[olug] New Linux User (long)

[Benjamin Watson]

Rather than ripping all of his CDs to his hard drive, he might think
of investing in a portable 2.5" USB drive.  I picked up an 80GB unit
at Best Buy about 6-8 months ago for $130.  The think I like about it
is:

1. It's capacity - 80GB
2. Completely USB powered
3. Small form factor (too big to wear around your neck, but will fit
in a pocket.

They had 160GB models with the same form factor.  At any rate, they're
much cheaper these days.  In fact, the one here:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8293937&st=simpletech&type=product&id=1172277307942

Is nearly the same model I have and is only $90.  Since then, I've
also purchased the 500GB model (which is basically a hard drive in a
case).

My point is, your friend could rip all of his music to this device and
carry it with him should his internal HD not be up to snuff.  The only
drawback is that it isn't self powered and has no built in MP3 player,
so it isn't quite the poor man's iPod.  However, being that your
friend is back in school, I'm sure he'll need to transfer files at
some point.

Ben

On 8/19/07, Luke -Jr <luke at dashjr.org> wrote:
> On Saturday 18 August 2007, Eric Penne wrote:
> > player.  HPLIP for the printer.  I told him the scanner probably
> > wouldn't work and that he'd be lucky if the printer itself worked.  I
>
> Actually, scanner support tends to be great, and most printers work.
> Unless you meant the hardware itself being dead...
>
> > He then asked about ripping his CD collection so I popped in one of
> > his CDs and realized mistake #2.  I had installed the MP3 decoder but
> > didn't install the MP3 compression.
>
> Why exactly would you need MP3 compression these days?
>
> > He was impressed with the system.  I showed him all of the programs
> > like OO.org, K3B, Amarok, DigiKam, Konqueror, Firefox, games, etc..
>
> OO.org I can understand for compatibility purposes, but Firefox really
> provides nothing but memory hogging ;)
>
> > I installed Kopete in case she develops the IM addiction.
>
> Psi is much nicer on the memory, and if there isn't a preexisting IM
> addiction, the standards-compliance requirement shouldn't be too painful.
>
> > He's thinking about buying an LCD monitor and wireless keyboard since he
> > didn't even spend $100 on the PC.
>
> Just a note... when I got my LCD monitor, the result was 2x the desktop
> space-- all of a sudden my memory usage almost doubled as well ;)
> Also, if he intends to be copying all his music to the HD, he might find he
> needs to upgrade that (not sure what size it already has).
> So it *might* be worth considering saving that extra cash a bit longer, just
> in case.
>
> > I told him that he has a computer much faster than anything I have.
> > My fastest PC is a P3 1GHz laptop.  He asked me how a geek like me
> > could get away with such an old PC.  I told him it was because of my
> > meager requirements (no gaming) and linux.  Sure I've added RAM (1GB)
> > to my desktop machine (Duron 700MHz) and a new video card (ATI 9600)
> > with hardware MPEG decompression to offload some of the work from the
> > processor but in the last 7 years with that desktop I've only put
> > about $100 into it.
>
> Indeed, my last upgrade was prompted by a motherboard dying, and that was 3 or
> 4 years ago. Since then, my only upgrade needs have been HD and RAM, plus a
> video card just for a few more FPS and future software upgradability (the
> 9200 drivers work great and max out the card, but the X850 drivers still have
> a long way to improve while still doing at least what the 9200 could).
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