[KLUG Members] Re: New machine - Linux hardware?

[Jamie McCarthy]

adam@morrison-ind.com (Adam Tauno Williams) writes:

> Just look at the warranty.  My four Fujitsu drives all have a
> ***5 YEAR*** guarantee.  Nobody else has ever offered something
> like that.

You'll never use the guarantee, of course.  Drive prices fall so fast
that, 5 years later, it'll be cheaper to buy a new drive of the same
specs than to pay the shipping, and go through the hassle, to return
your old one.  That is, if you'll even be able to find such a small,
outdated drive.

The limit's typically around 2 years, actually... two years ago I
would have considered 9 GB to be a nice medium capacity hard drive
for a typical user's PC.  As of right now, Pricewatch.com doesn't
list any IDE drives smaller than 20 GB, and the price difference
from 20 to 30 GB is nine bucks.

Also, re backup, at this point the best backup solution for most
consumer-level stuff is just to buy a second hard drive.  With 60 GB
IDE drives starting under $150, you can't lose.  Decent tape drives
with a fraction of the capacity still start around $300 and involve
swapping tape after flaky tape.  Backing up to a hard drive is fast,
automatic, and verification is easy.
--
 Jamie McCarthy
 jamie@mccarthy.vg