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1. Sharpie Silver Metallic, which works great (not like the old silver or gold paint pens).
2. A link to PriceWatch, where you can get a new IDE CD drive for like $18. I'd send you one myself, but my 2x on my Linux box finally died yesterday so I'm back to using 'em all. Alternatively, you could break into the UPL and steal one of theirs -- go now! The webcam shows nobody home...

• Orange Micro Dual Port Firewire 800 (1394b) controller card:
  $79.50 at new-egg.
  
• 2x Dual Drive 1394b/ATA133 Firewire enclosures:
  $169.98 each at cooldrives.com.
• 4x 250gb, 7200 RPM, ATA 133 Hard drives:
  $230 each according to Pricewatch.

Total: $1339.46 plus Tax and/or S&H

- Greg

Of course if you're going for a file server, you should be going for a fast box with gigE, booting off a CD into RAM, and 8 200GB or 300GB hard drives, giving you between 1.5 and 2.5TB of readilly available storage, should cost more then $3000 even with a top of the line processer and a gig of ram.


What would really make sense instead of buying this $400 contraption, is buying a 160 gig HDD, which will run you up a little over $100 for a good one on Pricewatch grabbing a cheap 1 gig Duron and a K7S5A mobo, a cheap vid card for a few bucks, a stick of PC133, and throw Linux or Win2k on there, and you have yourself more storage space than this network fileserver for less money.

heh

i challenge you to do the research and post your findings.

some hints for help.

in any case, if you aim at low-end, of course you can build a dirt-cheap PC for cheaper than a Mac. Even then eMacs and iMacs still remain an attractive alternative because of the superior operating system that is Mac OS X. And it's not like you could play any decent game worth playing on a $200 PC.

are you up to the challenge? or are you just going to keep trolling around?

The top end chip might be in the $600 dollar range, but the cheaper chips will be significantly less than that.

For comparison, the 1.8GHz Opterons are in the $460 range on Pricewatch. So the A64's will have to be somewhat lower than that in price. (Unless they skip 1.8 altogether)

Also, for many benchmarks, dual-channel memory isn't that important. What is most important with the A64's (and Opterons) for desktop application speed is the on-chip memory controller. This gives these chips dramatically lower latency. So, we can still expect the low end A64's to be good in many, many applications - including games, I think.

Availability? I just did a quick search on PriceWatch and nobody is selling 1G PC3200 modules. All of the listings for that capacity are actually selling "kits" consisting of a matched pair of 512M modules.

The fastest memory listed there that comes in 1G sizes is PC2700. The dual-2GHz G5 systems need PC3200.

Of course, to be fair, I did notice that Apple seems to have access to 1G PC3200 modules. Systems ordered from the Apple Store with 2G or more RAM have them installed.

The real reason they aren't maxing them out probably has a lot to do with the software they plan on running. Depending on the application and the data set, they may not gain anything in the move from 4G to 8G. And it greatly increases the cost (using Apple Store pricing, 8G costs $2600 more than 4G.)

Just the motherboard and chip for a dual 1.6 GHz opteron runs you $1394.99 if you need PCI-X (which is probably necessary with the interconnect you want). And on top of that, you need the network cards, memory, case, hard drives, etc. etc.

You could easily get to Apple prices going with AMD.

It's interesting to note that the 1GHz Itanium 2 processor is 65 times more expensive (!) than the AMD Athlon 2600+
$7800 vs. $118
If you had a $40k research grant to build a supercomputer for less than $100 per GFLOP, which would you choose?

Instead of comparing just B&N vs. Amazon all of the time, why not use the book shopping bots? (Amazon and B&N are not the cheapest books every time you buy a book (they may be in this case (I checked), but in many cases, the others are much cheaper)! The bots search a lot of the book stores and rank the prices (including handling/shipping), present opportunities for discounts, and even point out the ability for finding books which may be out of print but can be purchased used.
Think of this as a book equivalent to PriceWatch

(these links were tested in 'preview' mode before posting.

BookPool
AddAll
BestBookBuys

Pricewatch shows venders with the 7200 RPM drive for $339 @ 60GB capacity. Although at the least the MSRP price *should* be included in the article.

