16GB USB Flashdrive - $9.37 per GB

Have you ever wanted to put a full-length DVD or two on your USB key and still have room for .ISO files of your favorite bootables?

At $9.37 per gigabyte, go ahead & shell out $149.98 and that 16GB could be on your keychain or lanyard.

Here's a review of the Corsair 16GB Flash Voyager from Maximum PC - looks like the drive needs memory that is better suited to large writes, but it's quite fast in read times.

Great Windows Programs I Use Almost Every Day

I was in a class last week with several windows admins who unaware of some great windows programs, so I thought these programs used for common tasks might be worth linking to here. I use at least one of the programs listed on a near daily basis, especially VLC & PDFCreator. All these programs are free, but not all are open source.

• Make all your mp3 files the same volume level without compromising existing audio quality using mp3gain
(see the included help file for step-by-step How To... instructions)


• Copy video DVDs to a folder or an .ISO using DVDFab HD Decrypter
  
  
• Mount ISO CD & DVD images using a CDROM emulator using Virtual Clonedrive (license allows for business _and_ personal use)
  
  
• Create data CD & data DVD ISO files (the entire disc in one file) using the READ MODE in ImgBurn
  (ImgBurn can also burn .ISO files in WRITE MODE)
  
  
• Create PDF files using PDFCreator (here's how to get PDFCreator to work with Vista)
  
  
• Download using the BitTorrent protocol with the µTorrent software
  
  
• Use VLC to playback nearly any audio or video file _without_ installing additional codecs
  
  
• Make Flash video tutorials/walkthroughs to share with colleagues using Debugmode's Wink software (also free for business and personal use)

Shrek 3: CPU Render Hours Double Every 3 Years

Linux Journal has a great article detailing some of the rendering specifics of Shrek 3. Some of the highlights include a 2Gbps network, use of NFS & LAMP, RHEL 4, use of Python, 24TB of storage, and a corollary to Moore's Law.