Not that the concept is new, but the dropping of the price point is welcome.

Yeah, that is cheap. I paid about $79 (I think) for the same thing, except it has the enclosure. (Also, Firewire, but USB was the same price.)

I believe it is indeed powered by the USB connection.

However, even since 1.0 USB there have been people making lights to run off USB. Notebook hard drives are fairly low in power consumption, so I can see that as acceptable.

Yeah, that is cheap. I paid about $79 (I think) for the same thing, except it has the enclosure. (Also, Firewire, but USB was the same price.)

I like the enclosureless design, because it makes the task at hand quicker. If I wanted to enclose it, it wouldn't take much, tho.

But for short term use? It would be quite handy. Easily transportable from site to site.

Quick question about DVD-Rs. You can use them like a huge-ass storage device for any ole types of files, instead of for burning DVD-format movies, right? I have all these avi-files that I've bit-torrented that's taking up room on my hard drive, but some of them are too big for a 700MB CD-R and I'm too lazy (and also not in possession of a DVD-writer) to learn to convert them and burn them as DVD. Can I just write a bunch them as regular data files onto a single DVD-R (which I understand can hold 4GB+ data)?

You can use them like a huge-ass storage device for any ole types of files, instead of for burning DVD-format movies, right?

Yes.

Can I just write a bunch them as regular data files onto a single DVD-R (which I understand can hold 4GB+ data)?

The dual-layer blank DVDs can hold almost 8GB. We just got a dual layer burner at work, but I haven't had a chance to play with it yet. Huh, I could back up my entire mp3 collection onto 4 DVDs.

If you don't have a DVD writer, you can't burn DVD-Rs, though.

You can't just stick a blank DVD in a CD burner.

Oops, I missed the part about not having a DVD burner.

If you don't have a DVD writer, you can't burn DVD-Rs, though.

D'oh! I am DUMB.

::grumbles:: I don't want to have to get a DVD-writer! The external ones (since I've only got a laptop) are pricey, yo.

Am I missing something here, or is MS dumb?

If I have Auto Arrange on, when I drop something onto my desktop in XP, they're arranged up to down, left to right. Yet, if I hit SHIFT and click to select a range of icons, they're selected left to right, up to down. Which means I almost tried to e-mail putty.exe to work, which wouldn't have gone over well -- I'd have lost the two scanned images I'd put there to the vagaries of our e-mail filters.

Why would they change that behaviour? W2K selects like it auto arranges. Can I change XP back?

Anyone used this [link] (it's the iTalk Voice Recorder that plugs into an iPod)? Any idea what the sound quality and recording level would be? (Quality wouldn't have to be that great if it's just used for voice.) Any other solutions for recording audio with a mic into an iPod?