An 80GB USB 2.0 hard drive is $100 (just an example, there's many, many more for a similar price, check http://www.pricewatch.com)

Anyone who's paying $150 for a 20GB drive is throwing their money away.

Apple has a list there for you to use. Next stop Pricewatch.com.

Considering pricewatch sets a GB of ram at $86.00 for PC 133 and $307.00 for DDR4000 ... are you really paying $900 for a mounting kit that makes the ram look like a harddrive?

Prices are in USD, please multiply by 20 for Canadian prices, thank you.

Considering pricewatch sets a GB of ram at $86.00 for PC 133 and $307.00 for DDR4000 ... are you really paying $900 for a mounting kit that makes the ram look like a harddrive?

Prices are in USD, please multiply by 20 for Canadian prices, thank you.

I would strongly suggest using CompactFlash rather than SD. It's faster (no dealing with DRM), and is basically ATAPI: with a $5 reader, you can plug it directly into any ATAPI-compatible computer and boot just like a hard drive. Plus, if you've got your heart set on a full Win2K and Office XP install, Microdrives come in sizes up to 1 GB (although you lose the durability of flash; they're just tiny hard drives in a CompactFlash form factor). Plus, a quick trip to Pricewatch says that CompactFlash is about half the price of SD for any given size, and is availible in a wider range of sizes. You might lose Palm compatability, but, at least to my eye, the benefits outweigh that one loss.

Well, it'd be slow if you decided to send a raytracer or some fractals or even the Mandelbrot set itself to the printer.

Yes, I've actually sent a fractal to an old LaserJet with PostScript, and waited ten minutes for the page to pop out.

For normal usage, of course, you'd never run into any sorts of problems. But if you decided to be crazy about it...

More on-topic, there's a refurbished HP color laser on PriceWatch's "not exactly new" section for $650. I've seen them for moderately cheaper than that at the local computer chop shop---used, of course.

Color laser is faster and better than inkjet, and you won't go crazy refilling or replacing ink. It's worth the extra cash.

--grendel drago

DOS and Win95 can do everything WinXP can??? What planet are you on? Hating MS is fine with me, but saying something like that just makes you look like an idiot.

And where are you finding that P4 2GHz? Pricewatch's cheapest is $112.

CRAP. That 1430 link is here.

"what is everyone's fascination with inkjet... give me more expensive but quality laser anyday."

Quite true. If you don't print more photos and colorful deals than text, you would be MUCH better off with a laser brinter.

At work, several of our employees have their own Samsung ML-1210. They've really been great. Not a single problem, toner lasts a long time. Got em for around $150 cuz they were being discontinued. If their replacement, the 1430 is like the 1210, go for it. And yes, after these days of crappy lego $30 Lexmarks, a $170 printer may not look familiar any more. But it's really worth it. No more zzzt-zzzt-zzzt-zzzt over and over again to print a page. It's whirrrrr and it's done. 15 pages a minute, too. Kicks your lexmark's ass. Cleaner, higher contrast, won't smudge of it gets a drop of water on it. It's better all around.

Think about it.

Well, the same reason as to why we don't have room-temp (or only requiring passive cooling) 500mhz processors for $25, silent single platter 10gb HDs for $25, 256mb 266mhz DDR RAM for $25.

600MHz passive-cooled processor for $15
Silent single-platter 20gb HD for $39 (can't hit the magic $25 price point, but it is 20gb)
256mb 266MHz DDR RAM for $22

It CAN be done for the prices you quote; but your point still is valid. The flashy stuff sells and gets the PR.

Well, the same reason as to why we don't have room-temp (or only requiring passive cooling) 500mhz processors for $25, silent single platter 10gb HDs for $25, 256mb 266mhz DDR RAM for $25.

600MHz passive-cooled processor for $15
Silent single-platter 20gb HD for $39 (can't hit the magic $25 price point, but it is 20gb)
256mb 266MHz DDR RAM for $22

It CAN be done for the prices you quote; but your point still is valid. The flashy stuff sells and gets the PR.

So I guess I'll still have to shell out $200+ to upgrade my Slot A to anything over 900Mhz... :(

just the other day i wanted to upgrade my 450mhz celeron system.

after searching and contacting vendors, i finally found a slot-1, 800mhz coppermine(100 fsb).

i charged the shipping and handling (about $200).

