Back to The Future.... In Photography

You've probably noticed that I've gone slightly "off the tracks". I know some of you are quietly saying that you've known this for years! I haven't yet decided that it's due to age induced nostalgia, or that I am in fact on to something. But here's the thing: I'm beginning to think that shooting pictures with film is different than shooting them in digital..... and "NO", I don't mean the technical difference in the medium which is an argument that will go on forever. No, I mean the psychology of shooting something that's permanent vs. what we know full well, we can and will simply delete because it isn't quite what we want it to be, then shoot again.

If you're "old" like me, you remember constantly keeping an eye on the frame counter to make sure you don't run out of it at a critical time. I even remember back when I was doing some "professional" work, I'd even sacrifice a few frames toward the end of a roll, and replace it with a fresh one just to make certain that you weren't caught reloading at an inopportune time. I even clearly remember luxuriating in the feel of having the relatively expansive 36 exposure rolls vs. the 24! There's nothing quite like that "film awareness" to keep you focus on getting the most from each frame.

I feel like I do a pretty good job of it when I'm using the D300, which is a weighty and serious camera. This is particularly true when I've got the old 50mm/f1.4 Nikkor attached, since it's manual focus only. However, it's still not quite the same. I find myself, spending more time making sure that either the automation is off, or I am in fact overriding it correctly, than simply setting and shooting. 

So, I find that the vast majority of the time when I want that simple connection of working with the light, I turn to the D40 with one of my collection of manual lenses. Since they have no connection to the body other than the mechanics of the mount, they really only pass and focus light. Yes, I'm aware that I can simply turn the settings on the D300 to manual and essentially do the same thing. But it's not the same mindset as having no other recourse.

In recent months, I've been involved in a bit of collecting with old photographic equipment. It started when my brother sent me some of his old gear with included a Topcon Uni. It's quite old and not really a practical "user", but it got me thinking and looking at old equipment. That, in combination of my posts regarding a "compact" DSLR system and the role of the Konica TC had in my consciousness really stirred the cobwebs in the old memory. So, I bought one. It was all of about $15 after shipping and had no lens, but did include peeling leatherette cover at no extra charge. I don't have the slightest idea if it works or not since the batteries it uses are no longer produced. I do have a couple of lenses for it though, so...... 

Yeah, this could be me. OK, no Jimmy Stewart spying on his murderous neighbor with the stunning Grace Kelly, but heh!?! OK, no weird Exacta VX camera or giant 400mm lens either. However, I do have some film in the cabinet here and I could see myself taking an old camera out every now and then to shoot a roll. What if that Konica isn't in "shooting" condition?

Here's what I'd love to use. A Minolta XE-7 (XE in Japan, XE-1 in Europe). It's the very first camera that I ever fell completely in love with.... back in something like 1973/4. It's in my humble opinion; the most beautiful single lens reflex camera ever made (especially when mounted with an MC Rokkor-X 50mm/f1.4 lens). They seem to go pretty routinely in the $35 range. It's a "dead system" (kind of like Latin as a language), so there is relatively little competition for the lenses. Of course there's the EVIL (electronic view interchangeable lens) crowd who adapt lenses to their cameras, but those guys are still relatively rare. They tend to concentrate on old Nikkors and Zuikos, driving those prices up! Will this become a successful experiment? Who knows. I just think it's important, and fun, to shake things up every now and then. Oh yeah; that pictures up at the top? The Contax RTS, arguably the most beautiful SLR ever made (designed by Porche); it's just eye candy. You can pick up one of the bodies for like $50, but those lenses go for ridiculous money these days!

The Love and Frustration That Is The Internet

I'm an optimistic pragmatist, if there is such a thing. I'm happy most of the time, because I'm pretty confident in my abilities and therefore OK with dealing with what's out there in the world. I love the Internet because it infinitely expands my search possibilities as I'm busy finding solutions to questions I've come up with (sorry, English teachers). On a morning like this, I can happily indulge my interests/hobbies by reading everything from technical papers, to reviews and opinions of others who have the similar interests. I can, if I'm not careful, spend an entire day doing this. It's like a rather well-stocked university library that never closes and is inside your own home!

