My Brother needs an external drive for his computer - I think Terrabyte cause he is housebound with medical problems and needs to store photos, videos, sound files and so on. Don't think he needs networking. Any recs? XP computer, 300 Gig hard disk, 2 gig Ram. Don't know processor, but that should give an indication of quality. About 3 years old.

I have had at least three of the WD external drives act up or go bad on me in the past 18 months. I only use them as scratch drives or when there is another layer of data redundancy involved. I have had better luck with Seagates but they are harder to get with the FW800 ports I use.

I'll be using a USB port, so that doesn't seem to be an issue. Sounds like I'm going back and getting the Seagate tomorrow. Thanks, Drew.

No kidding, ND. I've been holding out for dual USB/FW Seagate drives and they're not that easy to find anymore.

The Computer History Museum will be taking donations again in December.

Here's their wish list:

Wish List

Amstrad PenPad PDA 600
Cartridges for Nixdorf Computer LK-3000
Casio FX-780P
DataHand Professional II
Ergodex DX1 Keyboard with user-relocatable keys
Gophercon material
IBM 3270 Terminal with display and keyboard units
Kyocera Refalo
Lomak (Light Operated Mouse and Keyboard), Opdo Limited, New Zealand
Mentor Engineering Stryder mobile data computer
Minitel or videotex related advertising and marketing materials, i.e, magazine ads, video, shirts, etc.
Minitel or videotex related software, accessories, and hardware (EXCLUDING Minitel terminals)
Motorola Delivery Information Acquisition Device (DIAD) I used by UPS
MyTobii P10 non-target eye tracking system
Nokia Model 7110 WAP-enabled phone
ORBIT X-Y™ Ball Tracker
Prestel TV adapter box and telephone line
Texas Instruments Compact Computer 40 (CC-40), circa 1983
Thomson TO7 micro computer
Toshiba LC-836MN MEMO NOTE 30
TRS-80 PC-5 (this model only)
WebVan sign or banner
Xerox PARC ashtray or other ephemera from 1970s

ETA: I may have to visit my Mom's garage....

Another dumb graphic design type question-

If I am having a multipage booklet printed, do I do the print layout spreads or does my the guy doing the printing? It is my first time doing something that is not a trifold.

I'd ask the printer how he prefers it. Normally for something like 4 or 8 pages, I do spreads, but page by page for long things. He may charge to set it up in spreads or not. Each printer is an individual, fundamentally evil, entity.

Thank you Ginger. I just have to say I found that question impossible to google!

I'm looking into Blu Ray again. I want a player that plays all regions of DVDs, since a large part of my collection is international. I've found a list here, but what I can't tell is if any of those players actually don't suck.

What's the basic bottom line for a decent, forward looking Blu Ray player in terms of stats? And what's a reasonable cost? My TV is only 720p, so that's not a big deal.

Depends - any newish Blu-ray player will generally do fine for Blu-ray playing. You might want one with a little bit of built-in storage for fancy downloadable content things, though I've yet to use that feature myself. The main difference between low-end and high-end, near as I can tell, are video/audio quality things you're unlikely to be able to see and extra features: streaming options, video decoding capabilities, and built-in wireless. I use all of the last three, so I bought a high-end player (around $300 when I bought it, similar ones are closer to $200 now) but you should be able to go cheaper.

Basically, if you don't need the streaming decoding stuff, I'd grab the cheapest DVD player on that list that fits your region needs. If you can figure out how to unlock it yourself, I'd go ahead and buy one from newegg or whomever and then do it yourself, though, rather than paying markup though that company you linked to.