FastEddie Blogs!

Regarding my post a while back, “10 is the new 6“, you can watch that session (as well as all the sessions) from this year’s PDC here: http://www.microsoftpdc.com

I just watched “10 is the new 6″ and I don’t know if I’m really convinced.

I mentioned that there are many people who share the same viewpoint as me. The VirtualDub developer weighed in on his experiences (both past and present) with Visual Studio. It’s a good read, as well as most of his blog postings.

PS: You can view Raymond Chen’s talk here. It was weird to hear him talk after reading his blog for all these years. He doesn’t seem that grumpy in person.

My conspiracy theory was wrong.

The official name of Windows 7 is… Windows 7. How original. But it makes sense.

- Vista 2? No way, they want to steer as far as possible from anything called Vista. Remember when Windows 95 came out and everything was named 95? That’s not going to happen with Vista. You’ll never see another product with that name… ever. Although I thought it would be nifty if they bought Yahoo, and stuck the AltaVista name on an OS.

- Bet on a new moniker? Well, they spent enough money trying to build a brand around one name. I’m sure they didn’t want two failed names in a row. Betting on a number is nice and safe.

- I wonder how much Intel’s naming of the i7 chip played into this. I mentioned a while back that the Nehalem is the chip to get whenever it comes out. I wonder if the old Wintel partnership is getting back into gear. That relationship has been on rocky ground the last few years, so it will be interesting to see if there’s going to be a dual marketing effort based on the names. “Windows 7 only runs great on Core i7″ Of course, that’s just the conspiracy theorist in me coming out again.

Yes, I know this is 2 posts in one day. Judging by my past performance I can safely say that this isn’t a schedule that I can maintain.

In the wake of the Vista disaster, Microsoft is doing quite a bit of PR to try and drum up support for their Next Big Thing.

On the more technical side, the Engineering Windows 7 blog delves into complex / controversial topics to try and justify the reasons why they did the things they did, and some of the decisions they are going to make regarding the next version of Windows.

It really is a marketing site for the geek audience, but it has some interesting insights. Particularly regarding their use of user statistics from their Windows Feedback program (that I remember getting some product free from them a while back). But regardless of the freebies they offered, the user data is pretty cool, from a geek perspective.

Google has a new product… a browser? Really? Oh ya, I forgot, Google wants to eliminate the OS. Or more accurately, make the OS *be* the browser.

I decided to try this out right away, given my mood for trying new things.

It’s sleek, it’s smooth. Let’s start with the things I like:

- The technology. Multi-threaded this, Multi-process that. It’s explained in the comic, so read that first. But there’s a lot to like under the hood. A virtual machine for JavaScript. A task manager to see which pages are using the most resources. Sandboxing pages for security. Neat stuff.

- Performance. Like I mentioned in the Firefox “review” (Is it still a review when you first run it years after release?), Firefox just “feels” faster. And the same is with Chrome. I could care less which one launches a few milliseconds faster than the other. But just open up cnn.com and watch it load. Does it incrementally load like it’s supposed to? Or does it sit there for a few seconds and then display the whole thing at once. Incremental is better.

- Smooth. Again, load cnn.com and move the window all over while it loads. Does it stutter all over the place? Or does it smoothly scroll? Then, take the upper left corner and resize the window. Does it smoothly resize? Or does it flicker all over the place? Chrome is surpringly smooth.

- The opening page. Nice idea. I’m one of those guys mentioned in the comic who keeps new pages as about:blank for performance reasons. If the opening page opens quick *and* gives me access to pages I’m going to go to, great.

- Screen real estate. Excellent. User interface. Just the right amount of feedback. Keyboard shortcuts. Seems to be all in tact.

—

Now, on to what I don’t like.

- Tabs. This is probably the deal-breaker for me. You can’t turn them off! And it appears Google wants to keep it that way (perhaps as a sort of “running apps bar” to compete with the OS?). From the comic: “In Google Chrome, the primary piece of the user interface is the Tab.” Well, I don’t like them! I’ve said my piece on why I dislike them, so making them a first-class citizen in your product doesn’t win any points in my book. And all of the talk about making each tab it’s own separate process doesn’t affect me either, since every browser window I open is already it’s own process. So that kind of disappointed me.