And then, there's the other..... The constant assault on the senses of the never ending amplification of poorly thought out opinions. Don't get me wrong; I'm perfectly OK with people to have differing opinions. It's just the constant battering that I object to...... and clearly stupid people of course. I worked in higher education for about a decade, and learned to differentiate the highly educated (and often highly intelligent) from well-functioning brains. It is my highly unscientific opinion that doctorate degrees, like an excess of wealth, corrupts the brain! While working with these learned men and women, I found that the majority of folks with these high degrees, acquired them to overcome some sort of personal deficiency, whether in fact, or imagined. So therefore, once armed with this mantle of academic invincibility, they were all too happy to smote any and all who deign to dispute their intellectual superiority. 

A great example of this love/hate relationship is Facebook. I'm not much of a "facebooker" and really tend to participate regularly in the summers. It's the most awesome thing since sliced bread for keeping up with friends, and for me, my former students, athletes, and staff members who worked for me at the various stops in my higher ed administration career. I can't describe to you how rewarding it is to read about various folks who I've at some time in the past invested time and energy into and see that they are doing well. Or maybe just share a forgotten event, now that I'm on the far side of 50! Then, there's "the one". There's always one isn't there? Who was always self-absorbed and had a rather over-inflated opinion of their opinions. It's a triple whammy, when that person proceeds to get a doctorate, secures a position at a rather liberal institution (aren't they all these days), then proceeds to use Facebook to beat their friends (and formerly friends) over the head with their self-important rhetoric.

I guess, it's appropriate for this cloudy morning; into each life, a little rain must fall, and I'll be happy to be able to use the Internet to read about old cameras, old stereo equipment and new computers. Maybe I can get her to "unfriend" me today!

The Mac Came Back

Three years ago (this month) I wrote a blog-post about a foray into Macs, and I don't mean British for a raincoat. As a quick recap, I had a client who's daughter was going to school at Baylor University, a school that's known for it's medical programs and was/is a "Mac Shop". Therefore, she wanted to have a MacBook just to make things easier. Well; earlier this year, she graduated, and while I was doing some work for them, I asked about the computer and whether she was upgrading now that she's gainfully employed. Some time later, the dad told me that she had indeed upgraded since, a few months ago, she had spilled a soft drink into the computer and it had promptly died! ..... and that I could have it if I liked. 

So, of course I liked; you know me.... I enthusiastically welcomed the rather bedraggled looking MacBook back home. And it absolutely looked like the proverbial thing that "the cat dragged in", with NO signs of life emminating from it when power was hooked up.

Let's began by looking at the specs. It's a "run-of-the-mill" 2009 White polycarbonate MacBook, which back then cost about $1000 in base trim. This particular machine had been upgraded to it's RAM max of 4Gb vs. the 2Gb standard so was worth more. In 2011 when I originally bought it, they were going in the $500 range. I picked it up for somewhat less than that with 6 months of Apple Care left to go. In those pre-"Core" days, it was a very nice machine. Today, given that it's equipped with the "Penryn" (45nm) generation Core 2 Duo, it's still a very useable computer, especially with 4Gb (or more) of RAM. The main chink in the armor though is the slow 160Gb/5400rpm hard drive. More on that later. 

So, what we have here was what used to be a pretty nice little laptop, but had been rendered useless from soda. Now, when you have a liquid spill, typically, everything doesn't die. If it's water or a few other things, sometimes, the entire machine can be rescued if power is removed and the liquid is flushed away and dried quickly. NONE of those things happened. It was a worse case scenario. Soda (acid AND sugar), NOT flushed away quickly. So the upshot is that the motherboard and in all likelihood any electronics in the base of the machine are irretrievable. However, it wasn't a lost cause. In all probability, the entire screen assembly was/is still good, maybe the drives, and possibly the RAM. The question was: how much work did I want to invest into this little laptop?

