Boring update:

Running for 13 hours...it's at 28%

Lawdy. Time for bed.

Quick question. Monitor seems to be on fritz. It gives a signal or even sometime shows what is on the computer for a about a minute. Then fades to white. Can't get the menu to come on (or maybe I can, and just can't see for the all the blinding white).

17 inch proview PL1716s 700P. All troubleshooting suggestions in the manual start by calling for invoking the menu. Any suggestions for self-fixes? What are the odds a repair shop can fix it?

In my experience, monitors are kind of break-em-and-done deal. I've replaced laptop monitors before, but even that has required taking out the whole screen and sliding in a new one. With external monitors, it was always the policy for my department to send them back to the manufacturer, because if one thing went wrong, the whole thing was useless. You can take it to a repair shop, but unless it's under warranty it would probably be cost and time effective to just get a new one. However, there might be resetting options available I don't know about, so you might want to ring up the manufacturer before you replace it. Generally, though (IME) if something's gone schitzy with the monitor, it means something is broken, and you might as well replace it.

That said--it might be a cable issue. If the cable is bent, and one of the interior wires is fritzed, it could cause the problem you're talking about. If the cable is detachable from the monitor itself, I'd try replacing that first. Alternatively, it might be the power source, which should also be more easily replaced.

So my external hard drive is beginning to creak--I'm very close to maxing out its space, and as I continue to purchase new music and so forth, that's just not going away.

Anyone have any recommendations for a reliable external hard drive with plenty of space? I'm on a Dell laptop about 2 years old...

People tend to have their preferences wrt hard drives, but you can't go wrong with seagate.

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Western Digital is pretty stable and secure, too. Of course, it depends on whether you're looking for something more portable or something that's going to sit on your desk. I have two portable drives I've been very happy with, from two different manufacturers, that I got because of their size and not their relatively stability/security. What's your priority, Suela?

I don't need them to be that portable, really--I mostly use the external drive for backup and for my music (and some video files).

We were just looking at external hard drives yesterday. The one thing I noticed was that Seagate ones had something like a five-year warranty, whereas most other brands only had one year.

Five years is pretty tempting, I have to say!

I've always been very happy with Seagate drives. That said, if it is just for extra storage, I picked up a 500 GB USB 2.0 made by Buffalo (The mechanism is a 7200 RPM Samsung) for $119 at Fry's Electronics.

I want a terabyte drive. Just because it sounds so sci-fi. (I think there was a ST:TNG episode where Data's memory was described in terms of terabytes.) Plus maybe it will bring back the naive feeling that many of us got when we got our first hard drive: "This thing is so big - I'm never gonna fill this puppy up!"

Or maybe we've all learned our lessons and that naive feeling ain't ever coming back....