Day One – 02/06/2012: Got the TF101 and charged it for a while using the included charger brick and official power cord (which is WAY too short by the way, exactly why they think 2.5′ is long enough to be of ANY use I have no idea. Perhaps in Taiwan everybody sits on the floor right next to their outlets if they want to use a tablet while it charges). I then began to use it and was quite pleased. My apps installed fine, was able to get a decent video player on there, configure my user settings, and get it to sync with my gmail account (which my Android phone syncs with as well) all incredibly easily. As I needed to go to work soon I turned on Pandora and left it playing music for a while and left it in my room to go take a shower. When I returned it had locked up. No biggie I figure, I held down the power button for ten seconds and then it powered off. From this point forward it never turned on again. By this I do not mean that it’d try to boot and lock, I mean that it was a $400 brick best suited as a pretty looking paperweight.

I did an extreme amount of research on various sites, XDA-Developers being the most helpful. Nothing helped. I left it plugged in to the charger overnight and tried again in the morning. No luck.

At this point I sent an email to ASUS via their support site, which I was informed that I should get a response within 24-48 hours. The response came two weeks later with a canned response telling me to try a few of the various things I had already researched for myself. No matter, by that time I had called the ASUS support line at 888-678-3688 and the rep set me up with an RMA. I then packed up my fancy new tablet and paid something like $20.00 to FedEx it to them.

RMA # USG7220567

Day Nineteen – 02/25/2012: Received the Transformer back along with the charging brick and the all-too-short power cord I mentioned earlier. Charged it for a little while once again and powered it on. The Android 4.0 ICS update had come out for the TF101 by this time, so I applied it. Again I did a factory wipe just to be on the safe side, played with it for a while, and then reinstalled my apps, rearranged my icons in the fashion I like, copied a couple movies on to it, and took it to work with me. As I was at work it became more and more difficult to power up from the lock screen and I had to keep holding down the power button for ten seconds in order to get it to fully shut down and then boot it back up. After perhaps an hour of this it once again would not turn on. After I got home I charged it more (yet again) and was able to get it to turn on once using the power button + volume down combo. I elected to have it factory wiped once more. It booted up once, but as soon as the display turned off after not continually using it it never powered on again regardless of what I tried.

And so again I called ASUS support. I explained that I wasn’t terribly happy that they sent the tablet back without apparently doing anything to it (aside from perhaps some voodoo that reanimated its corpse for a short while). This time around I got the rep to pay for the shipping back to the Grapevine, TX repair center and was assured that this fix would be expedited. I filled out the RMA form I was sent in painstaking detail, repackaged it, and dropped it off at FedEx for the second time.

The tablet arrived at their facility on 2/29/12, and apparently evaporated for a couple of weeks. I was not able to check the status of the RMA via ASUS’s service site like I was the first time around. I finally got notice that it was being worked on on on 3/13/12. Notice that it was being shipped back was rec’d on 3/15.

Ah, as a rather random side note, here’s a notice I got during my first two RMAs:

Dear Valued customer,

FYI

Rma No=USG7222976 was issued for SN: B7OKAS012612 Model TF101 but we received SN: B6OKAS247032 model TF101 instead.

We will process SN: B6OKAS247032 model TF101 received under this RMA
Thank you,
Ritendra P.
ASUS Product Support

I haven’t a CLUE where they got the B7OKAS012612 serial number from. I never provided it to them, since it’s most definitely NOT the serial # on my tablet, nor is it close enough to be a typo.

RMA # USG7222976 – Here’s a link to my rather detailed RMA form I sent in for round two.

Day Forty-Four – 03/21/2012: So today, 3/21/12 (after ASUS having my “expedited” RMA for three full weeks) I received the package. Yet again, charged, factory reset, applied the update that was apparently released on 3/20, and played with it for a while. This time around I was actually fooled in to thinking that it was going to keep working. It would come out of the lock screen fine with a quick tap of the power button and was running splendidly. Oh how foolish I was. I left the house for around 30 minutes for a quick run to the store and left no apps running on the tablet while I was gone. Got back, picked up the Transformer, and of course it no longer would power on. For what seemed like the 50th time I went though all the usual steps by holding the power button down for 1, 3, 5, 10, 30 seconds, then the power + volume down button for 30 seconds. And again no response.

