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chconline, I love your reviews and your setups, but where do you get all the money to buy the stuff you review? Like the DiNovo Edge keyboard that thing costs like $200 and adding up all the other stuff you've bought, it's like 1k+

@pdmcmahon - Nice setup for sure mate!

Question for you...have you ever had any issues with those external WD hard drives? I was thinking about grabbing one, but wanted to know your experience with them? Normally, I would just buy a case and HD and put one together myself.

Thanks! :)

John, that is very good job at hiding the wiring. Are you putting it all behind the dresser?

Yeah, except its a file drawer :p

img0069ch0.jpg

Everything is nice and twist tied together. The cable on the left is for my Ikea lamp, the middle thick one is for everything (Monitor, speakers, etc) the one on the right is for my G5 V2 mouse so it gets free movement.

Its quite convenient to use my network cable plugged into the network jack to guide the cables, lol :p

:yes: +1 on the wiring.

I also love the new chair, can you post a link? I always really like your setups and hardware reviews.

http://www.staples.ca/ENG/Catalog/cat_sku....;affixedcode=WW

It's called "Office Star Air Grid Manager's Chair". :)

chconline, I love your reviews and your setups, but where do you get all the money to buy the stuff you review? Like the DiNovo Edge keyboard that thing costs like $200 and adding up all the other stuff you've bought, it's like 1k+

Quite beyond 1k, but I don't need to pay for these things ;)

desk.JPG

Twin 3007WFP HC screens

Twin 2405FP screens

I've sold one of the smaller 24" LCDs and am using the other one now with my Inspiron 9300.

Desktop is an E6600 @ 3.2

2GB 4-4-12-4 Corsair DDR2 @ 966 or so

8800GTX

I have a few soundcards in the case - X-Fi Fatility for games, M-Audio 24/96 for music

Genelec 1030A studio monitors

Lots of synth gear to the right, but this is all about workstations and not funstations :p

Love your setup ahfunaki,

I get my matching lcd today for dual monitor setup, has been too long with an lcd and a crt :)

Oh, and make sure you use a program called ultramon, its great for dual monitor setups.

thanks, and yea I can't live without ultramon. definitely a must have for anyone who owns dual monitors...

@pdmcmahon - Nice setup for sure mate!

Question for you...have you ever had any issues with those external WD hard drives? I was thinking about grabbing one, but wanted to know your experience with them? Normally, I would just buy a case and HD and put one together myself.

Thanks! :)

You might laugh at how I have them set up, but yes, they work just fine.

Originally, I had 3 internal 250GB drives on each of my file servers. 750GB total. Now, I plug all 5 of these into my domain controller (pitched the file servers as I didn't need them anymore). So, now I share all 5 volumes across my entire LAN. My 3 Macs all mount them and my PCs map to them, all on startup/login. Even though they are USB 2.0 hard drives and not internal, I see no performance issues whatsoever. Obviously, if you were to just plug them in to your workstation directly, they would be even better.

My philosophy is to be redundant with everything. For example, from the left to the right, they are VOL1 through VOL6 (no VOL5 right now). VOL1 and VOL3 are exactly the same contents, pictures, software, etc. VOL2, VOL4 and VOL6 are all exact copies, they contain all of my complete album MP3 folders. I am not going to say how many I have, but I will say that they fit in 500GB drives quite well :)

Overall, they work just fine for what I need. The added bonus is that when no one is accessing the drives, they simply spin down after 10 minutes of inactivity. In other words, when I go to work, I don't need to shut the whole thing down. When I come home and I log in, the simple act of mapping/mounting the shares makes them wake up.

Here's my 'reverse Squeezebox':

img0075xj9.jpg

Old AMD Athlon 64 sitting behind the set.

img0078pn3.jpg

Yes, it will live next to the sub lol. Sound output is from my Creative Audigy 2 sound card, using digital out (S/PDIF passthrough for external decoder) to the receiver. Darn Creative and their 3.5mm jack outputs, it took me a while to find something that would convert 3.5mm to RCA jack. Well, I found them in my basement, so what the heck. Connected via a standard 75ohm digital coaxial cable to the receiver.

The ATI thing is the receiver for my Remote Wonder II remote control.

Why I call it a 'reverse squeezebox':

The Squeezebox can stream music from a fixed source to anywhere in your home. Well, in this case, the music is located in a fixed source and any computer in the home can instruct it to play :laugh: (Remote desktop -- connected to main home gigabit network).

BUT it can stream music from my NAS.

img0081kp6.jpg

lol 32" display, no complaints about size of the display of this media player :p

You might laugh at how I have them set up, but yes, they work just fine.

Originally, I had 3 internal 250GB drives on each of my file servers. 750GB total. Now, I plug all 5 of these into my domain controller (pitched the file servers as I didn't need them anymore). So, now I share all 5 volumes across my entire LAN. My 3 Macs all mount them and my PCs map to them, all on startup/login. Even though they are USB 2.0 hard drives and not internal, I see no performance issues whatsoever. Obviously, if you were to just plug them in to your workstation directly, they would be even better.

My philosophy is to be redundant with everything. For example, from the left to the right, they are VOL1 through VOL6 (no VOL5 right now). VOL1 and VOL3 are exactly the same contents, pictures, software, etc. VOL2, VOL4 and VOL6 are all exact copies, they contain all of my complete album MP3 folders. I am not going to say how many I have, but I will say that they fit in 500GB drives quite well :)

Overall, they work just fine for what I need. The added bonus is that when no one is accessing the drives, they simply spin down after 10 minutes of inactivity. In other words, when I go to work, I don't need to shut the whole thing down. When I come home and I log in, the simple act of mapping/mounting the shares makes them wake up.

Perfect...thanks a lot for the input! They really do sound like great ExHD's, even though at first when they arrived in stores, I didn't like them as much. :D

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