Two weeks of pondering and eBay watching netted me this. At $83 with free shipping, plus my conveniently timed "eBay Bucks" certificate brought this solution in at less than $70 spent. To make a long story shorter; it arrived yesterday afternoon, and an hour later, I had a working MacBook. The important thing about this was that the base was complete/working, only missing a few screws. So the old screen went right in, the RAM and hard drive transferred right over, the machine booted right up. End of story.... kind of....

During those two weeks of looking and contemplation, I decided that if I was going to resurrect this machine, I was going "whole hog". And in my world, that means SSD. As I've trumpeted many times before; nothing makes a machine feel fast as quickly as putting an operating system on an SSD! To that end, I bought a used Intel 160Gb SSD for $90, which brought total outlay to just under $160. I'll need to watch Craigslist and find somebody selling an OS X Snow Leopard, or Mountain Lion (maybe even Mavericks) load and get it finished for something like $175 invested. If that seems like a lot of money, it is, especially when compared to similarly spec'd Dell E6400s that I often pick up for between $100 and $125. But, equipped with an SSD, I'll be able to sell this machine for more than double what I put into it. That's the upside of Macs; they may be more expensive, but they have a higher resale value as well. In this case, somewhere between $300 and $400...... that's IF I sell it at all!

WHAT!!! Have I turned to the dark side!?! No, not yet, although I am carrying an iPhone these days (long story). Some time ago, my daughter's ThinkPad X61 died. I replaced it with a Z61t, but she rarely uses it since it's slower AND she's been using an iPad as well. ......Yes, we've succumbed to what my brother-in-law calls, the "gateway drug" of iOS. In fact, we have 4, count 'em, 4 iPads in our house these days! No, I don't use one. AND No, I'm not writing about this now! Back to the sad little girl without a laptop. Anyway; she's always been the different child, the happy bouncy one, the artistic one, .....the lefty. I've always thought that she'd be a Mac person when she got older. She's older now, so it might be time to move her over to a Mac. 

Why not me? Actually, I'm probably a perfect candidate to be a Mac guy. A little different than most people. Kind of a hardware snob. .....and I might..... at some point. There's been a number of times that I've come close to picking up one of the black MacBooks from the same generation as the one I just fixed. And if the 2011, black MacBook Air would have come to fruition, I'd of probably been done for, but neither happened. I do think though, that when the time comes to retire my trusty ThinkPad X301, it'll come down to the X1 Carbon, or an MBA (black or no black). 

A New Camera For A Friend

Last week, I had a rather extensive discussion with a friend/co-worker/acquaintance about her desire to replace her camera and the plethora (and confusing variety) of choices out there today. We probably talked about it for the better part of half and hour with no clear front-runner. So I told her that I'd think about it and send her an email with some thoughts on the topic. Well: here are the thoughts on that topic!

How is this different than the myriad of articles that I've written about my camera buying travails? Well.... it's not for me, and as far as I can tell, she's not saddled with the baggage I lug around. Let's break this down then. The potential user is a young, bright and educated woman with some skills and experience with photography having already owned a early Sony DSLR (I can only assume that it was an A100 or 200) which she's already given up to a family member. So no baggage to speak of there, although there's some possibility that she might come into some "old" Nikon film equipment at some point down the road. This is duly noted but not an overriding issue such as my desire to acquire and use old glass. She's an educator, who has the ability, where-with-all and desire to travel extensively. In light of this, she's already done a little investigation into the Nikon One cameras.  So EVIL (Electronic Viewfinder, Interchangeable Lens) cameras are definitely "in the mix". 

