The "Holy Grail" has been attained!!!

Score one (or maybe even two) for the "Silly English K-Nigets"! After two years of wanting, wishing, planning and plotting.....I finally got a Nikon D300 (aka, The Holy Grail)!

Yup; that's the one. You guys bear with me while I digress and take a trip down memory lane. Going back to the 4th post on this blog, I've spent a fair amount of time talking about my odyssey into the world of digital SLRs. That was back in the summer of 2009; right after we came back from our "10th Anniversary" Alaska trip. At the time, I was describing how I ended up with a Nikon D70. Then a couple of months later; how I was able to convert that camera into a Nikon D200. Obviously I'm not going to repeat that whole story here since anyone who haven't read them can go back and do that.

It went in that particular progression because I had a specific amount of money to used, and no more. Plus I had decided on the strategy of getting the lens that I wanted and spending what was left on however much camera I could buy. This of course turned out to be the Nikon 18-200mm AF-S/VR lens. At the time, I was coveting the D200, but I had $350 left and it was out of my price-range.

However; the whole time, the understood "Holy Grail" made of unobtainium was the Nikon D300. It had just been release that winter/spring and it was often selling for well above the $1800 list price. It had ALL the "gee whiz/holy crap I want it" features that were brand new at the time; like the "Live View" display through the LCD, sensor self-cleaning, not to mention the gigantic 3" LCD with 3 times the number of pixels of the D200's, 2.5" version. Obviously there are innumerable other things, but this isn't a review, so I'll leave that to the professionals. Here's a couple of good ones if you are interested:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond300/

http://www.bythom.com/nikond300review.htm

Most readers will probably know that I'm a "build-quality" lover; hence, ThinkPads, Nikons and the like. Though this camera's selling price, at $1800 was closer to the high-consumer ($800-1000) end of DSLRs as opposed to the full-on professional ($4-5000) end of things, but its build quality is obviously closer to the professional models.

You can see here in the first image, is the full-on magnesium shell/chassis (vs. all plastic or magnesium "frame" only). The second image is of a D300 which fell down a canyon at Yellowstone and was retrieved 3 days later....fully functioning. This is why the professional grade DSLRs cost so much! Not in any way a shot at other makers, but Nikon is the company that NASA chose to send up into space since before the moon-shot days! Coincidentally, so are the ThinkPads.

So, on to the actual reason for this Frugal Propellerhead post. This is a case of SERIOUS long-range planning! If you go back and look at post #9, I described how I got into a D200 (complete with MB-D200 battery grip) for about the price that I sold the D70. About a year later, based on what I was seeing in the market place, D200 prices were starting to drop. Several things were going on: the first D300 update came out, the D300S (with video), causing the price of the D300 to drop, thus forcing the price of the D200s to do likewise. So I needed to get rid of that camera before I lost market value. I found that I could sell my D200 and battery grip separately for more than I paid (around $650 total), and I had some other projects going that needed funding. Also, I came across a D70S being sold cheap ($200) because it had an issue: it wouldn't shut off. Not a big deal since I could just pull the battery when I needed to get the memory card out. Around that time, I was given a 18-55mm with a broken mount. I replaced/repair that mount for $9. I've been using that camera for over a year now with no ill effect other than that its old and has a pretty low resolution (6Mp) by today's standards.

Now the stage was set for scene two. Theoretically, I was at a net $440, plus the D70s camera and lens. Of course that money has been spent on other projects since then. So, what's the point then....and where am I going with this? A few months ago, I traded one of my project computers for $100 and an old manual focus Nikon camera lens (20mm/f4). The $100 bought me the computer case, motherboard and CPU which has become our HTPC. The lens sold last week for $250, which leads us to scene three.

In less than two weeks we're going to Taiwan (nephew's wedding) and Hong Kong (because), so I really want a higher resolution camera for what is probably a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Now I have the $250 in hand from that lens, plus I'm fairly certain that I can get right around $250 for the D70s and repaired 18-55 lens giving me $500. I've noticed from my eBay research that on rare occasions a D300 can be had for around $700. So, now I've got a $200 potential deficit. This is one of those rare instances that I need external intervention, meaning that I needed to convince my wife that despite the financially horrific year its been so far (new washer/dryer, Tonsils & adnoids out for Moma and boy, months of 100 degree weather, Taiwan trip), I needed my birthday (Oct) and Christmas presents right now....in a lump-sum.