So – what did I do? Called ASUS support for the third time of course. I was as nice to the rep as I could be considering how livid I am and was basically told “too bad, so sad, send it in again. There’s nothing we can do”. I told him I’d like to speak to a supervisor. His response was that all supervisors were busy but one could call me back. “Fine” I said, “About when can I expect a call back?” – The answer? In 24-48 HOURS. Maybe less. If I’m lucky. I told him I’d hold.

The supervisor finally came on the line and gave me all the same platitudes. I demanded that they cross-ship me a FUNCTIONING tablet as I have no interest in waiting another three weeks to hopefully get a tablet that actually works since they obviously hire monkeys in the Grapevine, TX location. I was again told this isn’t an option and that it’d have to be sent in again. I told him I wanted overnight shipping to the facility, the repair expedited (and actually fixed this time), and then overnighted back to me. Again, I was told this is not an option. So – my only recourse is to ship it back to them yet again, wait another few weeks, and simply cross my fingers that they actually fix the fucking thing this time. I really would like to use it for more than 30 minutes at a time before playing more FedEx tag with these idiots.

Worst. Customer. Service. EVER.

RMA # USG7233081 – So here we go for round three. I will, once again, be extremely detailed in my writeup on their RMA form and probably include this rant along with it. I’ve been a loyal user of ASUS motherboards for 15 years now, but will most definitely be switching to eVGA for pretty much everything from now on. Maybe they’ll start making tablets…

Linux Mint focuses on usability, not unlike Ubuntu – which it is based on. They share the same codebase and overall software selection.

What sets Linux Mint apart, is it’s elegant, well thought-out interface. While ubuntu once had – what I considered – a decent layout / theme (orange and brown, with decent window borders and icons), it slowly morphed into what I consider ugly – a black and purple color scheme with less appealing interface elements. Setting subjectivity aside, everything right down to the default wallpaper selection and god-awful purple startup screen are now utterly horrifying in my opinion; as if they based the entire theme on Heath Ledger’s Joker. Its frankly so glaring that I’m confused as to how this stuff ever got off the table. Whatever the case, I was motivated into looking into other themes and layouts. Eventually I stumbled onto Linux Mint.

Linux Mint uses a custom theme, which happens to be drop-dead gorgeous. A simple, clean, minimalistic look, and also very modern. Colors are a neutral metallic and vivid green. It has the best icon set as well as interface buttons of any theme I have come across.

The Linux Mint menu is custom. It can show “favorites” or traditional applications, and switching between the two is very easy. Both have nice, large targets, especially “favorites”, and the layout is superb.

Linux Mint has only one bar by default, at the bottom, which I prefer.

On the software side of things, Linux Mint comes with additional packages that I tend to use. An example is GIMP (a graphic manipulation tool, one of the bits of software I use most), which ubuntu no longer auto-includes.

While Ubuntu, and any real linux distribution for that matter, can be modified, and additional software can be downloaded, Linux Mint is exactly what I want right out of the box (er… ISO image) – something I honestly never thought would happen.

I also happen to like mints, which is awesome.

Description of problem:

Any custom entries in the Windows 7 hosts file get ignored. If, for example, you had “activate.adobe.com 127.0.0.1″ put in there (we’ll ignore just why you might have that entry in there.. :) ) and then tried to ping that address, it would still reply with its actual IP instead of 127.0.0.1 as it should.

How to fix the Windows 7 hosts file:

1. First, in order to do any editing on the Win7 hosts file, you will need to open up Notepad as an administrator. To do this, Click on the Start button->Accessories, and then right-click on Notepad. A context menu will appear, then click on “Run as Administrator”

2. In Notepad, open up the hosts file located at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc. You’ll need to  change the filter from “Text Documents (*.txt)” to “All Files” in order to see hosts listed.

3. Select all of the contents in the file (CTRL+A), copy them (CTRL+C), open up another instance  of Notepad, and then paste the contents into the newly opened program. Close the Notepad you have the hosts file open in.

4. Now, rather counter-intuitively, you need to delete the original copy of the hosts file. Open up Windows Explorer (Start->Accessories->Windows Explorer), navigate to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc, and delete it. Windows will likely complain about it being a system file, etc – just ignore all that and proceed with the deletion.

5. In the Notepad you still have open, click “Save As” from the file menu, change the filter to “All Files”, type “hosts” into the file name textbox, and save it. Be sure to save it into the directory where you deleted the hosts file from originally, or else it won’t do any good.

