EnglishBob: Heh,  speak up there sonny. ;)

Actually, my hearing is pretty good.  Probably because I play a mix of classical and electric and only play the latter loud on ocassion.  But I do like my music loud.

Penguinisto: I agree that tapes have a longer (or more determinate) data retention.  But I have never liked them.  Probably great for a business where you have to back up 100's of GB or several TB a week or month, but for home use, I'd rather have quick access, less chance of corruption, and simple transport.  And remember that my CD/DVD case has everything - can't install all of your software from a tape backup.  There should only be one thing to grab in a fire - not a turkey shoot for disparate stuff scattered about.  Computer hardware can be replaced easily - software and data is priceless (or about $30K plus gone-forever). ;)

I don't mind external drives, but keep two (mirrors) and keep two.  Any more and it starts to be a warehouse (I have four already and would rather have two - one is for quick transfers of data between systems).  We're getting close to 1TB drives, but you'll pay good money for it now - just like Blu-Ray tech.  The data sizes are definitely outstripping the storage capacities.  Software now comes on DVD.  I just installed a 320GB drive for my data and it's already half filled - that's with stuff off-loaded to DVD and external drives as well as three other drives in the system!

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, you blow your whole leg off.

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

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