TheRealDrew

EDIT: Posted longer reply then saw your last post that you picked something up

Great to hear. As Allen mentioned, I am always pleasantly surprised about how people will respond with some information about the situation.

Like DiverDoug1, I have a few different cases depending up what I am carrying and where I am going. Some questions to think about: 1.) Are you traveling to places where it is more difficult to get the gear to? (Carry-on airplanes, puddle jumpers in there, etc.) 2.) Do you dive locally often so you can just load up gear in a car? 3.) Do you carry more or less equipment (or different size equipment) based on where you are going? Some of the questions overlap. But I use a variety of Pelicans, Porter, Bags (ThinkTank and LowePro usually) and other items. With a 4/3 system and some small strobes or lights the items I grab will be different compared to a full dSLR rig. Sometimes, especially if going to places I have been to fairly often before and will get to again, it is nice just to use a small portable setup. That all being said, I often use a Pelican 1510 because it works for carry-on in most places I go to, coupled with a laptop bag.

The language looks a bit loose there to me also a few reasons. Some may be custom/language differences from U.K. and U.S., but since you also see issues, probably not. It may also be that the email was more of a general bullet point concept, subject to a more formal document.

Divers on a Manta Dive in Hawaii came across a dolphin in distress. J

No doubt, have been fortunate through the years overall in small amount of failures, and constantly backing up. Have a variety of RAIDs, mainly use 0, 1 and 5. Issue is which drives nowadays seem to have an overall better reputation. Seems to have been a shift. Yup, have a few of the QX2s, and set up as RAID 5 hooked up via eSATA fairly fast. Was actually also going to try to see which drives they seem to like nowadays.

Hi all Need to pick up a bunch of hard drives for some things coming up. Have purchased any recently and looking through various reviews on sites, seems like things are a bit all over the place in terms of who is making what that is decent. Without pointing out a particular brand, it seems that some that I used to rely on often are now not as reliable or as solid as they may have been. (Though some that I have that have "bad" reviews have been solid.) Of course I take it with a grain of salt based on "reviews." Going to be using them for video primarily in RAID 0/1. Looking for 3.5", 2 TB or larger ideally, though 1.5 TB could work. Not overly concerned with absolute speed (even a good 3G lower RPM is fine), just looking for the current reliable ones that are out there now. Thanks

I have a couple of Drobos, more so as a general holder and something that I can use older hard drives with. Never got great performance/speeds. But just one aspect of back-ups I do. I also have things like the the Mercury Elite Pro Qx2. Supports different RAID configurations. Pretty decent speeds, even on RAID 5. Not necessarily the quietest unit, but not bad. Has a FW port so you can move it further away, especially if just for back-up. After the initial back-up, incremental back-ups aren't bad. Wiebetech also has some nice units. The newer 2 Bay RTXs are REAL quiet. They have various configurations/connections and different RAID Levels. The rebuilds times are pretty good. I usually use Carbon Copy Cloner to do back ups once a day for my drives, schedule for late at night. The first time will take longer, incremental quick.

Obviously a lot of people use Lion and like it. I am not the biggest fan for the reason you mentioned in terms of beach ball and all the rest. I think a clean install may be in order for me also. Seems something got messed up. On my SL partition things are fine and one base reinstall of Lion seems to be better. Got a feeling it could be software issue for me also. Just being kind of lazy in redoing it

Depends. If I am not quite concerned about portability/weight and the rest. The 17" with the slot. Has the connections, good working room even without another monitor, etc. Got a 6G eSata card and a 6G enclosure when I need speed. I have taken this even on trips when I know I am going to be someplace for a bit, a couple of weeks at a time or so. Curse a tad when getting it in and out at the airport. Happy when I get to where I am going. The Retina hits the spot for travel for me. Good screen, real spunky. But a lot of this depends on what you do when at home and when you travel with the computer.

Which transfer speeds/BUS are you talking about? The new internal drives on the laptop are 6G eSATA Something to consider is perhaps selling yours and then getting a refurbed unit from Apple. (Not sure though if that is an option where you are though.) But to give you an example for $1359 in the U.S. refurbed store. Refurbished MacBook Pro 2.2GHz Quad-core Intel i7 Originally released October 2011 15.4-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen display, 1440-by-900 resolution 4GB (2 x 2GB) of 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM 500GB Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm 8x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) Intel HD Graphics 3000 and AMD Radeon HD 6750M

On the 2011 and 2012 laptops you can put 16 Gigs in OWC Some interesting numbers Here on benchmarks. I just need to get the chips in to my machine. Will report back and let you know how it goes

How much RAM do you have in the computer? What type of HD (speed and/or SSD) Throwing as much RAM in is probably the easiest and cost effective upgrade if you have not done so. The SSD drive can also help, but RAM is going to be the big one. (Also not sure what apps you are running.) I would not bother upgrading the processor, if that is an option. On the MacBook Pro (non-Retina) only 8 Gigs is officially supported, though place like OWC have tested up to 16 Gigs. (In fact I am upgrading my machine to 16 Gigs and an SSD). The Retina is beautiful, just got done playing with one. Fast, responsive, just great. The base model is nice, but 256 SSD is a non-starter for me. (And at this time, neither the RAM nor HD are upgradable.) The mid-level one would be the least I would consider. It seems to be the sweet spot of size, weight etc in the Mac Line-Up as of now.

Hmmm, have not upgraded all my Adobe sets yet. Might be time. Thanks for making me spend money

Great job, congrats....