6. TEST – This is easy enough to do. If you’re reading this then you likely already to know how to do this, but I’ll humor you anyway. Open up a command prompt and type “Ping WhatEverEntryYourRerouting.com” then press enter. Using the example above, then if you were to type “ping activate.adobe.com” then you should get four replies from 127.0.0.1.

Why was the Windows 7 hosts file not working?

I have utterly no idea. I’d suspect some sort of corruption with it, but since it opens properly in Notepad without any odd artifacts showing it’s hard to tell. There’s always a possibility that there are some non-standard whitespace characters in the original copy of the hosts file that don’t get brought over when the contents are copied and pasted, but who knows. I’ve tried just cutting the contents from the file and pasting them back in, followed by saving the file but for some reason it only works when the original is deleted and a new one is saved.

What Facebook has not disclosed to its users are the big privacy issues that concern the many apps that the site is famous for. Nearly all of these apps require permission to access account information in order to function and whilst most users are happy to grant access, not all realize what this could mean if this information were to be misused. In fairness, most of the apps are legitimate and pose no security threat. But should an app developer suddenly decide to misuse this information, or another less-scrupulous company takes control of the app, then this account information could be used for all kinds of illicit exploits.

And it is not just the apps you install that can affect you – those apps installed by your friends can also access some of your information via your friends’ accounts.

Most people forget all about installed apps, especially ones that have not been used for a while and it is not like they are easily monitored on Facebook. The bad news is that these long-forgotten apps still have access to the very same account information whether you use them or not. The good news is that you can control which apps have access to your data – Facebook just does not bother to make this important information readily accessible to its users.

How to Control and Deny Application Access

First you need to logon to your Facebook account. On the main page you will see an ‘Accounts’ button in the top right hand corner. When you click on this it will bring up a drop-down menu, from this menu select ‘Application Settings’. Once on the Application Settings page you will see a box on the right hand side next to the word ‘Show’, the default option in the box will be ‘Recently Used’. Click the arrow next to the box to open up another drop-down menu, and then select ‘Authorized’ from the list.

Now the page will display all apps that have access to your Facebook data. To deny access to any of the apps, simply click on the ‘X’ at the right hand edge
of the app. You will receive a confirmation pop-up asking you to confirm you instruction to deny, click on ‘Deny’. The next pop-up box will be a confirmation that you have removed the app, click on ‘Okay’ and the action is complete.

Not every app can be deleted, or denied access. Those that are developed and pre-installed by Facebook cannot be deleted, but these are not apps to worry
about.

Facebook is not perfect and it seems that no-one really cares, if the rapidly increasing amount of users is anything to go by. But the protection of personal
data is something to worry about and too many people ignore this until they suffer some digital theft, or other online misdemeanour.

Facebook itself seems to be burying its head in the sand over the privacy concerns so it is up to the individual to protect their information and make their social networking as safe as possible. By all means continue to enjoy everything that Facebook offers, just make sure you are keeping a lid on things
that do not concern prying eyes.

DJ. Offer, owner of the desktop Facebook chat software “Chit Chat” writes about privacy on Facebook. Chit Chat is a Facebook client designed to make it
easier to conveniently send Facebook messages whilst allowing you to use your browser for other activities

Assuming you have virus and spy ware protection, along with a firewall, here are some things you may do on your own to speed up your surfing experience with Internet Explorer.

First, open Explorer and click the ‘Safety’ tab at the top right. In the dropdown, click ‘Delete browsing history’. You’ll be offered a menu of options to choose from. You should check them as follows.

‘Preserve favorites website data.’ Check this to allow your computer to retain the data for those sites in your favorites tab.

Check ‘Temporary Internet files’ to delete all the old temporary files your computer keeps to aid you in viewing websites. This file can be huge if you
don’t clear it regularly.

Uncheck, or do not check ‘Cookies’ if you want your passwords, login info, and etc. to remain on your computer. ‘Cookies’ are small files that stay on your drive to automatically fill in passwords on sites you visit often. If you don’t have anti-virus or anti-spy ware installed, delete these files until you get it; you are allowing access to your passwords and personal info.

Check ‘History’. This is a file of all of the websites you have visited since you last cleared it. Just a short time on Facebook, or other sites like it, can put many files on here. This is usually the primary thing that slows down your browser.

‘Form data’ and ‘Passwords’ files should be checked unless, or until, you have anti-spy ware installed. It is very dangerous to even go online without this protection, so never let it lapse. If you have good protection, you may uncheck these boxes.

If you see ‘In private filtering data’, check this block. This is data your ’In private’ filter saves about attempted sharing by websites you visit. Keeping it is not necessary.