All this reached the cinematic (on the Frugal Propellerhead channel) climax last week when not only did the lens sell, but got the wife's grudgingly approved AND I scored a D300 with MB-D10 battery grip for the magic $700!!! I'll admit it now: I was lucky. I was randomly surfing a little bit on Saturday while waiting for the kids to get ready to leave and go somewhere. There was a horrifically written one-line ad on eBay with a "stock" picture that nobody was bidding on. It had a $700 starting price; I put in my bid (for $700 only) and that was it! It almost never happens this way! Maybe it was the hurricane and much of the East coast was off-line, but I really couldn't care less.

Not only was it the D300 camera, but it also the battery grip, and for somebody that shoots a LOT of portraits, it's a big deal. These things allow you to shoot vertically much more comfortably giving you another set of controls for that and therefore don't have to wish for another joint on your right arm. That's an accessory that I consider almost mandatory and would have spent the $150 or so to get eventually. Sure, it's a little scuffed up from use and is missing the tray for using a second camera battery, but it had the all-important AA tray that allows me to use my stock of rechargeable Nimh AAs. Also it allows the camera to shoot at 8 frames per second, vs. the mere 6 of the regular battery. Yes, I understand that for somebody like me; 8fps is ridiculous.....but just sayin'.....!!!

Cliche' time. Clearly: you can never plan too far ahead and you have to keep your "eye on the prize". Two years ago, I couldn't dream of owning an $1800 camera with a $1000 lens attached not to mention the grip. But through a series of planned transactions and research (plus some luck), I was able to put myself in the position of taking the camera that I really wanted on a trip of a life-time. Now I just have to get the picture!

So as the great Sean Connery said in "The Untouchables": "Here endith the lesson".

Summer's Over

I know, that's obvious.......but what that means around here in an educator's household with young children is that the routines change majorly (to say the least)! Of course, we are gone every week day from 7am to somewhere between 5 and 6pm. When you throw in Scouts on Monday night, Gymnastics on Thursday nights, and Football games on Friday nights, it's obvious that any given week are pretty booked up till Saturday and Sunday. I generally grade papers or lesson plan on Sunday afternoon, so that leaves me with the first half of Saturday as "me time".

After successfully convincing the kids that they really wanted to watch cartoons from Momma & Daddy's bed, I now have the living room to myself to reap the benefits from the hard work of this summer. Meaning that I have the HTPC running Windows Media Center, pulling files from the WHS in the office, displaying on the big TV and playing through the main A/V system. I can't even express how satisfying this is to be able to access my growing cache of lossless music this way! I just realized that when I'm on the music part of the software that just hitting the letter key will take you to that part of the alphabet in the album list! Such a great way to peruse my media library. I had no idea that the "Os" were so great! Oleta Adams, followed by Orbital followed by Orchestral Manoeuvres In the Dark! All this while drinking my coffee and blogging! I do believe that convergence is within reach if not completely attained.

I do have a few little things on the frugal purchasing front though. The first is the addition of a couple of "backbone" devices that most people will never see. I picked up an 8-Port Gigabit Switch which will replace the 10/100 version on my desk. The other is a 4-Port Gigabit router which will pretty much allow my network to upgrade to Gigabit. I still need to pick up "N" WiFi cards to move the Z61ms to the faster wireless standard.

I also picked up a set of computer speakers. I know, I know; it sounds pretty pedestrian, but let me explain. Of course you guys know that I HATE spending lots of money, but although I demand nice peripherals, I'm almost psychotic in not spending money in that area! So, I've been struggling along with an old pair of IBM/Infinity computer speakers on my desktop workstation for some time. Lately though, I've been planning out a monitor shelve for my desk, obviously to lift the monitors, but also to give myself some extra space underneath. So I'm planning on moving the speakers to that location. Unfortunately, the rather big and tall (yet uninspiring) speakers won't fit, so........ of course this gave me an excuse to hunt down a replacement pair. The the parameters (other than cheap) were that they be small, sound good, which are contradictory requirements, and therefore left me with the option of satellite/subwoofer style. To make a long story short. I found a pair of Logitech Z-340s on eBay that I paid $16 after shipping. They were dirty and one speaker has a little hole in the grill, but they sound VERY good and cost $16!!!

Re: Digital House Cleaning

Really, its kind of Part 2 of my last post which discussed the new Microsoft applications that I've learned to really like a lot. However something that even us diehard gearheads have to admit; none of the cool shiny gear does anything without the software end of it. Part 1 was really about the applications themselves, this part I'll delves into the bane of our (at the very least, "my") existence......media files.