Yeah, you don't see the slot-1 processors much at all anymore. Hell, I can't even find them on Pricewatch. But you still got ripped off. You could have gotten an Athlon 2500/el cheapo ECS mobo combo for only $145, including shipping, off of pricewatch.

That would have kicked the ass of your 800 celeron and would definitely kick the ass of a Walmart PC. By the way, be glad you didn't get the Walmart PC. Yes, they are 1 ghz. But the fact that it has a tiny amount of ram, horrible onboard video, plain bad chipsets, etc, means that the Walmart PC will likely be as slow or slower than your 450 celeron.

My brother's girlfriend bought a 1.6 ghz eMachines for $1200 (!) last Christmas. The thing might have a fast enough processor, but it is completely incapable of running Windows XP that was bundled with it. By completely incapable, I mean it would take a couple minutes to boot up, and several seconds to open the start menu. Unusable. Contrast this with my old computer, a Compaq 633 celeron that was bought for $600 two years ago that is perfectly capable of running Windows XP. (Although I run Win2k.)

I'm a web developer. As I run Linux, my applications ranges from Gimp to web/script/databaseserver to several web browsers, of course in addition to mail and news applications and all the small stuff like XMMS and Gaim. For these tasks, I have an AMD K6-II 400MHz with 128MB RAM and a 16 MB video adapter. I'll upgrade the RAM soon, but the computer is sufficient for my needs, and it's not painful.

And until recently, I did the same kind of thing on an AMD K6/2-450 w/512 MB RAM. I too thought it "was enough" until a new contract forced me to run multiple VMWare sessions. Then, I upgraded to an Athlon 1800+/1 GB RAM.

Now, there's no way I'd ever consider going back.

Moz is instantaneous. Kmail can search GBs of email very fast. Big PGSQL queries complete instantly. In short, I love it!

Realize that your time is worth money. Time you spend waiting on your computer is frequently time you're not getting paid for, and is otherwise time your customers are paying for.

A new 2.0 Ghz motherboard/CPU can be had for under $100.

How much do you charge per hour of your time? At my "good guy" rate of $65/hour, this motherboard costs 1.5 hours. I probably save that in billables to my clients in a few days to perhaps a week.

In other words, get the right tool for the job.

Seriously, I'm not just simply making fun of you. When I worked as a temp and my employer refused to buy needed peripheral equipment (I don't think your job could be any worse) I ended up bringing some of my own. It made my job easier and it sent a subtle message to my employer.

According to this page :

http://www.pricewatch.com/1/37/3846-1.htm

the cheapest video card is $4

So you have one of those yeah?

or are you talking out of your Arse?

According to Froogle it's $90.

According to Pricewatch, it under $80. Choose your vendors wisely... Some don't require hardware purchases, either...

What everyone seems to be forgetting here, is hardly anyone pays $200 for a home-user version of windows. Most people get the newer version of windows with a newer pc, and that costs OEM pricing for the manufacturer. In fact, you can get the OEM version of XP home (with license) for $58 on pricewatch (direct link)

I've been paying a little under a dollar a gig for hdd space. I can't see how a DVD burner is much cheaper