Let's start here. I'd say that she's looking for something that will fit her during her travels and not the other way around. Therefore, compact is going to be a major attribute that will be desired. This keeps all the EVIL types, ranging from micro-4/3rds, and smaller like the Nikon One on up to the APC-C type sensors. But let's not throw the baby out with the bath-water here! We'll still keep the lower (smaller) end of the Digital SLR cameras as well. These are often not much bigger than the better EVILs. Let's get down to specifics then.

The general type of "mirrorless" cameras as pioneered by Olympus with Micro 4/3rds have been wildly successful and unless I'm missing my guess, it will supplant  SLR as the most common type of advanced cameras some time in the next couple of decades. They take images of a technical quality virtually indistinguishable from DSLRs given equal conditions and they are generally smaller and lighter. They not only have the ability to interchange lenses, but can universally be adapted to SLR lenses due to requiring less "back-spacing". Of course you lose all automation when using said adapters, but hey, there is always "manual"! My main objection to them is that they are generally NOT equipped with an optical viewfinder and therefore often difficult to use outside in bright sunlight. And there is my personal objection to any camera without a viewfinder.... is that they encourage the user to do as you can see depicted above..... that's right, holding the camera away from the body thus introducing more hand-held vibration to the equation! Grrrr! But you say, most have accessory viewfinders that you can purchase and attach to solve that issue! Two problems with that scenario. If I spend several hundred dollars for a camera: A. I expect it to work optimally without having to buy an accessory, and B. attaching one of those things on top makes them just about as bulky as an DSLR!

Ahhh, but what about the Sony Nex 6 and 7? Yup, that's indeed a good solution and with a bigger APS-C sized sensor as well. Therefore, as far as EVIL cameras are concerned, this is the direction I would go. Either the one of the Sony Nex models with a viewfinder or the Fuji equivalent. That's it? EVIL wins?

Yeah..... kinda, not really. In the last year, the "old line" camera companies (eg. Canon, Nikon) showed that they still have a few tricks up their sleeves. Canon brought out the Rebel SL-1 and as you can see compared to the 6D, it's significantly smaller (even with the bigger lens attached). Plus it as the same sensor as the T4i! 

In the meantime, Nikon brought out it's new entry-level D3300 with the all new collapsing 18-55mm kit lens. That body is almost as small as my D40, bu the lens is quite a bit smaller than anything in it's class. You really have to go into a store and hold the camera to "get it". That's what you go to stores like Best Buy and Fry's for, but for Pete's Sakes, just don't buy it there!

So, at the end of the day; what is my recommendation? I'd go into a brick and mortar store(s) with a short list based on my criteria. Then I'd hold them, play with the controls, play with them some more. Go home without buying anything. Be a "pest" to friends (like me) who have similar cameras and see if you can borrow them for a while. Take pictures. Look at your pictures. Get a sense of which ones had controls and menus that you feel more comfortable with using. Then go to the stores and do it again. The fact is that all these cameras will take better pictures than you can, so that's really not the issue. The issue is to find one that you'll take good pictures with AND that you'll be happy to carry around. Even though I'm not a huge fan of the Nikon One cameras, they'll take WAY better pictures than your phone or tablet that you used because you didn't want to carry your "big" camera.

HooToo 2.... The Device That's Changed My Life!

Let me just say; tablets on car trips are AWESOME! Did we just let the kids turn them on and use them the whole time? No. We did other things as well; like read books..... actual physical books, but when it was time for a little change of pace?

 

Let me back up and start from the beginning. Remember when I wrote about the HooToo Tripmate Nano I bought for $20 from Newegg, 'cus I wanted to try out "cloud" concepts in my classroom? After using it, almost on a daily basis, I became more and more sold that this device was going to be solid and useable in a variety of situations. You know how during family get-togethers, everyone hurries to get there and then there are seemingly endless hours of boredom sitting around and contemplating your navel? You remember all those trips hither and yon during the summer where there are hours sitting in the car dozing or looking out the window hoping you see something interesting? Yup, that time was fast approaching. So I started playing around with the HooToo, powering it from various sources of electricity, ranging from cellphone adapters, to car-plugs and misc. other sources. I quickly learned that this thing draws so little power that can use darned near any USB (5v) source. I tried every single car-style plug I had and they all powered it fine. So on our trip to Caddo Lake State Park which ended up taking about 3 and a half hours when all was said-and-done, it allowed the kids to watch whatever I had on the "stick".

