I am a semipro photographer. One raw picture is >20M, and I tend to take between 500 and 2000 pictures for an event.

I keep all pictures. All of them. With the usual exceptions of the black ones or a very blurry ceiling.

My computer is also a laptop. I removed the useless DVD drive to host a second hard drive, only for the pictures. That gives me 750gb for pics.

I also have a 2TB external hard drive, and a general backup 4TB drive.

The workflow I use is as follows:
- I put all my pictures on my computer.
- Once transferred, I plug and copy all the new pictures on my 2TB, never removing anything from there, only adding.
- I then process the pictures, adjust them, do whatever needs to be done. I sort them in 3 buckets (deleted, meh, good).
- I copy the working copies for the good ones to the 2TB also.
- I delete the deleted/meh from my laptop, only keeping the good ones.
- I do a general incremental rsync backup of my laptop to my 4TB.

For me that's enough protection, I always have my "good" pictures with me on my laptop, and have access to everything else on my dump drive.

For fires and burglars, I also have a second encrypted 2TB at work. I can safely recreate everything else from that part...

So far it has served me well, and I haven't lost anything. I've been burned badly in the past after crashing a HD while doing a backup, and having 6 HDD failing me in the same year (yeah, lan partys will do that to your gear) so I am very anal about my data.

I agree. I had to update eventually to get the latest PSN stuff... it took me 2 months before updating, in that time, I purchased a 360 and I bought most games I missed on the 360. Lost revenue. Now I got the choice and they just lost the equivalent of 50% of their revenues from me.

I am a game programmer, I code as a living, in fact I own part of a successful gaming company. I wanted to stay up front to PS3 development and have fun with it, to see what I could do with it (even with their stupid ganked environment). Now I can't ...

Then, the key, they kill its import rights ... now everyone and their moms can unlock them, with game loaders and stuff... Won't take long before emulation will be perfect and undetectable. Sorry for not losing sleep over that. Sympathy level = 0%.

I don't condone piracy, I never did and never will, I gain most of my pay because gamers purchase my games. But when companies are doing jackasses of themselves and are evil to their purchasers, I have no sympathy. Same that I don't have sympathy for RIAA/MPAA.

1 - If they were all open about their efforts on a day-to-day basis, the other companies would simply copy them, make a 90% "good enough" version just before them and then Apple would simply lose their creative edge.
2 - They have marketing campaigns to make us WANT a new product. Meaning gaining momentum until the product actually ships.
3 - All companies are doing that. Only because Apple is successful in making campaigns doesn't mean the other companies aren't doing it themselves. -- and if it was more profitable in advertising in advance, they'd certainly do it. Like they did for many Mac OS X releases. And yes, the latest Google Phone was also tight lipped ... the latest Palm was tight lipped ... and the developer in his basement developing the latest revolution in whatever he is doing is also (usually) tight lipped about his project.

I mean, it's business management 101.

I'll drink to that. At home, got a laptop, no other displays. At work, got one laptop, with one external display (req'd to do any kind of coding) and since I code console games, I have a HDTV screen on the side too, making it 3.

I am using IMAP from my various e-mail providers, including gmail, dreamhost, and other, depending on where the mails come from. Some are company-related, some are personal, some are from projects. I long gave up hosting my own email server when everyone is happy providing that service for either free or a small price.

But if he wants IMAP, he can still get any old netbook and install whatever he wants, like I said in the 2 other possibilities. Only telling it's USUALLY useless to host its own everything.

We went from having 2 computers with a server and a laptop to having 2 laptops, a base station and no cables. With today's 1TB 2.5 HDD and easy sharing through wireless N, it's relatively simple, efficient and in the past 3 years, we saved a crapload of money since we don't even come near a 500W power supply recent towers (nearly) require. When we wish to have access to our data from home without our computers, we leave them open and they are shared through our router. Otherwise, we have our computer with us, so we don't need to connect to them ;)

However, for your question, most vendors have small busyboxes with potential to plug a 2.5" USB-powerede external HDD, with hacking potential for more. If you want more (as you advertise), go to your local cheap used hardware store, get a netbook someone got tired of, and put additional HD. It should solve your problem.

I personally am very vocal about my hate of purchased anti-viruses for end users.

Most of the home user computers I've seen use some kind of outdated anti-virus technology that wasn't updated in ages. They purchase the computer, they got a 90 days free AV deal, then weeks before it ends up, they are asked to subscribe to this crap for some kind of amount, they say "later", next reboot "later", next reboot "later", next reboot GAAAH "never! there!", and they are stuck with that piece of crap that slows down their computer than gives them a false impression of security "because they got Norton installed", even if they totally forgot they even had to subscribe.

Even worse are the computers with some outdated version of the software that isn't even updated anymore, like they got this 3 year old version of (example) Symantec they purchased, asked for the year update, then got a message about that brand new (shiny) version with more features. They said no because they aren't doing anything fancy with their computers. Now they are stuck with some 3 year old solution that isn't updated anymore. How appropriate.

So my suggestion for all the computer users: don't use a bundled anti-virus unless you get explained what's the deal pay their due diligence everytime they are asking for it. Then, they are very good (usually vastly superior) products. -- Instead, use some free anti-virus, like AVG, that will automatically update everyday, and won't become outdated, and you won't have a popup message asking for money or else... Use spybot for the lesser evils. There, you are free of pains.

I will have to agree with you. My friend has a company branch there, and at first, all computers came with all illegal software, although the invoices were saying it came with Windows, it was a pirated version that couldn't even software update (talk about a bad hack :) ).

My friend had to go to the store, ask for "real" Windows, he got told multiple times it was real, it's not a copy, no one here never sold any "official and legal" Windows. They finally agreed to (get this) order 5 copies, that took 2 weeks to receive, and finally he got his real Windows.

That's the tip of the iceberg. Untold hardware changes ("But I asked for this", "this is the same" or "this is better"), specific requests for legal versions getting preinstalled cracked versions, and so on.

You know what, we're frowning today at this practice, but in Windows 3.1 times, it was always like this in here too, and that's not too far away. When you purchased a computer, you seldom had any official version of your software. Everyone I knew had some Autocad version dangling around (why, I dunno!), and the hardware was (and sometimes still is) a black box of arcane things.