• Get a high quality monitor
  If you can't get one at work, at least have a good one at home. I went looking for a 19" monitor that could do 1600x1200 four years ago, and while I could have paid $450 (prices in USD), I instead opted for a $600 model (I used pricewatch for these prices). Why? Because any eye care and related discomfort to me wasn't worth $150. And the monitor really should be able to do at least 70Hz at the resolution you use, I can't tell you how many people I know who've had monitor-related headaches that were fixed by upping the refresh rate.
• Balance your color settings
  I've used Macs for a long time, which come with excellent color-balancing software. But PCs don't have this, and I'll often notice they present an image onscreen that is horribly out of whack. A lot of monitors allow you to adjust the strength of the color outputs, and I assume there's some software to do the same (try Adobe?). You shouldn't notice any adjustment in your eyes between looking at the monitor and the real world (such as if you putting on or taking off tinted glasses). That's not good for your eyes either.
• Don't sit too close to the monitor
  You're supposed to have your eyes 2 feet from the screen. I don't know anyone who actually does this, but most people are at least 1 foot away. If you're sitting closer, or finding that you often have to lean in to see things (such as small text), you should probably get a larger (physically) monitor, or run at a lower resolution (or, adjust the sizes of how all your fonts display). This will make a big difference, and you'll see results almost immediately.
• Align your monitor with your eyes
  Your eyes should be even with the top of the screen (not the bevel). Ok, this doesn't have to be precise, but if you are constantly looking down or up it's going to suck for not only your eyes, but your neck and back, too. It's easy to fix, too, mostly people have monitors that are too small, so they stack books or bricks or whatever underneath to raise it up.
• Eliminate glare
  Almost forgot this one. If you're getting too much glare from windows or overhead lights you're going to be squinting constantly while using your monitor. You probably don't even notice it, as (like all of these things) your eyes just adjust to it automatically and you don't notice until they're bloodshot or you've got headaches. But if you find that you're squinting, get a filter on your monitor, or buy one that has some sort of anti-relectivity technology built-in. Well worth it.

If you're ambitious enough to enter everything into your PDA, all the power to ya'. Otherwise, I found it handy for boring classes to be able to read the news (basically like bringing an electronic magazine to class). You may think it sounds funny and that only flunkies would do such a thing, but I gaurentee there will be courses you show up for the sole reason to either receive or hand in assignments. The rest of the time is just filler. If you do get a PDA, make sure you get 802.11 support with it.

I think the only device you really need is a good computer. Laptops are nice because you can take them to group sessions, but not necessary. A desktop will give you more features for a lower price. I would get a desktop and save my money to get a newer one in two years when it's obsolete. Most public campuses here in the Midwest seem to be Microsoft campuses, so you might as well get a Windows machine and buy/steal Office from your University right away (unless you're an Art/Music student, you'll want to check with your department as you'll likely find more value in a Macintosh).

If you get a laptop, get a wireless NIC with it! Printer isn't absolutely necessary because you'll have access to printers on campus or possibly at work, depending where you work. You'll probably want a decent sized hard drive for P2P. An LCD monitor is hella-sweet in the dorms.

Here's a tip: Don't buy a piece of crap, overpriced, used computer from "a friend your dad knows" or from schmuck in the newspaper. Dell and HP Compaq always have new machines for around $300-$400, and if you look around, they often have new machines in the low $300's, which leaves more room to add the features you really need/want. If you're really looking to pinch pennies, buy a machine from Dell with the things they offer cheap (like video cards and DVD burners) and buy the stuff they sell expensively from an alternate source (like Memory or CD readers). Make sure you get name brand memory, though, as Dell's can be a bit finicky with cheap memory. I've had good luck with Kingston ValueRAM in my Dells.

And let's not forget about the Golden rule of the dorms - he who owns a DVD burner and the right software makes the friends. ;) Dell often has a deal where you can get a DVD burner for $99.

I recommend a decent size TV too (~25") and a DVD burner that can read all types of media, because I know my roommates and I spent a lot of time playing video games and watching TV...unless you're a girl...then just get some rollerblades and some hot pants or something from Wet Seal or whatev.

Let's recap - a good computer (I prefer a desktop), a good TV, and a beer fridge. Any further questions? Oh yeah, and some helpful, off-topic advice:

1. College is not primarily for education. It's merely a system our society has created to determine who is willing to jump through more hoops than the others.
2. Don't be bummed that you didn't get the GPA you got in high school. There is a good chance you will either a) fail a course, or b) drop it before you fail it. And you will probably take at least a course or two over.
3. It doesn't really matter what you major in. Don't let it stress you out. Just study what you're good at. They're pretty much all the same anyway...
4. Most importantly: NOT EVERYONE IS MEANT TO GO TO A UNIVERSITY. If you can't handle it, don't worry. Try something else. It doesn't mean you're a failure, it just means it's not for you. Some people have PhD's, but that doesn't mean anyone below them is stupid. Different strokes for different folks. Remember that, especially when you get all depressed about some bad grade(s) you get.