This was my other "revelation". Admittedly not huge, but a revelation none-the-less. I had started out using the HooToo with a USB flash drive because that's what my classroom use files were on. Of course, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files don't take up lots of room, however, video files DO. I knew that people often bought software to "rip" DVDs into files that could be read on other devices, but I didn't want to go out and buy something I wasn't even sure was going to work. What to do? Why.... YouTube is the answer of course! A few videos later I came found a solution. Download a couple of free pieces of software: DVD Decrypter, and the well-known Handbrake, and even a software-phobe like me could take his own DVDs, strip out the encription, and rip the resulting file down to a size that was small enough to be truly portable. Now, it's not as easy as all that. You do have to "play" with it a little and see where the balance is "for you", between small file size and image quality, but it's not too bad at all. In the follow week or so after I figured it out, I "ripped" something like 60 of the DVDs in our collection! This is where my newly upgraded Ivy Bridge computer came into play. I was able to do it in half the time that my older machine would have taken. The typical movie ranged from a little under 1Gb to some that were just a little over. All in all, I was able to do the first batch of 20 and they were just a bit over 15Gb. I realized that at the rate I was going, the 32Gb stick that I had previously thought of as huge would be out of space pretty soon. Lucky for me though, we went to Costco about that time and they were running a sale on the Sandisk Cruzer Ultra 64Gb flash drive for $35. So, another 40 DVDs got ripped and put on it. 

 

In the ensuing weeks, I tried everything. We connected to it from 2, 3 and 4 tablets/phones while watching the same or different movies, starting, stopping, skipping back and forth without issue. I even got my hands on my wife's old Motorola Atrix cellphone "emergency" battery that they gave her with that phone. Even that thing powered the HooToo Tripmate. It didn't just work: this slim little device that's only about 600mah at most, last somewhere between 3 and 4 hours.... after having been charged up 2 years ago and left to sit in the car the entire time since! Today, I tried to charge up the solar battery/charger my wife bought me 5 years ago to see if it would run it! Stay tuned on that.....

 

This started me really thinking. I could pick up one of the bigger external charging batteries and become my own little walking cloud! I could just put a piece of Velcro on the Tripmate and attach it to the battery and thus have 6, 8 plus hours of serving whatever files, wherever I wanted. After a little research, I found that the bigger versions of these batteries can charge multiple devices including tablets and cost somewhere between $50 and $100. Which brought this to mind.

The new version of the HooToo; the TripMate Elite just hit the market. And at around $60 on Amazon and carrying it's own built in battery, why don't I just upgrade? If it sounds like I'm a little "over-the-top" on this, it's because I am! I don't remember the last time I was this excited about a product. And I've gotta say; everyone who I've shown it to was just as amazed as I am!

Ya See; There's This Camera.......

....And here's where  you say: Of course there is, there always is! At a large conveniently located pawn shop that I frequent, I ran across this a few months ago. In the ensuing time, it has gotten push farther and farther back into the dark corners of the digital camera showcases as more of the current flashier models have shown up. It's a Nikon CoolPix P7000; 10.1Mp, 7.1x zoom (28-200mm, 35mm eq.) with VR (natch.), 100-6400 ISO, 3" Ultra-High Res screen (about the same as my D300), optical viewfinder, and full manual controls. It's original "list" price was a cool $500. And even at the inevitably discounted from the marked $200, which would probably be somewhere between $150 and $175, I probably won't buy it. Then is there a point to all this other than averting summertime boredom? 

