VPR Matrix FT9100-PE Desktop Computer

[Ioman]

"Take advantage of Intel's fastest technology, the Intel® Pentium® 4 processor 3.06A GHz with Hyper-Threading, all the speed of two 100.0GB RAID 0-enabled hard drives, and the latest GeForce4 Ti4200 graphics and Creative Labs Soundblaster® Live 5.1 audio. Watch or record video using both DVD-RW and DVD-ROM drives."

http://www.vprmatrix.com/products_desktop_FT9100.asp

This looks like a killer system and at $1899.00 it is a steal. Too bad it has Windows XP Home Edition on it. The Nvidia Ti4200 video card is kind of cheap as well. I wonder if the motherboard support 8X AGP capabilities?

I also just noticed that the price does not include a monitor. Still, it does seem like a good price. I think it is pretty cool to see a home system using RAID on it.

[Angus]

Oh man. I wonder how they're going to explain to users that if one drive goes bad in the RAID 0 stripe that you lose everything. Or that striping drives like that increases the likelihood of a drive failure. I'm all about RAID, but I'm an advanced user and can deal with that sort of thing. It's good to see it offered on a prebuilt computer though.

[Ioman]

Originally posted by Angus
Oh man. I wonder how they're going to explain to users that if one drive goes back in the RAID 0 stripe that you lose everything. Or that striping drives like that increases the likelihood of a drive failure. I'm all about RAID, but I'm an advanced user and can deal with that sort of thing. It's good to see it offered on a prebuilt computer though.

oooh totally good points. People migh tbe upset that they cannot use the 2nd drive for a backup since its in the RAID configuration. I bet their tech support department is just cringing at this system.

Props to them for trying something bold in the consumer electronics arena though.

[Ioman]

Think it has the stripped down version of XP Home edition too? I am willing to bet it does. So I assume that Home edition and Corporate/pro have the same type of RAID support? If not, they why did they pick Home XP edition over PRO? Probably costs?

[Angus]

Well, I guess they could be using some sort of inexpensive hardware RAID solution to get around XP Home. I'm not sure though if XP Home supports the "dynamic disc" style RAID arrays or not. I try to stay away from XP as much as possible. Hehehe. I think in the last months I've told about a dozen different people to just do themselves a favor and get Windows 2000. Hehe.