Now, click the ‘Delete’ button and you are done. The toolbar should keep your choices, and you should get in the habit of clearing the history on a regular basis. If you are online a lot, delete it daily and you should see a difference in speed.

Once you have cleared your history, click on the ‘Tools’ tab next to the safety tab. Again, you will get a drop-down menu. Click the ‘Manage add-ons’ line. Now, you will see a list of all of the add-ons in your browser. Many of these add-ons come from visited websites, and you may not even know how they got there. Look over the files, disable the ones you don’t need, or are unsure of. Next, click ‘Search providers’ on the left, and do the same, disabling excess add-ons. Keep only the ones you use regularly.

Then, click ‘Accelerators’ and disable the ones you don’t use or want. You may not need ‘News’, ‘Finance’, or ‘Translate’, for instance.

If you encounter any problems running your usual websites, or surfing, go back and enable the items you disabled, one at a time, to see if they are affecting it. When the problem disappears, you should find your browser running faster and smoother. Congratulations, and don’t forget to do these tasks on a
regular basis.

A good security program, such as Norton or McAfee, will also let you run file cleanups and security scans on a regular basis. Use these tools to keep your
computer in top form.

D.Offer writes, Offer writes on behalf of the Facebook login application Chit Chat for Facebook. Chit Chat is a Facebook chat client that enables users to send Facebook messages from their desktop.

Instructions for PC Restore on Dell Inspirion Mini 10 Don’t Work

If like me you’ve purchased a Dell Inspiron mini and you’re looking to perform a factory restore on it you’ve probably run into difficulty. You’ll want to perform a factory restore in order to get your system back looking like when you first purchased the machine. The chances are however that you’ve checked out the manual only to find that the instructions on page 42 of the manual entitled “Using Dell PC Restore” don’t actually work.

In particular, they’ll tell you that in order to perform a PC Restore on your Dell Inspirion you need to:

1. Turn on the computer and during the bottom process, a blue bar with
   www.dell.com appears at the top of the screen.
2. Immediately upon seeing the blue bar, press <Ctrl><F11> if you wait too
   long and the operating system logo appears continue to wait until you see
   the Microsoft Windows desktop; then shut down and try again.

The only problem with this, I found on my Dell Outlet purchased Windows 7 mini 10 with Windows Starter was that these instructions no matter how many
times I tried just don’t work. Given that that my Inspiron mini didn’t come with a factory restore CD, I naturally checked for a recovery partition on the hard drive – I noticed that this wasn’t visible in Windows Explorer; however, a partition did exist when I checked using the defragmentation tool provided in Windows.

Restoring Dell Computer by Phoning Customer Support

In the instruction manual I was advised that “Dell PC Restore by Symantec and Dell Factory Image Restore may not be available in certain countries or on
certain computers” naturally, given that I could see no evidence of this software on my computer, nor could I access it using the shortcut, thus I phoned
Dell technical support to either provide assistance with this problem. Quite frankly after 30 minutes on the telephone, they were completely useless –
firstly they denied that there was an image on the hard drive, they denied that I was legally obliged to be able to restore my computer and that it was
impossible to restore my Windows 7 operating system without a recovery CD which would require me to purchase an external hard drive (cost £40) and a recovery CD at £60 plus delivery fees. To this, I told them no thanks!

Anyhow, I eventually figured out a solution by a lot of trial and error. I found this article on restoring the Dell Inspirion mini 10 which isn’t entirely
accurate but it pointed me in the right direction.

Solution to Restoring Dell Mini 10 to factory settings on Windows 7 Starter

Restart the computer and press F8 when you receive the Dell loading screen and keep holding it till it the computer beeps , then release it and you’ll find
that you get into a Windows loading screen it gives you a variety of options – select the “Repair your computer” option by highlighting it using your arrow
keys and press enter.

You’ll now be asked to login to your machine, you’ll need to use the same username/password that you use to access Windows normally.

Now, instead of accessing Windows you’ll get a screen with a whole variety of options at the bottom, of that list you’ll find a hyperlink that allows you to
select “Dell Factory Restore Image” – select this and follow the on screen instructions.

Author Notes – I was really disappointed with the fact that Dell had shipped to me incorrect factory restore settings in the manual and then provided me
inaccurate information on the telephone – even after my insistence that this information was inaccurate.