Now that you ask..... yes there is! Last month, while down at the 1st Saturday computer flea market with my computer club students, I ran across this at one of the "junk dealer's" tables. It at once grabbed my attention and took me back something like 40 years to when I was a budding teenager just becoming obsessed with photography. Back then at the height of the era when 35mm and Japanese cameras were king, these cameras were very common. They sold to well-heeled consumers who either didn't want to give up a month's of salary for a "real" 35mm SLR, or what a devoted photographer would buy as a second camera when they didn't want to take along "the big rig". Many were sold, but they generally didn't get a lot of use. They were typically of high level manufacture, and came equipped with excellent features sets and optics. After all, they were Minoltas (Rokkor), Konicas (Hexanon), Canons and Olympuses (Zuiko) and thus were equipped with lenses to match. Of the species, the Minolta Hi-Matic 7s II that I found (as depicted above) was considered within elite group of 3 and came equipped with a Rokkor 40mm, F1.7 lens! And as was also typical, it was also endowed with automation with manual override. Of course, I bought it and it now lives with one of my students. Between those two find, within the space of a couple of days, I was transported back to the mid-70s. 

Then, some 10 years later to the mid-80's when I was single, working and living in Lubbock, Texas, where-upon I found this in a dusty corner of a glass case, in a pawn shop. Although, not one of the "elite" given it's (quite good) F2.8 Tessar formula lens, this Olympus 35 RC was nevertheless considered one of the best of it's breed. Plus (thanks to it's smaller lens) it was considered "pocketable" whereas it's brethren endowed with more sophisticated glass were not! I paid my $12 for it and got the heck out of there! It went on to go live with one of my students as well when she went overseas for a trip. There seems to be a trend here!

Around the same time, one of these came to live with me. My brother had picked it up somewhere and it was not working properly.... so he sent it to me. Come to think of it, there seems to be a trend there as well! Anyway, back in those days, I had a camera repair guy. Yes indeed, there are those people. Folks didn't just throw away broken stuff back then, and there were those jobs.... kinda. This was a guy who did it on the side, but had a real "day-job" (or in this case, night-job) as a police dispatcher. Anyway, when Rollei moved production of this little jewel.....

to Singapore, they engaged in some cost-cutting by using some nylon gears (vs. the traditional brass which had to be hand-fitted). Guess which one my brother had picked up? Yup. So my "guy" replaced the buggered up nylon gear with a brass one. You can't tell by these images, but the wonder of these cameras is that they are completely mechanical, AND literally the size of a package of cigarettes with the lens collapsed! It now resides in my "collection in exile", living with my buddy Pat.

Then there's this. The "unrequited love" of this type of cameras for me. The Olympus XA. What's so special about this one? A decade down the road in the early-mid 80's, the "compact rangefinder" market was dying. People who bought small cameras didn't care about precision and quality any more. The folks who did were buying the new breed of inexpensive SLRs. So, most makers were bailing out of this market segment. Well, we all know that Olympus isn't like other makers so they built this. It was an immediate sensation, but a relatively expensive one, so they came out with the "de-featured" XA2/3/4. So the original XA is the one to have! I might pick one up someday, but of course, I'd probably give it away anyway! So is all this reminescing going anywhere?

Well..... kind of..... I think it's pretty apparent that I love this type of camera. Whether it be the "real thing", or a digital throwback like the P7000. And if the pawn shop gets desperate enough to clearance it at or near the $100 that I think it gave for it, I'd probably buy it and put my CoolPix 8400 out to pasture. But while I was contemplating the idea, it's obvious to me why that camera has been sitting in the case for so long and obviously neglected by the buying public.

Yup. As a photographer, I think it's stupid and encourages poor photos, but the fact is that poor photography has always been around! The reality is that the Smartphone has almost completely wiped out the bottom end of the camera market. Furthermore, any camera even physically small has to compete again them. 

