for the sake of saying I did it. Really anything you would do on your computer, but on a much much bigger display.

As far as audio goes, I'm not sure. My receiver is from the stone ages, and hopefully one day in the near future I will get the money to replace it, so that I can get true surround sound, to go with that great picture, and all those speakers, etc. I'm not exactly what I'd call an audiofile anyway, so I don't know if I would even be able to tell the difference...

Dec 2006, I was looking at displays, at the time, I was leaning towards the BenQ FP241W, it's one of the better 24" displays. But since then several more have come on the market. The price has come down though. I ended up getting a 24" iMac. Pro's and con's. I'm not 100% satisfied with it, but it is pretty nice.

I heard at one point when I was "researching" displays on various forums and review sites, that Dell will often introduce a new panel and put in very good parts, so that when review models go around, the reviewers are all wow'd and write good reviews about what a great display Dell put out. And then down the line they switch to cheaper parts and so people read these great reviews, and buy it, Dell gets higher profit margins, and people get a crappier display than what was sold in the early run... I have no proof, but it sounds like something a big corporation would to so it wouldn't surprise me a bit.

I'd love to get one of these displays, especially for the Mac, where all the font sizes are defaulted to much larger, can't fit as much on the screen at 24" as you can in Windows or linux. $2000 is kind of steep but they say it's great so WTH... who wants to loan me $$$ ??? Oh well, maybe in the next round of upgrades I'll do 30". 24 is really nice too!

As a tabletop RPG - shadowrun was one of the games that I will always have a fondness in my heart for. The rules were cryptic, battles took forever, but that didn't seem to make a difference. The world was described so clearly with so many things that were logically futuristic it didn't seem like were you playing a fantasy sci-fi game - you were just role playing in the future.

Neither was I willing to purchase just to play a game that would probably ruin my memory of the weekends rolling dice.

I picked up a few of these a while back for a project at work. They work well, even if they run a bit warm...it's much easier to get a clean digital signal from the local stations than to get a clean analog signal. It's still more than $40, but the prices still have time to come down.

Unfortunately, it doesn't matter if the STB you mentioned drops to $1.98...you still can't use the coupon to purchase it, as it has "disqualifying features" in the form of component video output.

The $40 coupons can only be used on decoders with at most S-Video output. See Technical Appendix 2 here for more details.

it seems impossible to find any of these models (or any other new stand-alone ATSC set-top box, for that matter) for sale anywhere, in person or on the internet

I picked up a few of these a while back for a project at work. They work well, even if they run a bit warm...it's much easier to get a clean digital signal from the local stations than to get a clean analog signal.

It's still more than $40, but the prices still have time to come down.

All current socket AM2/AM2+ AMD processors (Opteron 1000 series, Phenom, Athlon X2, etc) support a maximum of four unbuffered DDR2 memory sticks. All current socket F AMD processors (Opteron 8000 and 2000 series) support a maximum of eight registered DDR2 memory sticks. (You can find this info in AMD's public datasheets).

As of today, unbuffered and registered DDR2 memory sticks of 4 GB or more are extremely expensive because the technology cannot be inexpensively mass-produced (yet). Only 2-GB DDR2 sticks can be found at reasonable prices.

For these financial and technical reasons, your are restricted to a total of 8 GB per socket AM2/AM2+ processor, or 16 GB per socket F processor. Therefore the cheapest option for an AMD mobo supporting more than 8 GB of memory is to buy a single socket F model. Newegg sells one for $136 (open box, though). Add a $180 Opteron 2212 processor, $240 for eight 2-GB sticks of registered DDR2-667, and you end up spending only $556 for a dual-core 2.0 GHz 16 GB barebone server assuming you have a chassis and a PSU lying around.

I'll leave other people comment on your Intel options. I am not very familiar with Intel server motherboards.

All current socket AM2/AM2+ AMD processors (Opteron 1000 series, Phenom, Athlon X2, etc) support a maximum of four unbuffered DDR2 memory sticks. All current socket F AMD processors (Opteron 8000 and 2000 series) support a maximum of eight registered DDR2 memory sticks. (You can find this info in AMD's public datasheets).

As of today, unbuffered and registered DDR2 memory sticks of 4 GB or more are extremely expensive because the technology cannot be inexpensively mass-produced (yet). Only 2-GB DDR2 sticks can be found at reasonable prices.

For these financial and technical reasons, your are restricted to a total of 8 GB per socket AM2/AM2+ processor, or 16 GB per socket F processor. Therefore the cheapest option for an AMD mobo supporting more than 8 GB of memory is to buy a single socket F model. Newegg sells one for $136 (open box, though). Add a $180 Opteron 2212 processor, $240 for eight 2-GB sticks of registered DDR2-667, and you end up spending only $556 for a dual-core 2.0 GHz 16 GB barebone server assuming you have a chassis and a PSU lying around.

