What I find interesting about this is that Intel sold their LANDesk virus protect product to Symantec in the late 90s, which became Symantec's enterprise product. In fact, they spun the entire LANDesk division a few years later. Can't imagine why they want to get back in the software business.
The systems I support at work are almost exclusively Dells with the "Gold" warranty, I couldn't be happier with the support.
I have a number of personal Dell systems as well, bought mostly from their Home division. I've only had to use the support on one system, and it was to replace a faulty DVD-RW on a Inspiron. Used their e-mail support, and with only two additional e-mails after the initiating the issue, they shipped me a replacement.
The Apple TV does "custom" sync with one iTunes Library, but you can also stream from any shared iTunes Library, which can on the same system you sync. I sync a small amount of content to the device (iPhoto won't stream at this point), then stream everything else. It has been a great solution for me.
I actually ran in to a piece of Windows software that had to be installed by the user who wanted to use it as an admin-level account. The site sysadmin had installed a Dell scanner driver for a user who didn't have admin rights using his admin-account, and she could not use the scanner until she had been promoted to admin-level and run the install herself.
We also use a lot of legacy scientific software that requires admin-level to run, period. So, non-computer-type scientist are running as admin on FDA-regulated systems. Good times.
If it is the same one I saw, it not only included AppleCare, but a wireless keyboard and mouse as well. If I wasn't saving my pennies for a FrontRow Mini to use as a media center, I may have picked it up.
The DRM could be stripped out easily from earlier versions of iTunes' songs using Hymn, but they haven't cracked the new one yet.
While I am not a fan of DRM at all, the iTunes model is pretty reasonable. My only real complaint is they won't let you stream the videos using the built-in share functionality of iTunes.
I just want to second the USB network device. That and a USB-thumb drive (with a Win9x driver on floppy) have saved me tons of time moving files around on older junk.
We looked seriously at online solutions, such as Iron Mountain, but the cost of both the service on top of the extra bandwidth needed were prohibitive.
We decided to go with an off-site service with a 24/7 courier service. We do a weekly/monthy/yearly rotation, and so far have been very happy with it. The company has a unique solution because of their location at the bottom of Little Cottonwood canyon in Salt Lake in a solid chunk on granite, theoretically earthquake and flood proof. The tour of the facility was most impressive. Their webpage, while less impressive, gives a good idea of their services. http://perpetualstorage.com/index_home.htm
I my server cabinet, in addition to our OpenBSD zillion dollar EMC, I have 6 Linux servers and 4 NT servers.
Linux: I've bought 3 RedHat Distro's (5.2, 6.1, 7.0): ~$120.
NT Server: One license for each (no client licenses, they come from our $$$ Enterprise agreement): ~$3000 + 2 Exchange licenses.
Linux wins here, no contest.
Shoop...
The Philips Expanium can do 32-320 kps (okay, so it's not quite 384 =) ). It costs twice as much ($199), but it overcomes a couple of the shortcomings of the cheaper units (CD-RW and multi-session compatable are the main ones).
I recently bought Sony hometheatre system. DVD that came with it refuses to play CDs that I recorded myself from MP3s into Audio CD format, although they play fine in any other stereo system. This one accepts only original CDs.. Now what's up with that?
This is actually a feature of _most_ home DVD players. They will not play any CD-R disks, but they will play CD-RW disks. You read that correctly, CD-RW disks. I did not believe it until I did it myself. This is the opposite of most early DVD-ROM drives, which would play CD-R's, but not CD-RW's.
Most of my MP3's are ripped from CD's I own so that I can listen to my CD collection at work and in my car without having to have them here (I don't like the idea of storing a couple hundred CD's in my office, thank you very much).
(Just bought a CD based portible MP3 player - they rock)
My problem with this is that I repeatedly hear the mantra that you do not own the media (floppy disk in this case), but rather you own a license to use the software.
No matter how the media is destroyed/lost, you still own the license to use the product. I feel that the company you purchased the product from should give you a method to get new media (I'm more than willing to pay a marginal price to cover their cost of media). If not, I'll happily download a new copy from any Warez site...