Contemplate these results of a quick Google search! They range from the: "Oh, I could use that" to the "that's the craziest thing I've ever seen". The fact that they exist should tell you everything you need to know about the direction of compact cameras! It that market isn't dead, at the very least, it's severely shrinking! Well; at least I have a gift idea for my wife who does engage in iPhone photography and there's a darned good chance of that P7000's price dropping into my range soon!

"Leftovers" Tech

This is the ongoing battle that I fight at my desk/workbench. Quite often, as a result of these battles, I end up with "leftovers". I don't mean that meatloaf in the fridge, or the crumbs in the bottom of the chip bag. 

I mean things like this. I'm old-school, and guys like me who have built a computer with a 120Mb primary hard drive have a hard time throwing them out. As a result of about a year or two of computer work, I've accumulated 5 virtually identical Western Digital Caviar drives. Unfortunately, they are 160Gb each (too small for real storage, too big to throw out), AND IDE interface to boot! None of them have very many hours on them at all, so they are still good.

You might remember that I had 2 Cooler Master Centurion cases in my home setup not too long ago. The main machine was in a newer Centurion 590 and my "Client Rig" was an XP box in an old Centurion 5 case (depicted above). When M$ pulled the plug on XP support this last spring, so did I; thus ending the need for an XP box. Subsequently, I upgraded and rebuilt, moving on to an Ivy Bridge based machine that now lives in a Cosmos II. The Centurion 590 went to my former student who's in college now to replace the dilapidated case we built her computer in, which left the old Centurion 5..... sitting forlornly out in the garage. 

One day, I dragged that poor old case into the office and just sat looking at it. I didn't take long to come to the realization that it has a lot of drive bays (5 5.25", 5 3.5"). Hmmmmm...... Stack of hard drives....... Case with lots of drive bays........ A marriage made in scroungers' heaven! 

Subsequently, it was found that I also own another "leftover"; a Thermaltake TR2-430 power supply. This power supply not only has just about enough ummph to handle all those drives, but 6...... count-em 6...... old style molex connectors for just the IDE style drives that I have! 

Then you throw in a Gigabyte GA-G41M motherboard along with Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 processor, and 4Gb of G.Skill RAM that was already living in that case (from the XP box of course), I'm just about set! This MB has the added benefit of onboard video making 1 less card to buy and consume power.

Another client throw-away from last year held a Promise TX-2, Ultra 133 ATA controller card. This card has dual IDE controllers that will connect 4 drives. In combination with the onboard IDE controller of the G41M, I have the ability to connect 6 drives....... the 5 I already have, plus one more at some future date. Are there other things I can do to this "free" server?

Apparently, Cooler Master made one of those "bay racks" that takes 3, 5.25" drive bays and turns the space into a container for 4, 3.5" hard drives, complete with it's own cooling fan.... all for $23 including shipping! That will allow me to use 3 of the 5 bays up top that would otherwise  not hold anything! Should I buy anything else? Here's a list of possibilities: 

• Another NIC to speed up file transfers
• A hardware RAID card, just because that might be cool to play with
• Firewire/1394 card (if I don't have one somewhere) to give me that interface (I have a couple of Firewire external hard drives)
• A card reader for the 3.5" drive space that I don't have the cover for. A reader would cost about the same as buying the cover ($10-15)

Where does all this leave me? Without doing anything else: a file server with 800Gb of storage. I know that doesn't sound like very much when you can buy little portable HDD that are 1Tb a piece. However, this gives me a full-on server that I can do with what I want, plus a platform from which I can plug in all those misc. drives into. Which leaves me with one question left to answer!

What OS should I use? It would be easy to do Windows 7, but there's a virtual cornucopia of free products out there. These range from the various forms of Linux, to FreeNAS or NAS4Free as well as my old Windows Home Server V1, that's very friendly for using a pool of random drives. What to do? It's a nice problem to have when you don't have financial resources invested in it!