I view flash drives as cheap temporary storage, like floppy disks, not like archives. This is possibly because my last annoying data loss was a flash drive that went tits up.

It has been a long time since I evaluated relative reliability of the drives currently in use. It's been a while since I actually properly evaluated and compared.

For my work, we have to use TB drives for data transfer for some stuff. Our internet pipe ain't big or reliable enough (which is appalling in itself. But even when we hook into I2, fedexing drives is more reliable.)

For my cutover on the 27th, we have to copy maybe 1/2 a TB between servers in the same server room on the same VLAN, and apparently they've been doing at least a two step process involving a trip to the workstation connected via VPN until I started complaining that it can't possibly be the best way to do it.

It's not something that can be fixed by a drive--I was just reminded when transfer came up. But I am still perplexed at what people would settle for--we have 9 hours of allowed downtime a week, and that's 4 hours of watching a progress bar crawl, and all people were going to do was grumble.

IT'S A MOTHERFUCKING NETWORK ACCESSIBLE STORAGE DEVICE. BOTH FOLDERS, SAME NAS.

Jesus.

I wish I knew more about the Sprint network where I am -- I know people have issues with AT&T in our building. Any thoughts?

I used to have a Virgin phone and now have an iPhone with AT&T. I've generally been MUCH happier with AT&T than Sprint, and not just because the Virgin phone I had kept freezing up. I would regularly have problems receiving texts, whereas now I always get them quickly.

Hmm. Thanks.

With Virgin/Sprint, the only real data problem I sometimes have (when I have phone coverage) is sharing photos on Twitter. Otherwise, voicemail/text notification issues are similar to what I had with T-Mobile (which had the best coverage/reception at my place).

To me, that's a pretty non-essential problem when compared to how much more using AT&T/Verizon would cost.

And then, there's the general question of coverage in remoter areas, which IME seems best with Verizon, then AT&T.

So, yeah, there is a trade-off. If I needed to be in phone/data contact constantly for work, I would probably upgrade.

But right now for me the $600+ per year aren't worth it.

Thanks. Part of why I've resisted a smartphone is because I don't want to be in contact for work, so I'm not worried about that at all. (If they really wanted me in constant contact, they would buy me an iPhone.)

Well, my Tivo is completely dead. Earlier in the week it was able to stay on for about 20 minutes before crashing, now it doesn't even make it past the Powering Up screen.

Before I send it to Weaknees, does anyone have good things to say about Elgato EyeTV? I already have a Mac Mini plugged into the TV so I'm wondering if I can consolidate a bit.)

Tommy, did you download the Adobe products? I'm trying to work out if it's worth it. I have Elements 10 on two machines (bless that license, bless it to bits!), and a...PS6 or something on my PC...but I'm interested in giving some of the other apps a try on OS X Lion (Illustrator!) but if it's a lot of work for little return, enh.

Jessica, I live in fear of a dead TiVo. It's been doing odd things recently--not a lot, but enough to make me paranoid. Yes, the new models look lovely, but FUCKING LIFETIME ACCOUNT.

So, nervous. I wish you luck--I don't know anything about EyeTV.

I love Elgato EyeTV! It's awesomesauce, as far as I'm concerned. I use an HD Homerun to record QAM channels because there's no such thing as OTA reception here, and I've been very happy with the results. I'm on the free TVGuide listings subscription that came with my last hardware purchase, istr having some difficulty setting up season pass style recordings when I didn't have that, but with it everything I want to do is a piece of cake. It doesn't suggest shows I might like the way TiVo does, but that's the only functionality I can think of that it lacks.

Oh, and you can remotely view your recorded shows and (I think) live tv (I am sure about recorded shows as I have tested that) on iPhones or iPads (possibly other platforms, I have an all Apple ecosystem at the moment so I don't know) streaming over the internet without having to download or export to iTunes or anything. Burning to DVD requires Toast, I believe, but is easy. And you can convert recordings to iPod friendly format. Blah blah blah - I really like it.