Like most people, particularly those close to my age, we've spent the better part of several decades accumulating media. Of course, some of it is in the form of obsolete medium such as vinyl records (or even shellac), cassette tapes and even 8-Tracks. In this post, I don't intend on discussing digitizing/archiving that media, but the other stuff that's been accumulating in our computers the last decade or more. We all have videos, mp3s, and photographs in digital files scattered all over one or more of our computers. I know this, because every time, I work on somebody's computer and have to move their hard drives, I come across files scattered all over the place. Quite often, the owners are even surprised by what I've found and put back in place for them. Furthermore, even if they're all in "My Documents", and in the "My Music"/"My Pictures" subfolders, they are generally just kind of thrown in there; much like our closets. What makes it more complex, is that over time, files of all different types have been thrown in there all together.

All good example are music files. In most cases, people will have some WAV files which are essentially the complete equivalent of what's on a CD, then there are MP3s of varying sizes dependent on the bitrate at which they were ripped (or downloaded), which is often dictated by the device on which they are intended to play. You add to that, the various other issues, like AAC for iTune/iPod users, WMA for Windows device users, OGG for those cool Linux guys or just people who want to be different, you can easily have chaos.

What, I decided to do was to consolidate and combine first, then secondly, move everything to the server. My thought process was as follows:

• I really want everything as universally readable as possible.
• I want as much in as high quality of format as possible.
• Everything as organized as possible.

That's a tall order, so, how do I accomplish all this:

• Obviously, I want as much as possible in a "lossless" format as I can. That means, whenever I rip a CD, I want to set the application to save that way. Although, this uses quite a bit more space, than even 256bit, it give me essentially a perfect copy of everything. I plan on eventually ripping (actually reripping) my library that I haven't already done....which is most of it! On the server, I actually have a lossless folder, a standard bit-rate (128 or better), and a low bit-rate folder (for stuff that is horrible, but I don't have another copy of at the moment).
  
• I use Microsoft's included WMP to do this which gives me WMA files. Why that, says the Mac maven?!? It's the most universal. Pretty much anything can play and/or convert WMA, but the converse is not true of AAC.
  
• Organization is pretty standard; mean putting music in the WHS Music share, Photos in the WHS Photo share, etc. with a twist. That means that I use subfolders to help organized each of these categories. Although, Windows Media Center doesn't really care and just pulls everything in, as individual users, we need to find individual files for things like FaceBook, or my long neglected, high school and college favorites CDs project.

As far as a files system is concerned, the music side is pretty easy since I use the default, Artist, Album standard that most software is set up for. The only difference is that I separate the files in terms of resolution (lossless, standard bit, low bit). Its the photographs that are the headache.

What I've developed over time is a system of topic, sub-topic (as far down as is necessary), then date preceeding the lowest level of sub-topic which hold the individual files. These dates are created by last two digits of the year, so they'll stay in Chronological (and not numeric) order, the two digits for the month followed by underscore and the topic (most of which are recurring). The only picture files in the Photo share are the family ones since they're the only ones that need to be generally access by everyone as well as displayed through Windows Media Center for guests. Of course, 95% (or more) of our pictures files are of this one group, so this takes care of the bulk of files. Obviously, nobody else is interested in or needs to have access to the photos I use for items I'm selling or ones that I'm adding to my blogs so they go in my personal server folder. That way, I can grab them regardless of which machine I happen to be on at the time. This will become our standard, whenever my wife starts using the server for storage on a regular basis and the kids grow into that need in the future.

So basically; other than what I use on a "live" project, most of what I do resides on the server in a "replicated" folder (you can never be too safe). Its the same model that most corporations use because its convenient and safe.

Let me just say that it's been hard work....very hard work! I've spent the better part of the last week, where I'd estimate that I put in on average 3+ hours on file organization most days. So many files got moved and deleted that my main workstation running Windows 7, on 4Gb of RAM took 3 hours to completely defrag the 1Tb storage drive! Digital or not; "house cleaning" is no fun, but it needs to be done.

Love M$.....Kind of.......

I'm about to go into uncharted waters here; meaning I'm going to write about software today! I know, its not very sexy, but even the biggest "gearheads" of us has to depend on it, and have it running properly so that our shiny black boxes actually do something! Even I can only sit and admire them for so long. Now understand; that this is not a review I'll leave that to the far more qualified and lucid who get paid for such things, but really an essay as to how Windows 7, WHS and Windows Media Center has moved me and my "system" into the current century of computing.

