Watch out for those "green" drives. We used ~a dozen of them in various (linux-based, whitebox & "proper" server-based) configurations and found they had the highest failure rate of any drive we've used. At the very least, a) read up on them and b) regardless of drive, monitor their S.M.A.R.T parameters for early signs of

failure (specifically bad sectors) and replace the drives when more than a few of these happen.

The three biggest problems imho with RAID are:

1. 1. The controller issue you mention above -- we use software RAID on linux for this reason (most of the time)
2. 2. Do you know when a drive is actually dead? It can be mostly dead and you don't know unless it gets kicked out of the array. It's scary how often 2 or more drives get booted from an array in short succession too. SMART monitoring is a must (Google did a major study on HD risk failures years back - *any* bad sectors at all, and particularly rate of change in bad sectors were the single biggest indicators of near-certain drive death within 6 months)
3. 3. What happens (specifically to the various layers of caching) under power loss

#3 in particular is why some spend big bucks on expensive RAID solutions, #1 to an extent as well and particularly if you want 'performance'. You don't need this level of crazy, but you still need to be aware where your risks are so you can work around them.

> Flawed logic at it's best.
Flawed grammar at its best.

Actually it would require a rewriting of the SMTP protocol :P However, the standard solution is to use port forwarding on an external unencumbered host accepting inbound port 25 and forwarding to your unblocked port (e.g. 1025). You can use a smarthost to similarly forward external email via another 'unblocked' host. This generally gets you closer to the benefits of a "local" mail server vs simply hosting your mail server external to your network.

Presumably this definition depends on the jurisdiction. At least in AU a contractor is as DragonWriter describes. A consultant can either be a contractor or an employee of a company. So typically it goes:

Internal roles:

• casual employee (works less than full time, includes a 'loading' in their base rate to account for not paying them holiday pay, sick pay, long service leave etc)
• part-time employee - same rights as full-time employee, but doesn't work full-time hours
• full-time employee, fixed term - a full-time employee with an end-date
• full-time employee - a full-time employee with an expectation of ongoing employment

Semi-external roles:

• labour hire/temp - internal staff member 'loaned' by a 3rd party e.g. resourcing firm

External roles:

• contractor - individual, usually with specialised skills &/or equipment, which is responsible for OUTCOMES not just effort. However they are often paid on an hourly basis. When they are, they are held to a higher standard of quality/responsibility than internal employees. They usually provide their own equipment, often work from home and typically only charge for directly produce work related to the task at hand.
• company - of course a 'contract' defines the role provided, but usually the people providing the service on behalf of the company are employees of the external company. e.g. IT Consulting firms. They may be contractors etc. There are many advantages to this situation over hiring a straight contractor or any of the internal roles, but the cost is almost always higher due to overheads.

David

Dropbox is a decidedly single-user solution. Try running a corporate network of 20 people using add-hoc cloud-based file-sharing with no file locking. And try doing it without getting "Why can't I access xyz file?" or "What happened to my data?" questions every 15 minutes. File locking sounds like technical minutae until you realise it's probably the single biggest feature requirement of a reliable storage solution. Use a commodity NAS instead of you want free/cheap (just be wary that your backup position is likely to be unknown/untested, but that's probably on a par with giving the task to someone who doesn't know WTF they're doing on raw linux or M$ platforms). BTW there are some annoying limits with GMail for domains. Again though, beats trying to be a mail admin who doesn't know wtf they are doing :P

With mobile broadband plans like Soul (Optus reseller) 1GB/month for $20 with a free modem over 24 months or Vodafone $39/5GB (which I use), you're going to be hard-pressed to find an ADSL connection that gives you that much speed & data at cost parity on its own, let alone once you throw in the $30 Telstra tax of having to have a landline.

As for a landline, last I checked, unless you get naked DSL, you're up for Telstra's $30/mth plan just for a phone line to use with a non-Telstra ADSL provider. Their

As an IT Consultant, I find most users (even techy ones!) are increasingly heading towards online services and using less and less computing resources (unless they install Vista) - basically using their machine as a Web terminal with some basic local programs - Office, file storage and maybe some utilities. A web browser, maybe an IDE and putty/ssh are all a lot of people need. This kind of usage goes well with mobile broadband, where the drop in latency (kills games and highly interactive client/server apps) and pain of connection (it takes time, and doesn't always work) are offset by both the convenience AND the cost. The cost argument is probably different outside of Aus, but here where you need to spend $50 per month to get more quota with ADSL than you do on mobile broadband, it's significant.

For renters, this is great. Particularly people in share houses (where people moving in/out or one person using all the quota can create issues, let alone the infrastructure cost and hassle of setting up cabling or secure (yet still compatible) wireless). $20/mth buys you 1GB of Internet quota. If you don't bittorrent (and when you're saving $30-$70+ per month by not having ADSL, you can suddenly afford a lot more DVDs) or download heaps, you'll be fine within that 1GB. Just don't expect it to reach the "maximum" speed too often, and don't expect it to feel overly fast. But it's certainly better than dial-up, and heaps more convenience.