I just went out and picked up a iH19B. It's a pretty cool idea, but it's heavy and kludgy. I mean I guess it's portable, but it weighs about 5lbs (w/o batteries) and is about 3x3x8 inches. The sound quality is pretty good for something this size with only 2 speakers. It would be nice if they'd had separate tweeters and midrange/woofer to get a bit better range, but that might have put it out of their target pricepoint. If the speakers aren't pointing directly at you, all of the highs are gone due to the depth of the cones.

One thing that is really annoying is that the iPod doesn't sit in the thing nicely, like the photos show -- it sits really awkwardly unless the iPod is tucked inside and the case is zipped up. It would be nice if there were some way to mount the iPod on the outside or to have it sit flat so that you could control more than just volume, play/pause, and forward/back.

The build quality feels pretty solid for the most part. But the zipper strap is not removable, and seems like it might have problems with breaking after a few months of hard use. I've not tried mounting it to anything to see if that feature works well.

Overall I'd give it about a 7.5/10. I was looking for something a bit more portable and allowing easier iPod use. But this is still a pretty good product.

iTunes 7 has been installing for over an hour. Anybody else having this problem? It's kind of funny to watch it go through its "Verifying Install" process so slowly. I've got no songs on my laptop anyway, just wanted to play while I'm at work.

I've been saving up for a good NAS and weighing my options. I decided to just roll my own. Now this won't be the best option for everybody, but I'm going to get a CoolerMaster Stacker (or ThermalTake Armor) case (go check them out on New Egg, they've got room for like 15 drives!), 2 4xSATA RAID cards, 8x400GB (320GB has a better pricepoint now, hopefully the 400GB guys will come down soon), and the rest will be older stuff that I've got laying around. Run the drives in RAID-5 (either 2 logical drives or maybe just 1) for redundancy. Yes, software RAID is slow as balls, but it's only going to serve 1 or maybe 2 people, so that should be alright.

I'll probably run NAS Lite, FreeNAS, or FreeBSD+vinum if I'm feeling adventurous. I might go with Windows Server 2003, because I have a legit copy of it, but you can use XP and get software RAID-5 out of it (google for it on tomshardware.com) if you want to go that route. Each of these can run the requested Apache/PHP/MySQL.

Big Bucks and No Whammies...STOP!

Big bucks and no whammies...STOP!

I'd love to get one of these, but can't find anyplace that sells them online besides Future Shop. Costco makes no mention of them. microcenter.com doesn't seem to have the Viewsonic 32" either.

big bucks and no whammies....STOP

Some of these are Roman names, not Greek. Here's a Greek to Roman translation:

Odysseus: Ulysses
Aphrodite: Venus
Hermes: (no Roman name)
Eros: Cupid

Open either of the pics in a text editor. You'll see "JFIF
 d d ?Ducky
 < ?Adobe" right there at the beginning. That's the tag that Photoshop (and other Adobe programs) use to identify that they are the image creator. To me, this says it's fake.

Grab one of the images and rename it to a .txt file. Now open it. See the "JFIF
 d d ?Ducky
 < ?Adobe" in there? This tag says that it was an image CREATED by an Adobe product. To me, this says it's faked, but everybody is entitled to their own opinions.