I've gotta say, that I haven't been this happy with those Redmond money grubbers since Windows 2000, and I'm including XP here since that's really a prettied up version of W2K. It seems like every other OS release, they lay a rotten egg. Obviously, I'm talking about ME and Vista, where half-baked ideas, unfinished features are pushed on to the public because they needed to release something and make money.

However; as most of you have found, Windows 7 is a completely different animal; not in how it looks, but in how it functions. I've been on some version of W7 for about a year now and have progressively moved our stable of machines over to it during that time, but its really been in the last month that I've learned to really appreciate it. Why now? That would coincide with me bringing both a file server running Windows Home Server, and a HTPC up running Windows 7 Home Premium (which includes the current Windows Media Center). I've spend a good part of this week configuring this product as well as reloading both my main workstation and laptop on W7 Ultimate.....don't ask (thanks Jake)!

This has been a little a little more challenging than you might think (not because of what you might think either), due to the daily threat of "rolling blackouts", along with the 108-111 degree temps. Basically, I have to get everything done before about 1pm and then I shut down the big machines. Not only due to the "rolling blackout" issue, but it just gets too dang hot in the office with 2-3 machines, 2 printers, and 3 or more monitors running! The other issue, is that there was so much lossless music on the server that it took the clients quite a bit of time to index it all through the network (I'm definitely considering moving to gigabit soon). But once that got done.....WOW!!!

This may not be news to some of you, but its just like the magazine articles have been saying; once you've experienced online/connected media, you really wonder why you didn't do it before. At the core of what makes it possible (at least for not software guru, me) is the networking simplicity of W7 with the pretty much seamless integration of WHS combined through the new Windows Media Center! Side-note here is that I'm still going to be working on getting XBMC (X-Box Media Center) up and running, but the fact of the matter is that WMC has been very simple to set up. I've even been able to get it to recognize and use the cheapo NTSC/ATSC-Tuner-capture card in my workstation to work, when all the forums had said that it wouldn't. So at this point, I can have most any of the computers that has WMC set up to record a program, then archive it to the servers public "recorded TV" folder to be watched by any other computer in the house!

What's so cool about it? Other than the DVR function that I wanted, I found that I'm hooked on Internet TV. I knew it was out there; I'd been watch Revision 3 (the old TechTV) on and off through a browser for some time, but this makes that stuff work just like regular TV with a channel guide and everything. Some of the "over-the-air" stations (notably CBS) has some complete shows on it. I've watched a few NCISs so far. Plus there are other channels that I didn't even know existed like Smithsonian Channel which has some very interesting shows on it....at least for me. I found myself in bed last night watch TV wishing I could just surf the stuff other than what the cable provider had available.

So, there has been grunt work involved of course. Hours of uploading files to the server to that our photos, and music is available anywhere. Turning all the pictures so that they show up right when the computers pull them for the screen saver slideshow: YES, W7 does go out over the network and do that! Which lead me to another great W7 thing: you can turn pictures (even big ones) right from Windows Explorer! Then, there's the organizing, tagging, sorting, and selectively editing the music files to get rid of stuff that we don't like and won't listen to, that came from who knows where. Then there'll be the laborious ripping of the rest of my library into WMA Lossless to come. Let me tell ya, watching the software have the tuner search through the seemingly hundreds of channels of both analog as well as digital is mind-numbing as well, since you know that you'll have to go back and get rid of half the digital channels since they are in a foreign language or are for shopping.

There was some hardware involved (that I haven't already talked about). The most important has been the 2 tuners that I bought. I picked up an off-brand tuner on eBay for about $25 mostly for its capture capabilities, but I've watched a surprising amount of TV on it already. Then there's the well thought of Hauppauge one with 2 internal tuners, so it has the capability to record 2 or watch 1 and record another which is in the HTPC. I found that on Craig's List for $50. Then the "unsung" hero; which was the 12' optical cable that I picked up from Monoprice (if you haven't used them, you should at least look), which has allowed me to send the digital stream directly from the HTPC motherboard to the far superior DAC in my home theater system. Those lossless music files streamed from the server SOUND GOOD!!!

So, I've largely reached my home network goal of being able to do what I want from anywhere and watch/listen to the results from anywhere as well. Most of this was accomplished with the use of free (or at least included in the price) Microsoft software. Amazingly, it works as advertised and the costs has been very affordable! This is no small thing! I know that a lot of guys out there have been able to do all this for some time, but I'm kind of software-phobic/lazy, so if its not easy, I won't do it.

