http://disqus.com/by/sokalski/enThu, 07 Jun 2012 14:20:28 -0000http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/sales-of-amazons-kindle-fire-plunged-80-percent-in-the-first-quarter-while-apples-ipad-thrived-195054#comment-550085766<p>I thought about the Kindle Fire after my wife got one and she likes it.  But, it lacked memory capability, screen size, speed, and GPS capabilities.  So, I checked out the new iPad but rejected it because of price (32 GB base) and Apple's proprietary designs.  The Samsung Galaxy Tab II 10.1 was a good alternative but closer inspection revealed no GPS capabilities, weak camera, limited memory, and OK processor.  I then checked out the ASUS Transformer Pad TF300T and for about the same price as the Samsung tablet it provided up to 64 GB of memory (32 GB + 32 GB SDHC card), GPS capabilities, an 8 Mb pixel camera, micro HDMI output, Quad Tegra processor.  An extra $132 gets an ASUS keyboard another 32 GB of memory (HDHC card), more time with batteries, and a USB2 port.  Plus, they are ICS systems with the more open system OS capabilities. </p><p>I bought the ASUS TF300T to complement my ASUS G74SX-AH71 which I use for video editing on the road (Adobe CS6 Production Premium).  The TF300T will give Google maps and earth views for camping and navigating my RV, reservation info, e-mail, etc. without having to leave the drivers seat for the computer work station.</p>sokalskiThu, 07 Jun 2012 14:20:28 -0000http://svconline.com/connectedhome/features/coming_home_part_13_105/#comment-4930266<p>Can you disable Home Server's disk management and use different raid controllers and arrays for certain types of files? If so how is it done?</p><p>I have Win 2000 Server set up on a Supermicro X5DA8 system board with dual Xeon 2.8 processors, 3 GB ram, and 26 drives and am interested in Home Server if I can control where and how files are stored on the server. The system supports 26 drives on 3 drive controllers: an AIC-7902 dual channel Ultra SCSI 320, a 3Ware 7506-12, and an Areca ARC-1120. A good amount of tweeking has resulted in good server performance.</p><p>The 7902 supports a pair of Seagate 15K rpm, 73 GB Cheetah drives in software Raid-1 (110 MB/s avg. read) as the boot drives , and 4 Seagate 10K rpm, 37 GB Cheetah drives in software Raid-0 (240 MB/s avg. read) as swap, temp, utility drives. The 7506-12 supports 6 WD 500 GB AAKS drives in a Raid-5 array (56 MB/s avg read) for general computer systems backups, and 6 IBM 180 GB drives in a Raid-1 array (90 MB/s avg. read) for storing Internet downloads, and backup copies of system setup and software installation CD and DVDs. The ARC-1120 supports 8 Samsung 1,000 GB SATA-II drives in a Raid-5 array (306 MB/s avg. read) for multi-media, ripped CD and DVDs, home videos, music, and pictures. As you can see keeping multi-media on the fastest array is important. In addition, all data is protected by the raid 1 and 5 arrays.</p><p>Some of Home Server's wizards seem desirable, but can it be installed on this system as a dual boot with the Win 2000 Server, and be trusted to keep the current drive and data type setup. That way I could back up each booting OS for disaster recovery if the system suffered a catostrophic failure. I cannot imagine how Home Server's dumbed-down install which reformats everything and then uses what appears to be a JABOD raid-1 approach to file storage could give better performance and data security than I have now.</p><p>Thank you! </p>sokalskiTue, 06 Jan 2009 02:40:52 -0000