I'll leave other people comment on your Intel options. I am not very familiar with Intel server motherboards.

All current socket AM2/AM2+ AMD processors (Opteron 1000 series, Phenom, Athlon X2, etc) support a maximum of four unbuffered DDR2 memory sticks. All current socket F AMD processors (Opteron 8000 and 2000 series) support a maximum of eight registered DDR2 memory sticks. (You can find this info in AMD's public datasheets).

As of today, unbuffered and registered DDR2 memory sticks of 4 GB or more are extremely expensive because the technology cannot be inexpensively mass-produced (yet). Only 2-GB DDR2 sticks can be found at reasonable prices.

For these financial and technical reasons, your are restricted to a total of 8 GB per socket AM2/AM2+ processor, or 16 GB per socket F processor. Therefore the cheapest option for an AMD mobo supporting more than 8 GB of memory is to buy a single socket F model. Newegg sells one for $136 (open box, though). Add a $180 Opteron 2212 processor, $240 for eight 2-GB sticks of registered DDR2-667, and you end up spending only $556 for a dual-core 2.0 GHz 16 GB barebone server assuming you have a chassis and a PSU lying around.

I'll leave other people comment on your Intel options. I am not very familiar with Intel server motherboards.

To answer my own post, It appears that it is, at least by the 2G Surf model Newegg has on hand:

1TB would cost you about $500

Sorry buddy, but you musta blinked: Newegg's now selling Samsung 1TB drives for half that amount. (Linky)

Petty, but it goes to prove your point about rapidly-shrinking storage costs, no?

Why would anyone use flash for virtual memory? You can get 4GB of DDR2 SDRAM for seventy bucks, or two gigs for less than half that. Notebook SO-DIMM prices are about the same.

With DDR2 prices so cheap, I don't see why anyone (with a modern enough system to use DDR2) is swapping data to disk regularly. Certainly not anyone who can afford a SSD.

2-TB TeraStations sell for at least $760... Which illustrates my point.

Yeah, or I could just take my business to NewEgg.com, which has one of the most amazing customer satisfaction ratings in the industry. Oh, did I mention competitive prices, unfathomable quality of customer service and reliability that has spanned the breadth of their online existence? Pfft, The day I started using NewEgg 7 years ago was the day that I lost interest in the computer/electronic superstores of the past.

Something like this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136100

That pricing is for brand new memory that's still being mass produced...
Also a 1GB module is mid-range these days...
Older memory is more expensive because it's no longer mass produced, and the (for the time) higher end modules more expensive still, because they never sold in such huge numbers.
To give an example, 512Mb of PC133 memory for a Dell Latitude C610 (1.2ghz P3-M) starts at $61.99 for the cheapest brand, and goes up to around $84.99 for the most expensive branded premium ram.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2000260381+1309221146&name=PC+133

I imagine anyone who has a laptop with 128MB memory currently installed, is probably using an older machine which requires PC133 or even older memory.

I also have a Sony Vaio C1-MHP laptop, an extra 256mb for it will cost me $89.98, bringing me to the maximum total memory of 384mb (minus 20mb for it's cpu to use for code morphing):
http://www.memoryx.net/sonvapcmem17.html

With older memory priced as it is, unless you can find a bargain on ebay where someone is trying to get rid of old memory (often these people only have small modules for sale), it's often cheaper to buy a new low-end system which will be significantly more powerful.

How about a GB for $16.69 then?

Does that break the bank? And yes, I am aware, he may have to buy slightly more expensive memory to be compatible with his system. But you get my point, no?

I use it on my older Linux laptop (128MB ram)

Yes, this is very good advice, especially if you do just black and white printing.

Color ones are even pretty reasonable.

I bought a LaserJet 4p on Ebay for something like $30 plus $20 shipping.
It lasted almost 2 years before I had to get toner. Again, Ebay, $12.
I print perhaps 75 pages a month.

So total expense for 3+ years of B&W laser printing, $62. I figure I saved
3 or 4 hundred over a comparable, slightly lower quality, slower inkjet.

Ummm cave dweller much? We've already got 100 GB+ solid state drives. This one is obviously crazy expensive but you can get 32GB models for a more reasonable price - around $400 I think.

Nokia N810
and/or
ASUS Eee PC
and/or
OLPC Give One Get One

Pleo

Arduino
iPod Touch 16GB (jailbroken)
Apple Tablet (will have to wait for January. Or when hell freezes over.)

2 gigs of ram is now $50
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231121

That 200MB of ram you are saving costs $5. I think $5 is worth it for an easier to use desktop.

They are the size of a nickel and cost less than 25 bucks:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820141250

Or go for 4GB and $35:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211197

They are the size of a nickel and cost less than 25 bucks:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820141250

Or go for 4GB and $35:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211197