As an addendum: I do have a hardware purchase bulletin to report. I found a ThinkPad Z60t listed on Craig's List on Monday night for $40. The add said that the seller needed to sell it immediately and had a August 4th deadline (yesterday). I figured that it was either garbage or he'd already sold it, but I emailed anyway. Low and behold I got a reply back saying that he still had it, but need to meet and get it done quickly which sounded suspicious. Turns out that he's a medical school student down at UT Southwestern, has just graduated and leaving to go back to China this weekend! He had tried to sell it for the last 2 weeks (needed it for school till then), but had a hard time doing so. He had dropped the price twice (I found the other ads), but had trouble selling it, since he didn't clean it up, his kids had pulled off 2 keys (I fixed them in 5 minutes), and the battery was dead.

The lesson here is that, if you intend to be frugal, you pretty much have to do the homework or you miss opportunities like this! This isn't a smoking hot, almost-new computer by any stretch of the imagination, but its worth at least $150-175, cleaned up! Plus I also spied a Salvation Army store across the street from the hospital complex. You think that they might have some interesting stuff that all those future (and present) doctors have donated!?!

Gotta run; the office is heating up!

"Nothing wrong with shooting...as long as the right people get shot"

Another Dirty Harry quote? Yup....what I'm referring to is buying computers and Macs. I just experience Mac buying firsthand on behalf of a client (more correctly her daughter) who had to have a Mac. I've been accused of being anti-Mac at various times, but that is simply not true. I like them just fine, and I've bought a number of them over time, so let me take a little time and explain the "Frugal Propellerhead" philosophy as related to Macs.

Here are my points to consider:

• What do you do with a computer?
• What's your budget?
• How important are the intangibles (eg. build quality, design, cachet)?

If your main purpose is say Photography (professionally, or serious amateur), Music creation, Graphic Design or any of several tasks that the premier or industry standard software is Mac; by all means....go Mac. If you have a high-end budget (although, I'd be confused as to why you'd be reading this blog), then go ahead, "make my day". Or if you're an equipment snob (I'll admit that I'm kind of one myself), then there's lots to like about them as well.....but....there's always one of those isn't there.

What this post is about, is my recent experience with a machine identical to the above. As I said earlier, I needed to find a MacBook for the daughter of a client who had bought a Dell from me previously. She needed a replacement computer for college and had a budget between $500-700. Normally, in that situation, I'd have recommended a ThinkPad or Dell Latitude in the $250-350 range equipped with an Intel Core2Duo CPU, 14" screen, combo drive and a hard drive in the 100-200Gb range. From a usability standpoint, we'd be talking about the same thing as the "early '09, 13" MacBook that I found for them. This machine was built very well, it was in good shape, and spec'd nicely with a 160Gb HDD, and 4Gb of RAM, plus 6 more months of AppleCare warranty left.

So, what's the problem? $200-300, that's the problem! The Dell D630s that I've been doing lately are spec'd almost identically to that Mac and I've been able to get them into a client's hands for between $225 and $275! They'll be just as functional as that MacBook and last pretty much just as long.

So, if you are OK to double your cost for those intangibles, then that's your call. ".....as long as the right people get shot"

"A Man's Got to Know His Limitations"

A little nugget of wisdom from that great philosopher, Harry Callahan. Does this mean that I'm about to pump 44 Magnum rounds into somebody!?! No, not really, although the heat and the politicians are getting pretty tiresome.

No, what I'm talking about is my "to do list" of propellerhead things that need to be done. Although, many things have been taken care of and others are "in process", there are some that there's been NO PROGRESS! Which is where Dirty Harry comes into play.

What it comes down to is that there is still some install things that need to be done with my A/V system. Specifically, the 3 rear-channel in-ceiling speakers that need to be go into the living room, plus the connection of the triple-gang jack panel behind the A/V cabinet. The reality is that I could probably do it, but it would take me a ridiculous amount of time by myself. On top of that, I'm not getting any younger and several of hours crawling around in the attic would do me no good. So, I've turned to my friend Pat who actually does this kind of thing professionally, meaning that he'd not only be much faster, but far less likely to make mistakes as well. So, I've arranged to make a manual labor exchange with him. If he'll come down one weekend this fall (after Oct.) and help with this install, I'll go to Lubbock at some point in the future to help him with his house. Yes, I know that it's still manual labor, but hey, its manual labor that I already know how to do!