Modern games do lack creativity, that's why I like emulators. Before graphics were the rage, you had great games like metroid, legend of zelda, dragon warrior, etc. Now there are great graphics but no originality. I did enjoy Counter-Strike's realism, that was originality from the standpoint that it was a game without the extreme cartoonish nature. Fast paced first person shooter games just don't appeal to me anymore on the PC, and I have not purchased an entertainment system since the Nintendo. I don't think I ever will, especially since you can get a cheap laptop or build a cheap PC and play all of the older, really good games without ever having to upgrade again.

Have you actually checked the prices for Sun's Linux boxes?

You mean here? $1,995 for a single-proc P III @ 1.4Ghz?

That's the entry price, as soon as you start looking at upgrades and systems with fault tolerant power supplies, RAID etc... then yes... they are expensive. $520 for a second processor!! (just a 1.4Ghz P-III).

Just go to www.pricewatch.com and see what $1,995 can get you.

You'll have to pay 20% more for it: Pricewatch currently shows GeForce FX 5800 running for $326 and up, while you won't find the Radeon 9800 for less than $394. So either way you're basically just getting what you pay for.

You'll have to pay 20% more for it: Pricewatch currently shows GeForce FX 5800 running for $326 and up, while you won't find the Radeon 9800 for less than $394. So either way you're basically just getting what you pay for.

That's a neat trick, paying $1 in royalties on a 16 cent piece of media!
You're not thinking of "music" labelled CR-Rs are you? In CANADA?

There is no reason.

As for performance, the $40 you spend on this crap could be spent getting a better graphics card. I believe you can get a GeForce 2's now for $30-$50. That's what I use on my current Gentoo GNU/Linux system (with WindowMaker). Guess what, no performance problems -- at all [qualifications: 1GHz CPU, 256MB SDRAM, 7200rpm ATA-100 HD].

People are really stupid when it comes to buying the latest greatest whatever. Here are the specs on my current PC:

1.1GHz AMD T-Bird CPU
256MB SDRAM
60GB 7200rpm ATA-100 hard drive
64MB GeForce2 GTS
19" Monitor

Guess what? It was fast when I bought it (a year ago). And guess what? It's still fast. It has not magically been transformed into a lumbering beast. For the home user, there is really no reason at all to buy anything other than that which sits at the best performance/price ratio. You can get an excellent system today for under $1000 that will be able to do anything you want as far as productivity goes, and will play most all games just fine.

My general plan -- and I think it's a good one -- is to upgrade once something 10 times better than what I have is available at an optimal price/performance ratio. And that's only if I have some need.

It's amazing to me how many home users are tricked into believing that a 2GHz CPU is somehow going to make their internet browsing experience any better, or make programs load faster and make Word work better. For almost all typical uses of a computer, you will *never* need to ugrade. You will only need to upgrade if you want to keep up to date with the latest games or if you want to do computationally intense computational work. Even then, you can still do so at the best price to performance ratio.

Also, Pricewatch, Pricegrabber and Froogle scour the web for prices and create search engines out of them so consumers can find the best price.

I'm not saying just because everyone else is doing it means you can too (and you might have a slightly different objective causing these examples to be weightless) but it's being done all over the place.

Hope that helps.

Look at pricewatch.com, it already goes around collecting price data from many online stores.

I don't see why this is such a big problem... one site creates competitive prices based upon other sites' prices. In reality if a consumer reaches your site on the internet for your product they probably didn't do it by accident. They will evaluate all aspects of the business (licensing, service/support, upgrade cost, security of the site, etc) before they jump ship to another site to save a few bucks.

I'm sure Dell, Sony, and HP already keep an eye on eachother's prices.

This is an old philosophy that I'm sure is running out of steam.

Myth: Doubling your RAM leads to significant benefits.

Fact: RAM has been cheap for quite a long time. In fact, it is not uncommon to find machines with 512M or more of system memory - not only that, but extremely fast memory as well. It would not be surprising to find that most individuals have at least 256M of RAM. And for 90% of the regular consumer - 256M is more than sufficient (as of current).