- Searching in the same bar as url. Microsoft has tried this before (not as slick mind you), and I just don’t like it. I prefer search to be it’s own page. I like intellisense on the url bar, and always use that, so it’s good to see it here. But leave the search out of it.

- Non-native UI. Minor gripe. The URL bar also does not act like a Windows edit line. Better than Firefox, but still not native.

- Too early. It’s a beta, so a lot of *stuff* is missing. Probably on purpose, to create a more stable platform. So that will turn a lot of people off initially. However, I’m certain that if the browser becomes popular, the *stuff* will show up.

—

Speculation. Why did Google create its own browser? It already pours millions of dollars into Firefox development. Did they not see enough of their ideas get put into motion? Was it too hard to change a browser that already has a sizable following? Is Chrome going to be used as a testbed for future changes, essentially a Firefox research platform? Or did they just have a whole bunch of smart programmers that they recruited from Microsoft who didn’t have anything better to do?

I don’t know. My initial reaction is that it will just water down the Firefox brand, diluting its numbers slightly. People (including me) are already more than content with whatever’s included with the OS. Once it’s in the OS, people don’t care. Look at the disk defrag market. Or the email program market. Or… the browser market. So, most machines with more than one browser will have either IE and FF, or IE and Chrome. Not all three… Except for the die-hards who install things like Opera… or Safari. (eyes rolling)

One of the sessions for this year’s PDC is called:

Microsoft Visual C++: 10 Is the New 6

I love it. I’ve mentioned before that many C++ developers feel that Visual Studio 6 (released over 10 years ago!) was the last great IDE put out by Microsoft. When Visual Studio 7 came out, it just felt like Microsoft was pushing .NET, the Web, and Visual Basic into one product, and “oh ya, we included a C++ compiler too”.

We kept waiting for improvements on the IDE side for C++ devs. Visual Studio 8 (2005), nothing. Visual Studio 9 (2008), nothing. We kept shouting, “Make it more like Visual Studio 6! Give us Visual Studio 6 with the new compiler! Why does hitting F1 take us to a Visual Basic help page??”

Anyways, I think it’s a pretty funny title for this talk. It shows that people are actually listening inside the monolith. Hopefully something can be done about it. Can’t wait to see what’s revealed at the talk.

Ok, here’s my conspiracy theory post of the year.

I’ve wondered why Microsoft chose the name Vista to be their new OS brand… I’m guessing it will eventually be no longer Windows Vista, but just Vista. Just like it’s called the Nintendo DS, not the Gameboy DS, even though it’s an evolutionary product (I still call it a Gameboy out of habit). Of course, this might change given how poorly Vista has performed in the market (but don’t underestimate the MS Marketing machine).

Anyways, why the name Vista? With all the press about Microsoft and Yahoo, it got me thinking.

Microsoft has a huge competitor that it wants to beat, Google. Microsoft has tried to compete in the search space, and hasn’t succeeded much. What was the most popular search engine before Google started? It’s so obscure now because it was so long ago. Remember the name? Altavista. Who owns Altavista? That’s right, Yahoo. Can you see the name for Windows 7? Alta-Vista perhaps?

Is that just random coincidence? Or has it been planned all along? Would MS buy out an entire company for a marketing name? Would MS name an OS after a internet search site?

Another bug to vote on for Visual Studio.  Log in and vote for it.  They actually keep track of which bugs get votes.

http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=344591

I had a momentary lack of judgment over the weekend and now we have a new member of the family. (!)

Everyone loves kitty pics (the new kitty has taken over Princess’s seat for the time being).  Isn’t she cute!!

There was a nice blurb about my work on the local news the other day.  You can watch the video here:

USC Creates Virtual Environments For Hollywood, Military

Ian sent me this slashdot link the other day (since I can’t bring myself to read slashdot for any length of time):

The Return of Ada

Allow me some nostalgic reminiscing:

Most of my college buddies are fondly aware of Ada, having it being forced down them in their first couple years of school.  Cal Poly’s CS dept was very pro-Ada, my guess is that it was because they wanted to cater to government recruiting.  Perhaps this was why most professors laughed when I told them I wanted to go into the games industry.   Just like my dad, “nobody’s going to pay you to play videogames”.

So anyway, we were forced to use Ada for the intro data structures courses.  This bugged me to no end.  It wasn’t so much the language, although it is unnecessarily wordy IMO.  But the lack of any serious tools was its shortcomings.  We’re talking: No code editor, No IDE, No Debugger.  Syntax highlighting?  Ya right.