DJ Offer writes, Offer runs the Facebook Add On Chit Chat, Chit Chat is a Facebook login program that makes it possible to send Facebook messages from your desktop. Chit Chat supports text formatting, Facebook chat history and much more!

It’s actually quite easy to get to the recovery partition on most eMachines. Your W6409 should be no different, according to the manual.

__________________________________________________

HOW TO RESTORE WINDOWS 7 ON AN eMachine

STEP 1:

Power on or reboot your computer. Press F11 when you see the prompt text on the bottom of of the screen when it gets to the POST screen. (Or simply reboot the machine and keep pressing F11 repeatedly until the Windows 7 system restore process starts)

STEP 2:

Choose the type of system restore you’d like to perform. The choices include -

1. Non-Destructive System Restore – This recovers the operating system, all programs, and drivers that were installed by default. Any files currently on the computer should not be damaged by this process. (Meaning that you get to keep all of your documents, pictures, videos, etc when using this option.
2. Full System Restore (Destructive) - Formats the hard drive and restores Windows 7 and all of the default system software/drivers. All data on the hard drive will be lost, so be sure to back everything that you want to keep up first!
3. Full System Restore (With Backup [Advanced Option]) – Moves the contents of the hard drive to the C:\My Backup folder and installs a new copy of Windows. All of your existing data will be saved using this option, but any non-factory standard programs will need to be reinstalled. At least 4GB of hard drive space is required for this.

STEP 3:

Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the system restore process.

Betty, in your case you’ll likely need to do the destructive full system restore because your OS is hosed and you can’t boot to it in order to backup your files. However, do keep in mind that depending on what your daughter’s friend did to erase the OS there may actually still be files that you can recover stored on your hard drive. In order to get to them though you’ll need to either yank the hard drive out and hook it up to another machine, or boot to a Bart PE disc and copy the files to a flash drive. You could also try the non-destructive full system restore as well, but I cannot guarantee how well that will work.

—————————————————————

For reference, below are excerpts from the eMachines W6409 Manual .PDF I linked to above. The following two give the instructions for using the hard drive recovery partition.

And finally, how to use the eMachines Windows 7 recovery discs -

Does anybody else out there have an eMachines computer and have had to use the system recovery process? Tell us about your experience with it!

HOW TO MAP SKYDRIVE IN WINDOWS 7 AS A VIRTUAL DISK

STEP 1 – Download

Download Gladinet from the link provided above, and of course, save it somewhere you’ll remember.

STEP 2 – Install

Run the install program, accept the license agreement, and select whether or not you want the program to create a desktop or quicklaunch shortcuts for you. You should let the install register Gladinet with the Windows Firewall, otherwise it may be blocked and not function.

After you select your options here then continue onward and complete the install.

STEP 3 – Configuration

Gladinet should start up automatically after this. If it doesn’t then run it manually. Upon it starting for the first time they will offer an upgrade from their “starter edition” to their professional one, which includes more services it’ll connect to, but since SkyDrive mapping is included in the free version you can simply select “No Thanks”.

After this you’ll want to add your SkyDrive Virtual Drive. Setting it up is easy enough, you simply open up the configuration, select “Virtual Directory Manager” and then click the “Mount Virtual Directory” button. The dialog box to add it will show up as shown below:

Obviously you should select Windows Live SkyDrive as the storage provider, and then you can set the virtual directory name to whatever you’d like. On the next step you’ll enter your Windows Live ID and password, followed by selecting what drive letter you’d like to map it to. When it’s all setup, click “Finish”, and you’re set!

COMPLETION

After this you’ll be able to open up Windows 7′s Windows Explorer, and open up the drive, and browse your SkyDrive contents. My only real complaint with this is that the mapped drive is far slower than the web interface as far as simply uploading a file to where you want it. The reason for this is that is that the directory refresh is painfully slow. A lot of the time this isn’t a huge deal for me, especially if I have many files to upload. It’s also much faster to use the SkyDrive virtual disk to move files around that have already been uploaded as the process for moving a file to a different SkyDrive folder is extremely time consuming and tedious.

Gladinet also supports many, many other online storage services. Because of this, you can not only mount your SkyDrive drive, but you can mount other services such as:

• Amazon S3
• AT&T Synaptic Storage
• Box.net
• EMC Atmos Online
• FTP
• File Server Share
• Google Docs
• Google Storage
• Mezeo
• Nirvanix
• Peer1 CloudOne
• Windows Azure
• WebDav
• Other services using their SDK Custom Plugin

So, easy enough, eh? If you have any other utilities that also provide this service (possibly better?), then post what you use in the comments below!