In yester-years - most people struggled with large bloated applications with very little memory. We all remember the days of 8M to 32M (wow!) and 64M to 128M (big wow!). Windows 95 did one thing for the industry that was absolutely positive: it forced people to stop struggling along with 16M or 32M of RAM and move up to the big top - 64 to 128M. (Unfortunately, Microsoft never stopped - 256M seems to be a nice sweet spot for Windows 2000 - will we be seeing a 1G sweet spot anytime soon?)

But this is a new era of computing: software still runs well on hardware that is a few years old. Prices for computer components have drastically fallen in the last decade. Components are now extremely modular and flexible - and can accomodate new and improved hardware. You can still find the ubiquitous i440BX chipset (introduced in the early P2 era) hosting P3-500+ processors.

Since people have been able to stock their computers with more memory (more than enough for mundane tasks; good enough for large behemoth games), RAM doubling may not help that much. Sure, an OS's page cache can always benefit from "wasted" memory by loading everything under the sun into memory. I have three computers that I regularly use: one with 768M, one with 384M, and one with... 32M (a paltry laptop).

Granted, the laptop would see a huge performance benefit with another 64M module. But the 384M machine always has free memory, and the 768M workstation (although loaded down pretty well) will manages to avoid swap without a problem.

My 768M stocked workstation is what I call ideal for me: a 10000RPM 80G hard drive, P4-2.4GHz, and with an ATI Radeon 7500. It's for browsing, compiling, and editing - no gaming.

My 384M stocked workstation is what I call the bare minimum: 5 hard drives (for a total of 145G), a dual P2-400MHz, and with an nVidia GeForce 2. It's for moderate gaming, browsing, and compiling.

My 32M stocked laptop is what I call "Jurassic": 1 hard drive (for a total of 1.6G), a P-166MHz/MMX, and a I-don't-know-what-the-hell-it-is video chipset. It's for board games, card games, and light browsing.

I'll focus on my 384M stocked box. I could get rid of the 5 drives and invest in 2 80G or 120G 7200/10000RPM drives. Hard drives are the biggest bottleneck in a system. The higher the density and the faster the spindle speed is a theoretical higher output from the drive. Other factors weigh in considerably - but this is a mere example!

I could also upgrade my processors to the maximum limit of the motherboard. If I flash the BIOS, I'm supposedly able to move to dual P3-800M. According to Pricewatch, I can get two of these bad boys at a small price of $156 (total).

Since gaming is not really a big focus for me, I can deal with this aged video board. But ideally, I would probably go with a relatively cheap dual-Athlon board, get a couple Duron 1.3GHz processors, move my 384M RAM over and be done with it.

$500. Hmmm...how about these 1GB PC2100 DDR SDRAM prices? Pretty inexpensive, if you ask me.

That's nothing! You can get 120 gigs for $95!

SuperMicro has some astonishing cases ( one takes, with their 5-drive backplane-type things, S-ATA, 15 drives .. Stock!! )...

a pair of 3ware S-ATA cards in a dual-Athlon 'board ( cheapest AthlonMP chips you can get, you'd want 'em for unstoppability, rather than for blitz-performance, eh? ... or go for a pair of the slowest, coolest-running, AthlonXP's and short the correct bridges to MP 'em, though the kernel will run as "License Tainted" then... )...

A batch of Maxtor DiamondMax 9 S-ATA drives Model Numbers Table ( plus spares, and check for the prices you want on PriceWatch ), and one could even bolt one onto the side of the chassis ( drill holes for mounting it on, to get the magic 16-drives )

then use RAID-55

3- or 4-drives == 1 RAID5 unit ( within the 3ware card )
2 of those RAID5 units within each 3ware card
4 such units visible to the kernel, which can therefore give you kernel-raid5 on top of the 3ware RAID, so it'd take multiple-drive failure to kill the redundancy of the array.

( yeah, so it'd be a nuisance to have to hot-plug replace the one screwed onto the side-panel, but just arrange that only the other drives fail, right? Simple!
+: )

Be wary of the Enermax P/S's, though, yes they've got an 800w ( or thereabouts ), but I've read that when fully loaded, they don't supply the proper voltages ( Danish review was it? actual tests, they did, but I don't know if they were de-rating for the 'combined' rails that each are rated to a certain current, but their combined rating isn't the sum... all P/S's are done that way... )

Enermax's, though, are as nearly silent as makes-no-difference when loaded to 50%, though, so that's where I want 'em.