Even the Ada compiler wasn’t natively Ada, it simply converted the Ada code to C++ and then called g++ on it.

And this is the time when Microsoft had Visual C++ 5, leading up to Visual Studio 6, which many hard-core C++ programmers still believe as their best IDE (but poor standards compiler).  Every version after has added more latency, and no useful features.  VS.NET 2002 was a huge step backwards and they’ve been playing catch up ever since.  I think you’d find many people who would be more than happy if they scrapped their entire .NET trunk, rolled back to version 6 of the IDE and hooked it up to the latest compiler.

Anyways, working with Ada was such a chore, it was a breath of relief when you got past the data structures courses and could use any language of your choice.  In fact, it was always my first question on the first day of class.

Ironically, the year after I graduated, the school introduced a new curriculum, starting with Java for the intro courses, then moving to C++.   No more Ada.  And they got a brand new computer lab to top it off.  Sigh…

Of course, this probably degenerated the school into one of those JavaSchools, but that’s a debate for another time.

Everyone like cats!  Oh, maybe it’s just us geeks.

http://www.videosift.com/video/An-Engineers-Guide-to-Cats

Reasons why it’s worth to be a PCgamer in 2008

Wow, there are a lot of games released in one year.  Granted, there are probably more than half on this list that don’t look all that great.  But still, that leaves like 20 or 30 that I would at least like to check out.

How many games did I play last year?  Just one.  I really have to break my WoW addiction.

But seriously, there’s no way I have time to play all of these…  But I would like to…

Do me a favor and vote on this bug. All that requires is that you have a MS passport ID. It’s a bug in Visual Studio 2008 that I get, and suposedly they won’t offer a full patch until Octobor. Here’s hoping a few more votes in the issue tracker will speed things up:

C2471 error

Well, at least his head is…

Here’s the electronic version, but his picture was in print on Tuesday in the Local section.
Youth fields completed on time for opening day

Click the More Photos link to see the Cubs in a circle during their cheer. I haven’t quite figured out which head is Craig, but one of them is his!

Microsoft and Intel Launch Parallel Computing Research Centers to Accelerate Benefits to Consumers, Businesses

I initially wrote about the importance of multi-core programming back in 2004. And Herb Sutter’s “The Free Lunch Is Over” was written in 2005. So on some levels I’m thinking “What took them so long?!?” But it is good that advancement in this area continues.

My daughter got a real simple kid’s digital camera for Christmas this year. She loved it and immediately filled it up with pictures.

So then I had to transfer the pictures off so she could fill it up again.

I plugged it in to my laptop with the supplied USB cable (I’m asking myself why it’s a proprietary plug requiring a special cable rather than a standard connector…)

Well, Windows didn’t recognize it, so I go for the driver CD that came with it (I can already hear you say, “don’t do it!”)

Driver starts to install… Blue Screen.

Of course, nobody likes to get a blue screen, but come on, this is a usb digital camera. What kind of special driver is required to cause a blue screen??

So I reboot the thing, hoping to try the install again. Unfortunately, I didn’t get very far.

When I rebooted:

- My DVD drive didn’t work
- My Webcam didn’t work
- My sound card didn’t work
- My modem didn’t work

In Device Manager it was a sea of yellow exclamation marks.

Now, I’m worried. What in the world did this stupid camera driver do to my machine?!? Worst of all, this is my work laptop, and I’ll be really embarrassed telling IT this story.

I’m looking at this camera and I get no hints. It’s some sort of Toys R Us generic brand that has no website, no support page, no method of getting help at all.

Then I noticed that one of the exclamation points was a thing called the “Plug and Play Enumerator.” I figured that maybe I’ll start with this device, seems harmless enough.

Normally, when you uninstall a device and reboot, the device tries to come back and offers you a chance to reinstall it. So I uninstalled that device and rebooted.

However, it never came back. This was troubling, but I didn’t think much about it. So I tried uninstalling the rest of the yellow exclamation points, one at a time. There goes my dvd drive, my webcam, my sound card, etc.

But they never came back after reboot. I thought that it must have something to do with that PnP device. So I went surfing. I found a site that explains how to reinstall this device (hmm, must have happened to other people). So I follow these really hacky instructions, and voila, all the devices came back.