As soon as i turn my PC on I get a box up saying Isass.exe – Application error on the top. Inside the box it says: This application as failed to initalize properly (0XC00000005).

ANY ADVICE YOU COULD GIVE ME WOULD BE GRATEFULLY RECIEVED!

THANK YOU!

____________________________________

Does the computer finish booting up after you receive this error message and then function normally, does it not proceed any further, or does it shut down after you click OK? If you boot into Safe Mode do you still get the error message?

Also, and this is VERY important: Is it Isass or Lsass? If the answer is I, then you likely have a virus. (The W32.Sasser worm is notorious for creating this file.) The reason being is that Lsass.exe is a legitimate Windows file used to verify user accounts, security profiles, and login sessions for the various users; (LSASS being an acronym for Local Security Authority Subsystem Service) which the virus takes advantage of by making an executable file that looks very similar to when casually glancing at the running system processes via the Task Manager.

In the event that it is the Sasser virus, there are a few removal tools available. Microsoft’s Sasser removal tool (original) has been replaced by Microsoft’s Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, which can be downloaded directly here via the Microsoft Download Center, or via Windows Update. Instructions for downloading via Windows Update are provided on the MS Malicious Software Removal Tool information page that was linked to. AntiVirus companies like Symantec have also have released removal tools for Sasser, but most of these are quite old so you’re likely better off trying MS’s much more up-to-date app.

Of course, those removal tools will do no good if Sasser, or some other form of malware that the MS tool is designed to correct is not present. You may want to try booting to Safe Mode With Networking and then downloading McAfee’s SuperDAT command-line virus scanner in order to see if your system is, in fact, infected with something.

If possible, the following information will be useful in order to be able to assist you more efficiently -

Computer Make: (Dell, HP, Alienware, Homebuilt, etc)
Computer Model: (Inspiron 1501, Latitude 1200, etc)
CPU: (Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, AMD Athlon X2, etc)
RAM: (512 MB, 1 GB, 2 GB, etc)
Graphics Adapter: (nVidia GeForce 8800 GTS, ATi Radeon HD 5800, Intel GMA 3150, on-board graphics, etc)
Operating System: (Windows XP, Vista, 7)
Type of Anti-Virus Software: (Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2010, McAfee Total Protection, Kaspersky Internet Security, AVG Free, etc)
Latest Anti-Virus Updates/Definitions Installed?: (Yes/No – Note: This usually requires an active, paid subscription to the software manufacturer. Most trial antivirus software suites that come pre-installed on computers only have demo subscriptions that are good for appx three months, after which definition updates are suspended)

All of the requested information can easily be found by running CPU-Z by Franck Delattre of CPUID.

READERS: Have any of you been infected by Sasser? If so, how did you remove it? Have you ever seen Isass.exe in instances other than a Sasser worm infection?

An external hard drive can be a lifesaver; as I discovered a few years back when my laptop hard drive went to heaven (actually, hopefully it went to hell, since it died on me at an inconvenient time). I lost several personal files.

With that out of the way, why just use one?

When it came down to protecting my data, especially gigs of data that take a long time to secure, I recognized that a backup drive can be just as prone to fail as any other. That’s why a raid solution works so well.

I went with a dual drive external Western Digital MyBook (pictured below). Looks the same as a standard external drive, just somewhat fatter. No hurt feelings, for it’s what’s on the inside that counts (at least in this situation), and that would be two accessible SATA 3.5” hard drives. These drives can be configured to be mirrored, striped, or treated as independent volumes. If you decide to go the mirror route, as I did, the device formats both internal drives as identical twins, and your computer simply sees them as a single external volume. If one drive dies, you’re safe; just pop the lid, remove the bad drive, play some taps, and put in a new one. The device will automatically mirror the contents for you. Both drives need to be of the same size and specs, of course.

Another perk is that it came with WD green drives, designed for low power consumption. It only uses power when reading or writing; otherwise, it stays in a powered down, suspended state. A slick feature, especially for a backup drive.

Ports on the model include Firewire 400, 800, USB 2.0, and ESATA.

Another closely related product is a media streaming / network version with a gigabit ethernet port. Same package, just designed to be attached to a home network rather then a computer. Not only does it serve as network storage, it includes media streaming capabilities, so iTunes and DLNA certified devices (like newer game consoles) can see and play media contained on it. It thus works nicely as a container for digital media as well.