Gigabitten Ethernets would make your place cozier, too, rather than all that burningwire stuff....
( though I gather that there are firewire-to-ethernet translation devices 'round... )

PS... that thing-on-my-head ( in me self-portrait ) was supposed to be a Klutz Propeller Beanie, but it seems they don't make one, now, so now it's only a simulation of one, see...

If you're like me (approximately 300 CDs or media laying around) you can't afford the DVDs for storage, even if you have the DVD burner. If you're an artist who often ends up with 300-400 meg photoshop files or massive 3D renders, you need this kind of stuff.

The prices for DVDs at stores like Best Buy are horrible, horrible, horrible. But if you look at Pricewatch, the price, for the data, is less than CDs. Currently, they sell a 50 pack of DVD-R for only $45. That's equal to that data of about 330 CDs. That's quite a bit cheaper than CDs for the data. DVD-RWs are currently at $47 for a 50 pack.

Shop around a bit. Places like Best Buy have shitty deals on media.

I don't know where you're getting your numbers from. On pricewatch I find prices to be the following:

1. DVD-R: $76 for one hundred 4.7GB discs, or 16 cents per gigabyte
2. CD-R: $17 for one hundred 700MB discs, or 23 cents per gigabyte

for the average user the largest single file they'll burn on a CD is usually a divx movie, and that doesn't usually exceed 800 megabytes.

You've got the relationship backwards. Divx filesizes are being held back to under 800 megabytes by the constraints in CD capacity. I no longer limit myself to 800 MB divx files now that I have a DVD burner.

Just because current CD burners limit you to 800 MB doesn't mean you should be so short sighted as to assume that the 800 MB limit is actually desirable.

another pitfall of using DVD media is the different standards available from different manufacturers, unlike blank CDs

You are correct that the DVD standards war is very damaging to DVD. But then in the next paragraph you advocate using nonstandard double data density CDs!

If you're gonna troll, at least try to keep your position consistent.

An Athlon 2200 is $71.04 on Pricewatch right now. Pardon my feigned ignorance, but how exactly are you saving money while still buying an inferior CPU?

-theGreater Sarcasmic.

If you were creative you could probably come up with a 1TB server (IDE drives) and a GigE network card for under $1,500."

First, everyone on here has already said HDs are under $1/gig... make that way under ($94 shipped for 120gig), so less than $800 for the hard drives. Unless the "not state-of-the-art PC" + Gb card cost more than $200 (you can buy a freakin' 1.1ghz PC from Wal-mart for $200 so I'm sure you can do better) a 1TB server could be built for closer to $1000.

Also, if we go with the "not state-of-the-art PC" (I'm thinking 200-500mhz) is it really going to need a Gb card? I doubt it could write to the hard drives that fast (max speed of 120mB/s), a much cheaper 100mbps (max speed of 12mB/s) card and hub (a Gb hub is a lot of $$$$$ compared to 100mbps) would probably suffice, transferring 1 gB every 83 seconds is a pretty decent backup speed (43gigs/hr).

right, that makes sense... or you could have just bought one of the "new" (been out for 2+ years, is that new?) CD burners with burn-proof (or JustLink) technology making it IMPOSSIBLE to buffer underrun since it can actually stop recording completely and restart mid-way through.

Could have bought a 48x burner for $40 and be burning at triple the speed right now with $60 extra in your pocket to boot, but instead you're now $100 short and still burning at 12x.

At $500, you have just limited yourself to a mid-ranged Athlon or P4.

More like very high range. A quick glance at Pricewatch will show you that currently, the fastest Intel, 3.06 ghz, costs $388. The fasted Athlon, the 3000+, costs $320. Even the 2.8 Xeon is $425.

Hrm.

1) Go to pricewatch or e-bay and buy a server that can hold greater than or equal to 4gb... and buy the RAM while you're at it.
2) While waiting to ship - download the .iso's or whatever you'll need to prepare to install your OS.
3) Server and RAM arrive! Snap RAM into server - take existing machine, put aside - plug KVM into new server - fire up - install OS.
4) Test!
5) ?????
6) Profit!