I still have a rogue unknown device in Device Manager, and I suspect it’s that half-installed digital camera. But am I going to try reinstalling that CD? No chance.

This is a fake “laptop” that was received as a gift for a friend of ours.  Watch how it says the ABCs:

What letter is Zed?

Just think of what this is teaching our children.  You can even hear Craig in the background saying his own “Zed” in response. I love it!

In the spirit of trying something new, I’ve decided to see what all the hubbub is with this new fangled browser.  Yes, I’m probably the last person on earth that hasn’t installed Firefox (at least out of all my friends).  I usually hesistate installing something new on my machine unless there’s a clear benefit of better productivity.  Here’s why:

- Every program that’s installed on the OS adds to the “cruft.”  This is every little piece of data that’s added to the system that contributes to overall system slowdown.  Paranoid?  Yes.  I keep my systems pretty vanilla…  Usually not even setting a wallpaper, or changing the system colors.

- I typically don’t replace something that’s already built-in to the OS unless there’s a clear reason to do so.  I replace Explorer with Total Commander because Explorer is impossible to navigate with a keyboard (however, I knew someone who did, and it was impressive to see him work).  I replace the default image viewer with Vueprint because I like hitting space bar to view the next image in a directory.  I replace MSN Messenger with Trillian because I only want to use one IM client for all of my contacts.  You get the idea.

- I want a consistent OS experience.   I work on several machines both at home and work.  I want the same browsing experience on each machine.  This would require me to install Firefox on each machine I come in contact with.  Raymond describes the problem here.  Requiring third party components every time you get on a new machine isn’t good.  Not that you’re likely to hear “First install Firefox, then go to this site.”  However, I had that exact experience not too long ago on a beta site I was looking at.

———-

Of course the big feature touted by Firefox everyone immediately mentions is  “TABS!  You just gotta have tabs!”   Unfortunately, as a die-hard keyboarder, tabs just doesn’t work.  Coding Horror explains this much better than I could (The Problem With Tabbed Interfaces).  It essentially boils down to this:  When task switching, I keep the Alt-Tab stack order in my head (order of most recently used).  This way, I know that the last app I used is one Alt-Tab away, and the 2nd to last app is two Alt-Tabs.  When using browser tabs, I now have to maintain multiple stacks in my head.  Most recently used apps, plus most recently use tabs in each opened browser window.  If I’m in Outlook, and I want to switch to my blog, which is buried 3 tabs in, on the 2nd browser window, how do I remember that?  I just have to hunt around for it with the mouse.  Boo. 

So, I can live without tabs. 

Other than that, the other Firefox features don’t really give enough reason to switch.  Faster browsing?  Maybe…  More secure?  Well, it might keep my WoW password more safe, that would be nice.  It’s not a Microsoft app!  Sorry, but I don’t wear a tin foil hat.

Actually, the main reason I decided to try Firefox was rather simple.  I’m a big fan of Homestar Runner.  However, when your screen resolution is 2560×1600, those little flash windows makes it very hard to see.  So I was googling around, and lo and behold, I found a plugin that makes the Homestar Runner cartoons as large as the browser!  However, the plugin is for… Firefox.

So, off I went to install it.  (the plugin worked great btw!)

———–

Here are my thoughts so far, after about a week using it off and on.

My first criteria I judged it on was screen real estate.  How much space do all of those buttons take up.  I’m a real stickler for wasted screen real estate.  Yes my combined resolution is about 4100×1600, but I still obsess over wasted toolbar space.

Firefox doesn’t dissappoint.  Let’s look at some screen shots.  Here you’ll see my current IE6 browser setup next to my Firefox setup.  Actually, the Firefox bar is a tad smaller than IE6.  Bonus!

While we’re at it, let’s compare both IE7 and Firefox 3 beta as well:

IE7 is hideous!  There is no way to get that toolbar any smaller.  Why can’t you embed the address bar into one of the other bars?  The wasted space is mind boggling, especially when maximizing the window on my 30″ monitor.  Sigh.   On the other hand, Firefox 3 is able to squeeze an even smaller footprint.  Yay!   I can’t for the life of me figure out what the designers of IE7 were thinking.

