I mentioned a couple of weeks ago about my evolving digital lifestyle technology requirements. My current PC is a four years+ old 1.2GHz job, with a 2001 vintage graphics card and about 100GB of hard disk space over three disks and all the usual DVD writer gubbins. But the firewire card is not working as it should and it's only super slow USB 1.0 and so on and so forth.
The older it gets, the more fearful I am of the whole lot getting tubed and my personal digital assets going down with it, not helped by the strange noises and groans it develops from time to time.
So, I've got all my MP3 collection and 9 gigs of digital photos backed up onto my iPod. Which is better than nothing but I could easily lose the iPod while I'm out and about. The new PowerBook only has a 60GB disk and whilst it can certainly hold a further backup of everything I really need, I'm sure it'll finally start to complain whenever my blob like personal media needs get too uppity for it to handle.
So, as I said I need a form of digital lifestyle server but having just divested myself of all Windows interests for day to day home use in favour of the Mac, the prospect of buying a Windows PC just to use it as a server seems incongrous not to mention pricey. The cheapest suitably specced Dell server comes in at about £500-£600 minus lots of glamour spec items.
And the Power Macs are just too bloody expensive, particularly compounded by the fact that I rarely sit anchored to a desk at home, preferring to use the PowerBook wherever and whenever it suits me.
So, I've specified myself a compromise solution and purchased a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device in the form of a Buffalo LinkStation which consists of a 250GB disk in a standalone box with an ethernet socket and USB printer sharing all in one.
Meaning my WiFi home network now has 250GB of always on storage with automatic scheduled backups, disposing of the need to have the old PC switched on just to be able to access its disks, and I can wait another few months for either the price of the PowerMacs to drop or for a more suitable WiFi server cube product to appear. Probably a G5 spec Mac Mini with better gfx an storage than the Mac Mini version 1.0 spec which I'll wager will show up at the back end of this year, early next.
Plus if I wanted to, I could fit the whole shebang inside a shoebox somewhere out of sight in our home, freeing up the traditional home office desk space.
A postmodern reality dripping with fantastically recursive, circular irony given that 25 years ago, most of our old hard copy family photos would have been sitting inside the self same shoebox.