Tell me about Network Attached Storage ( NAS )? In particular what current manufactuers should I avoid for a typical 1 terabyte (or greater) RAID array? I'm also interested in general information and pitfalls for NAS devices and implementations. [more inside]
posted by loquacious on Aug 10, 2008 - 13 answers

Can I extend the life of my aging Dell XPS desktop by means of a processor swap? Details within. [more inside]
posted by killdevil on Jun 5, 2008 - 13 answers

I regularly use ffmpeg to encode videos (from mpeg2 to mpeg4) for my ipod. I've been doing this for nearly a year with no problems. Now, every time I start an encode, my system is suddenly under a lot of pressure - I can't use any other application. If I go into the windows task manager and set the priority to 'below normal', all is fine again. Anyone have any idea why this change might have occured, or any idea how I can get around it (preferably without using task manager)? [more inside]
posted by ascullion on Jan 31, 2007 - 5 answers

If Valve's Steam means that games developers can do away with publisher, distributor and retailer overheads... um... why isn't everyone doing it, or similar things?
posted by Pretty_Generic on Nov 10, 2004 - 13 answers

I've been told the computer hardware industry is based on holding back the release of existing technologies so that people upgrade in small increments. Is this true? If so, wouldn't the first company to break the rule get a chance to dominate the market? Is there some kind of backroom deal going on?
posted by Pretty_Generic on Oct 11, 2004 - 9 answers