How many hard drives makes too many hard drives?

Let me start off with one fact: I love my Mac Mini.

Let me add in another fact: I don’t think it’s perfect.

As a college student I am subjected to an insane amount and insanely tiny apartments. The Mini fits me well for many things, and I wouldn’t change it to a G5 or iMac for anything. However, it has draw backs that range from irritating to it needing to die.

My main issue is the lack of USB ports. Oh, another fact to throw on the table: Apple? I hate you for removing firewire support on the 5G iPods. The Mini is great as a basic little student computer, and I can deal with the lag when I open up Illustrator and Photoshop together. What makes me wish that I had a bigger computer? I’m a media packrat. Music, movies, photos, fansubs, you name it. My mini only has an 80GB hard drive which is barely enough memory for all my apps and my music. I have no room for all my video to be kept on it.

When I opened up the stats widget I had to laugh when I saw this and just had to laugh.

So I have to ask: how many hard drives does it take to count as too many hard drives?

Added bonus, my pathetic setup.

helpful google response

Since I seem to be getting various “pioneer how to activate AUX on” searches, I feel the need to answer this right quick.  At least on my pioneer head unit (DEHP6800MP) activating the aux feature is a little odd.  What the manual leaves out is that in order to get to that menu you have to go into demo mode, then follow the directions it lists.  That should solve your problems.

Google answer session 10/20/06

Yup, another google answer session!

pioneer ipod controller sucks
Well, I wouldn’t say it sucks, but you do have a point that it could be better.

“you got me”
Boo!!!!!!

how to take off a ipod faceplate
My dear, iPods do not have faceplates, they have….the thing that is the front of the player. Your search should have been “how to open ipod” and the answer would be “guitar pick”, or at least back in the day it was. The mini (and I guess the new nanos) are a bit sketchy to open…so ya. Either way, iPods do not have faceplates. *ahem* IPODS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!!!!111!!

send photo cingular cripple motorola
You might assume that cingular crippled moto phones for this feature, but nay, it is simply a bit cracked out to figure out how to do. Reference your manual, you basically have to use the ‘copy’ function.

iPod Integration for Volkswagen jetta
AVOID!!! It’s all about the aftermarket baby.

iRiver Clix

In the history of electronics there have always been products that people fall in love with as soon as people see them.  The iRiver Clix series has always been one of those.  Now, iRiver hasn’t impressed me much with their other models, but the Clix series took the concept of a PMP in a new direction.  Design has always had to balance usability with screen and beauty, and the Clix solved this dilemma in such an amazing and simple way.

iRiver continues to taunt us with these products.  The only problem:  to every product, no matter its greatness, there is a catch.  The catch with the Clix series has always been the storage:price ratio.  Too little storage for too much of a price.  The other drawback?  A PMP simple does not work well with 512mb of storage.  Even low end conversions for movies range around 300mb.

Hopefully iRiver can solve their ratio problems with this player.  4GB is a very good storage size.  I don’t see anyone actually watching full length movies on this, but for short clips and a good sized music library it is a good size.  I’m only hoping that their price point can stay competitive so that this model series can take off.

Clix homepage

SanDisk, how did we miss that you didn’t suck before?

http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/01/sandisk-intros-sansa-c200-player/

Ok, look at this player. It’s freaking pretty. Seriously, I haven’t used this player, and the navi is a potential tweak-producer, but you have to fall in love with this player as soon as you see it.

When did SanDisk become a player? They had a really good thing going while offering some of the cheapest players out there, but amazingly they’re drawing out the standard for cheap players. No longer must we simply accept what they give us, cheapies have a choice now!

TiVo: Best friend, worst enemy.

The bane of academia is television–well, unless you’re studying technology and society (^_^). Any undergrad will tell you that zoning out and forgetting all of that expensive education in front of the tube is the best thing ever. However, along with college comes study groups, cramming at the library, running out to the store at 1am for toilet paper, etc. This chaos doesn’t always compute with living by the television schedule. Seriously. I have no idea when I will be going to bed tomorrow, if I’ll be in the library, or if I have to run home to save a lizard or family member. There is no way I could possibly plan my schedule and 100% of the time to make sure I catch everything (rerun Lost you bastards!). The other problem: crazy time-slots. There’s no way I’m staying up until 2am to watch a 15 minute cartoon show. Some might, but I’d question their academic standing.

All in all, a college’s student life truly requires something that breaks them from the dependence on the TV schedule. TiVo has done this by recording everything for you and saving it until chaos settles a bit. On thursday nights, for example, I am now free to go out with friends or go to the library to write papers instead of sitting around and watching my usual night-o-drama. True, there is the VCR, but why deal with that when you can fully automate your entertainment institutions!

This freedom created by TiVo is wonderful, but it doesn’t solve one very big problem: you’re still watching TV. TV sucks time away, and college students generally need as much time as they can get in a day to get everything done. Yes, chill time is just as important as productive time (don’t believe me? talk to someone who doesn’t get chill time), but it can be hard to place chill time in a slot that does not interfere with productive time when there are so many things to watch just at your fingertip (err, thumb that is)!

This being said, I still wouldn’t give up my TiVo. TiVo does not alleviate the need for responsible viewing, but allows you the freedom to go about your business and forget all about TV for a few nights.

New Yorker picture mishap

The complete New Yorker, available on DVD or external hard drive.

Interesting? Not really. Not unless you see the firewire cable in the picture and see that the specs says USB 2.0.

Apple: kiss your ass goodbye cause SanDisk’s got ya

http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/afx/2006/08/21/afx2961842.html

An 8gb player for $250? No, this isn’t even part of their cheap-ass M series, this is a full out E series with video/radio/recording/etc.  Meanwhile, where the hell is Creative in this?  A year ago they were gung-ho to take Apple down and SanDisk was just the player you got because you couldn’t afford anything else.  Creative hasn’t really moved anything new, but SanDisk has really started to put the heat on by actually making players decent enough that not even I can sell the ipod over them.

Apple, my friend, if you ignore this you will lose this battle. I’m glad to see this competition finally start to take off. Your move Apple.

Need ram? You can actually find it now.

Kingston RAM finder via Gizmodo

Can I please give a big shout out to “Where the hell has this been all my life?!?!”?

Okay, now that that’s done, I can move on to telling you that you soul has just been saved by the vast l33tness of the internets.

Seriously, the only way they could make this better was to make it a chart wheel you spin around on the back of the RAM boxes.

Wireless age my butt

So I’m moving in two days, and I always pack up my comptuer stuff first so as nothing gets lost.  My last few moves I had a whole bunch of random boxes of computer stuff but as I moved I found that the boxes migrated around thus causing much chaos and chord loss.

This time I just got one long tub thing that’s meant for rolling under a bed frame or such.  Pretty much everything fit in around my monitor.  Yay!  Don’t worry, the 2405fpw is in there upside down on top of a very squishy towel.