———–

I was afraid that Firefox would throw convention out the window and introduce all new keyboard shortcuts for browsing.  So far, I am happy that all the shortcuts I have been using work just like IE.  Ctrl-D, Alt-Left, Alt-Right, Ctrl-F.  Incremental Ctrl-F is nice.

In terms of rendering speed, I noticed that Firefox doesn’t exactly render any faster, but it feels different.  I think Firefox does a better job of multithreading the rendering so that the text displays first, and the images come in afterward, bit by bit as they download (just like the good old days).  Lately, in IE, most pages seem to pause for a second while the entire page downloads and then displays all at once (cnn.com, for example).  The incremental display is a better user experience.

Also, plugins were a breeze to deal with.  Download and copy it to the right folder, Firefox finds it right away and asks you to install it.  Neat.  Go to a site that requires flash, click the window and the flash plugin page displays and lets you install it.   It just seems more complex with IE.

———–

So, now that the good stuff is out of the way… let’s start nit-picking.  After all, I don’t really want to switch, so I’m trying to find everything wrong with it as I possibly can.  (Actually, I noticed these things right away, and boy do they bug):

- Toolbar buttons.  I think every menu option should have a icon for it.  This isn’t the case with Firefox.  Firefox is missing a Print Preview button and a Font Size button.  These two options I use frequently in IE.  Fortunately, I guess other people do as well, because there are two plugins that offer this capability.  On the one hand, it’s nice that Firefox is extensible, and people are willing to extend it.  On the other hand, I feel this is functionality that should have been added out-of-the-box.

- Scroll speed.  Take the same page in IE and Firefox.  Scroll down the same amount with either the mouse scroll wheel or the arrow keys.  The Firefox page scrolls about half as much as IE.  I much prefer a faster scroll speed.  However, I would prefer them to be consistent.  Why the difference?

- In IE, click the URL in the adrress bar.  Then click and drag in the middle of the URL to select half of the URL.  Notice how you can select part of the text?   Try the same thing in Firefox.  For some reason, it thinks you want to drag the icon somewhere.  In order to select that text, you have to move the pointer out of the address bar, then back in.  Then it will let you select text.  Why build in different behavior from the default Windows text box?  This is the danger of Non-native UI…

———–

Well, that’s my Firefox story.  I’m almost convinced.  Actually, if IE7 becomes mandatory (as it is on Vista), then I think the decision has already been made.  When it comes to wasted screen real estate, that usually trumps every other reason.

I’ve mentioned my addiction to Google Maps before.  Recently, they’ve added 2 new features that are pretty neat.

First, in major downtown cities (for example San Francisco and Los Angeles), they’ve added 3D outlines of the buildings in the area.  It’s really quite neat, and offers a great way to orient yourself with landmarks when the satellite view offers sometimes too much info.

Second is the Terrain view.  I’ve wanted a topographical map for a while, and this one looks pretty sharp.

Love it!

I just purchased a file server.  Before I get into the specs, this is why I purchased it.

• I wanted a backup solution.  Taking a cue from Scott Hanselman (here and more recently here), I needed a Family Backup Strategy.  I really hate the idea of all of my personal information stored on a single hard drive that can fail at any time.  I’ve heard too many horror stories.  This backup server will be in addition to an off-site backup of my most important data (via Mozy).
• I wanted a central media server.  I’m playing around with Vista Media Center, and I really like it.  It’s every bit as good as Tivo, plus the flexibility of a full PC.  However, it’s currently limited to a single machine.  This is especially bad when I Tivo a show in the bedroom, but want to watch it in the living room.  I want a central server that contains all of my media, and have satellite clients spread throughout the house that can access that content.
• I wanted more hard drive space.  Nobody can have enough hard drive space.   Pictures, home movies, games, downloads …  it all adds up!  Plus, I wanted it in a centralized location so that everything can be accessed from one machine.

——–

I had a few options to weigh before purchase time.  The most important option had to do with the case:

• My initial thought was to go whole-hog and buy the rackmount case w/ redundant power supplies (for example here).  This is the ultimate piece-of-mind, both in terms of redundancy, and scalability.  Even if the power supply dies (which usually is the first to go), the second power supply will keep it going.  And with that many drive bays, it can handle upgrading whenever the need arises.
• I also considered the Dell approach.  Dell’s servers are way too expensive, and their desktop cases don’t have room for a RAID storage solution.  But I did vow to myself that I would never build a PC ever again.  It’s always easier to just get a Dell.
• My final choice was a regular PC case and build it from scratch.  I had to find a case that had enough drive bays, and not frustrate me completely when it came down to building it  (poorly designed cases usually makes building a PC the worst chore).