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What I find interesting about this is that Intel sold their LANDesk virus protect product to Symantec in the late 90s, which became Symantec's enterprise product. In fact, they spun the entire LANDesk division a few years later. Can't imagine why they want to get back in the software business.
They've added the nVidia 7300 TurboCache since the initial introduction to the E1505n, which may be enough to make me pull the trigger.
The systems I support at work are almost exclusively Dells with the "Gold" warranty, I couldn't be happier with the support.
I have a number of personal Dell systems as well, bought mostly from their Home division. I've only had to use the support on one system, and it was to replace a faulty DVD-RW on a Inspiron. Used their e-mail support, and with only two additional e-mails after the initiating the issue, they shipped me a replacement.
Hard to complain about that.
The Apple TV does "custom" sync with one iTunes Library, but you can also stream from any shared iTunes Library, which can on the same system you sync. I sync a small amount of content to the device (iPhoto won't stream at this point), then stream everything else. It has been a great solution for me.
I actually ran in to a piece of Windows software that had to be installed by the user who wanted to use it as an admin-level account. The site sysadmin had installed a Dell scanner driver for a user who didn't have admin rights using his admin-account, and she could not use the scanner until she had been promoted to admin-level and run the install herself.
We also use a lot of legacy scientific software that requires admin-level to run, period. So, non-computer-type scientist are running as admin on FDA-regulated systems. Good times.
If it is the same one I saw, it not only included AppleCare, but a wireless keyboard and mouse as well. If I wasn't saving my pennies for a FrontRow Mini to use as a media center, I may have picked it up.
The DRM could be stripped out easily from earlier versions of iTunes' songs using Hymn, but they haven't cracked the new one yet.
While I am not a fan of DRM at all, the iTunes model is pretty reasonable. My only real complaint is they won't let you stream the videos using the built-in share functionality of iTunes.
I just want to second the USB network device. That and a USB-thumb drive (with a Win9x driver on floppy) have saved me tons of time moving files around on older junk.
We looked seriously at online solutions, such as Iron Mountain, but the cost of both the service on top of the extra bandwidth needed were prohibitive.
We decided to go with an off-site service with a 24/7 courier service. We do a weekly/monthy/yearly rotation, and so far have been very happy with it. The company has a unique solution because of their location at the bottom of Little Cottonwood canyon in Salt Lake in a solid chunk on granite, theoretically earthquake and flood proof. The tour of the facility was most impressive. Their webpage, while less impressive, gives a good idea of their services. http://perpetualstorage.com/index_home.htm
The low end Dells do not include an AGP or a PCI Express slot. You're stuck with the Intel Extreme with shared memory.
Most factory cruise control will not engage below a set speed, typically 30 MPH.
I my server cabinet, in addition to our OpenBSD zillion dollar EMC, I have 6 Linux servers and 4 NT servers. Linux: I've bought 3 RedHat Distro's (5.2, 6.1, 7.0): ~$120. NT Server: One license for each (no client licenses, they come from our $$$ Enterprise agreement): ~$3000 + 2 Exchange licenses. Linux wins here, no contest. Shoop...
I got one and I love it.
This is actually a feature of _most_ home DVD players. They will not play any CD-R disks, but they will play CD-RW disks. You read that correctly, CD-RW disks. I did not believe it until I did it myself. This is the opposite of most early DVD-ROM drives, which would play CD-R's, but not CD-RW's.
Most of my MP3's are ripped from CD's I own so that I can listen to my CD collection at work and in my car without having to have them here (I don't like the idea of storing a couple hundred CD's in my office, thank you very much).
(Just bought a CD based portible MP3 player - they rock)
My problem with this is that I repeatedly hear the mantra that you do not own the media (floppy disk in this case), but rather you own a license to use the software. No matter how the media is destroyed/lost, you still own the license to use the product. I feel that the company you purchased the product from should give you a method to get new media (I'm more than willing to pay a marginal price to cover their cost of media). If not, I'll happily download a new copy from any Warez site...