Back in the 80's, I purchased the Tulin 33MB (that's megabyte with the M)
full height hard drive for $2,499, the largest hard drive for the IBM PC.
I still have the receipt for it from Crazy Bob's Computer Warehouse.
Crazy Bob took me for a ride in his hot air balloon because I was a good
customer and crazy enough to go..(c;

Walking through Best Buy's computer department, I always scope out the
prices on USB gadgets that may prove useful to my favorite hobby
(obsession?, ask Skip). There's been quite a rapid increase in hard
drive capacity recently in this depressed economy and prices have been
falling like flies. Given how worthless the Federal Reserve
Corporation's money has gotten, I don't see how they can produce the
computer stuff they do at a profit, without using slave labor.

I keep tabs on the price of serious storage, namely external USB hard
drives I can carry around from computer to computer, including my laptop.
The laptop enjoys a 160GB Western Digital tiny little USB-powered drive
that fits right in your shirt pocket, a little plastic brick. Well,
there it sat and I lost the battle to get out of there.....

Best Buy has a special running on the Western Digital "Essential
Edition" "My Book" SEVEN HUNDRED FIFTY GIGABYTE USB hard drive for only
$179! They had 8 of them on the shelf! 750GB is quite a space. 187,500
4MB MP3 songs. 1071 full length DivX movies will also fit on it.
Millions of magazines, books, and other pdf files. This is the size of a
good novel. The box is made to look like a black book with a green
lighted ring on the binder. WD has made carrying it even easier. My two
500GB My Book drives have power supplies you sit on the desk with 2
cords, one 12VDC, the other the line cord. This new drive has a TINY
little switcher that plugs sideways into any AC outlet not blocking other
plugs and weighs about an ounce! It puts out 2A at 12V, max.

The key for boaters is the 12V. These power supplies are NOT highly
regulated. The regulators are INSIDE the My Book drive boxes. So, if a
boater were to stop by any Radio Shack and buy the appropriate 12V power
cord for a pittance....VOILA! You have a boat-powered, 750GB hard drive
for the laptop, direct! I've run my 500GB My Books off a 5AH 12V gelcell
quite successfully. Plugging it into your boat battery will work
wonderfully as it only draws about 800ma once it's running and goes to
sleep automatically, even shutting off automatically with the USB port if
you shutdown or hibernate the computer.

Well, just thought you'd like to know about this bargain at Best Buy. I
bought TWO, another 1.5TB (with the T) to add to the collection. My
laptop's gonna explode one of these days....(c;

No need to carry 800 pounds of books hogging all that space in the
playroom full of bookshelves. The Library of Congress stores with 500
movies in the space of Moby Dick. She'll sail faster with digital
storage! No fragile CDs or DVDs to worry over, either!

......under 24 cents/gigabyte! Hard drives are getting cheaper than DVDs!

Larry
--
Search youtube for "Depleted Uranium"
The ultimate dirty bomb......