On another front, the AVPC is finally in! It's up and running, connected to the network where the bulk of my photos and some music has been moved on to the server. That took quite some time in and of itself since I was moving a lot of data. There was all of our family pictures from the digital era beginning around 2002/3 and a growing cache of "lossless" music. I spent some time listening to it the other day and I must say that with a digital connection from the computer to the receiver pulling lossless file, it sounded very nice indeed. There is still lots of "setup" and tuning needs to be done. I'm committed to using XBMC as the "front-end" to access the files, but so far, I haven't been able to get it to see the server. I also need to set up the Hauppauge dual tuner to handle DVR work. It's all in there though and connected to everything that its supposed to. Oh yeah, we found a bonus yesterday when the wife and kids were going to Skype with sister and cousins in Germany. Yep, I set up the webcam on the AVPC and was able to Skype via the big TV in the living room. That's absolutely the way to go on this!

We're getting there, so at some point in the next few months, the A/V system will finally be "finished"!

Home Server Part 2

You guys probably know that I'm a little bit of a software-phobe. I've always been able to get hardware to work and really quite enjoy the challenge of resolving their issues, but where software is concerned, I don't enjoy it near as much. This is why my projects quite often are technological successes after which it comes to a grinding halt until I get around to resolving the software problems to make it all work.

So far, the home server has been a pretty good example. It's been up and running (and well) for several months. It quietly sits in the corner of the office going about its business without nary a peep. We've enjoyed the ability to put files in there and have access to them from any machine as well as have it unobtrusively back up our stable of computers giving us peace of mind. However (and there's always one of those, right?) it hasn't nearly fulfilled it's potential. One of the main reasons I went with this software was that it would easily "server" media across a home network while keeping it in a safe (backed up) central location. We have a LOT of media, maybe not as much as some folks, but hundreds of CDs, thousands of photographs, and plans to add more once I get my archiving system up and running again. Like any family, there is tons of the stuff just waiting its turn to get digitized. Everything from old family photos that need to be scanned, to old high school choir VHS tapes that need to be captured, and even some vinyl records as well as cassettes to be saved. So the server has its work cut out for it.

So, where to start? For me, that was getting on Half.com and finding a copy of the Windows Home Server Bible book, by Greg Kettell, & Jennifer Ackerman Kettell, published by Wiley. I almost always look on Half.com first, then Amazon, then Half Priced Books for any published material. I found this book and had it shipped for less than a third of it's MSRP. I used this book to set up the server and learn about the more advanced functions of WHS. It's been indispensable!

There are a number of goals I have for this server in terms of sharing content in our home. The first, which as to give us peace of mind has already been achieved, as well as the second of creating a central shared place to store and access files. The next goal was to centralize, and hopefully eliminate duplication of media files so they can be accessed from anywhere, both internal and eventually external to our network.

What has started to drive this has been the completion of the Media Computer in the A/V stack. The concept with that machine is that it wouldn't contain any media files except on a temporary basis, but be able to access content and display it on the "big-screen", and/or play it through the main system. For our family, that's music; we have a lot of it and handling CDs is old, plus it will quite often create a situation where "you" play the same ones over and over again.

The ideal plan is to rip CDs losslessly into the music folder of WHS. The reason for lossless is obvious, but I chose to do this in WMP using WMA file format might not be. As would some of you, I'd say that iTunes is a better product and we are a multi-iPod family, but AAC isn't universal and IMHO, Apple products tend to be a little archane in terms of working with non-apple products. I just think, that iTunes will have no trouble pulling in the WMA files on the server, whereas the reverse isn't going to be true without a lot of hassles and work-arounds. I'm open to differing opinions and suggestions here. In order to get this done, I changed the rip settings in WMP to lossless then pointed the output folder to some folders I created in the W7 Libraries with are in fact residing on the server. The WMP couldn't see the server directly, through the desktop "shared folders" shortcut, but was able to see anything I put in the libraries of the machine. This allowed me to rip directly to the server and not have to move files after the fact.

I've been ripping a bunch of CDs this morning and now need to go test this out on the media computer and my laptop. If it doesn't work, I'm going to come back and commit the computing version of "sepukku".......stand by.......

OK, personal crisis averted; it worked! Now comes the grunt work. Culling through my files located in various computers, then moving the files, followed by the lossless ripping of many CDs! Then it'll be on to the photos followed by working out the kinks in setting up the DVR. Stay-tuned as they used to say: I suspect that it is going to be a long-running series.

OH YEAH! I almost forgot, I'm playing with XBMC (another free product) on the media computer, so of course that's going to be another episode of hardware addict vs. software!