I choose building the PC from scratch.  I did this for two reasons.  The server will have to live in our bedroom for some time while I figure out how to make a server closet.  So a relatively quiet PC is preferred.  This rules out the rackmount.  Also, I’d prefer to keep the price down as much as possible.  I definitely don’t want to go cheap since reliability is my #1 concern, however the rackmount prices were starting to get excessive.

——–

How much storage should I buy?

This was an interesting excersize.  How do you balance the price versus how many terabytes do you need?  Notice I say the word “need”.  If it was how much I “want,” that’s a completely different question!  Probably the most important thing to note, is that with a RAID 5 setup, 6 x 500gb drives is both cheaper and offers more storage than 4 x 750gb drives (~$720 vs ~$850, Raid Calculator).  The trade off here is more physical drives equals more noise and more chance for failure.  And at the time of this writing, 1tb drives are just now appearing, and priced way above normal.

——–

Requirements

These were my own requirements for the file server that I created:

• Intel quad core
• Gigabit ethernet
• Dedicated RAID 5 card (no motherboard solutions)
• At least 4 drives
• Seperate boot drive

——–

Purchasing

I took a lot of ideas from Jeff Atwood’s series where he custom built Scott Hanselman’s PC.  This post has links to the entire series.  In fact, I really liked the case he chose.  It offered both relatively quiet operation, plus room for all the hard drives I wanted to put in it.  In fact, the main hard drive bay contained room for 4 drives in a little pull out cage.  So everything’s nice and together.  Neat!

For the RAID, I’m fond of 3Ware’s cards, and since the case can hold 4 drives (plus boot), I’m going with the 9650SE-4LPML.  I’ve heard too many horror stories about motherboard or software raid, etc.  I want reliability, and from what I can tell these cards are the ones to get.

——–

Here’s the entire parts list:

• (amazon) Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 quad-core
• (newegg) EVGA 122-CK-NF63-TR LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard
• (newegg) Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
• (newegg) BIOSTAR V8402GL26 GeForce 8400GS 256MB
• (newegg) Antec P182 Gun Metal Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
• (newegg) Antec True Power Trio TP3-550 ATX12V 550W Power Supply
• (newegg) Sony NEC Optiarc 18X DVD±R DVD Burner
• (newegg) Western Digital Raptor WD360ADFD 36GB 10,000 RPM
• (amazon) 3WARE Pci-e Sataraid  9650SE-4LPML
• (amazon) 4  x  Seagate Barracuda ST3750640AS 750GB 7200 RPM

——–

Putting it together was fairly easy.  Granted, it’s been years since I actually built my own PC.  Coding Horror’s step-by-step pictures were a lot of help.  It’s always nice to have someone show you how to do it, rather than blazing a trail yourself.  The typical stuff was always a pain …  installing the CPU heatsink, cable lengths that are almost too short, hooking up all the LEDs and USB headers to the motherboard, trying not to lose any motherboard screws underneath the motherboard, etc.  And all without accidently short circuiting or breaking off anything.

——–

Looking back at the purchase, I have a tinge of buyer’s remorse.  In the end, I got a really fast PC, with about 2.5tb of storage for about $2000+.   What’s the alternative here?  Well, the obvious thing is an external hard drive.   Yes, there are 2TB external hard drives available (essentially 2 x 1TB drives mashed together).  But, I wouldn’t trust this solution as a primary back up solution.  The drives themselves are just as reliable as the desktop counterparts.  However, I worry about the cheap controllers and connectors they attach too.  If that connector breaks, access to your data is no longer possible, even if the drive itself is working just fine.

But what about other solutions?  After buying the machine, I was wondering about buying *2* external hard drives.  2 x 2tb external hard drives is still cheaper than the machine I bought.  Wouldn’t the reliability concerns be moot, considering that the data is being copied to both external drives?  I suppose that I wouldn’t get anywhere near the performance throughput out of those external drives, plus I would still need a machine to plug them in to.  But I suppose it is a valid alternative, and probably one I should have considered.

Oh well, I can enjoy my server now.  Now, I just have to find a place to put it!