HP ProLiant G7 N54L 2.2GHz MicroServer deal on @ eBuyer

eBuyer has their next HP micro server promotion up. Its a slight upgrade over what I think was the N40L (Could be N45L).  The price is currently £209 with a £100 cashback (you'll be waiting a month or so for this).

The specs are pretty basic, but this is ideal for my intended purpose of it being a NAS box to share all my videos and music across multiple devices. I haven't bought any upgrades for it as of yet. I want to experiment with it first as it'll be my first NAS box. The 250GB hard disk should suffice for the mean time until I am ready to use it properly. Its interesting to see what people have done in terms of running the OS off a flash drive on the internal USB port or their set-ups with RAID arrays.

I'll also need some sort of Dynamic DNS service as I'm on a residential Sky broadband line with a dynamic IP. Free ones can be had from www.no-ip.biz, but there is also dyndns.com which is $25 a year. Then again with the O2 purchase, Sky has been hinting at rolling out a static IP address to some customers. My guess is probably at an extra cost which is fair enough as it isn't a business service I guess.

Other concerns are noise. I want it to be dead quiet as its going to sit in the living room. I recently upgraded my Shuttles graphics card (a whole different beast) and it's noticeably louder these days.

http://www.freenas.org/ is looking like the OS of choice from what my colleague suggested.
From what the site says it looks pretty versatile which is what I need running a variety of OS's in my household.

I've not used a Windows server in a long while now, but it might be worth a download of the trail version to have a look. I've heard some good things about Windows Server 2012.

Link to the product is here:
http://www.ebuyer.com/430446-proliant-microserver-turion-2-2-2gb-250gb-nhpl-sata-lff-in-704941-421

Say goodbye to power cords with USB 3.0 update

http://www.neowin.net/news/say-goodbye-to-power-cords-with-usb-30-update

Usb to serial adapter

If you need a cheap USB to serial adapter then look no further. I went through a few eBay ones but it looks like a lot use knockoff chipsets and I found issues when using OSX and Windows 7 with them. Plugable are recommended by the chipset manufacturer and only use genuine chipsets. They are also cheap and I have tested them working on OSX and Windows 8!

For a full product break down and drivers see:
http://plugable.com/products/pl2303-db9

Please use my affiliate link below if purchasing to help me cover domain renewal costs if you found this helpful. Thanks!

CES 2013: Belkin Drops eSATA Support for Upcoming Thunderbolt Express Dock, Cuts Price Back to $299

Shame to see eSATA die out (I loved it over USB / ethernet  transfers) but hopefully thunderbolt will gain good traction on multiple platforms.

http://www.macrumors.com/2013/01/07/ces-2013-belkin-drops-esata-support-for-upcoming-thunderbolt-express-dock-cuts-price-back-to-299/

Opinion on USB 3 micro connector...

Who the hell thought this form factor was a good idea... Thats ridiculous and mobile phone manufactures will hate it! The whole point of them pain painstakingly designing normal sized USB 3 ports into the same form factor was for compatibility. Why they couldn't have miniaturised and split the extra contacts around the edge of the current form factor I don't know... 

Picture source: Wikipedia

Update: I wonder if Apple can fit USB3 down the lightening connector. If they pull it off I think other manufactures will be up in arms wanting a smaller form factor for their devices. Circuit board space matters to them! 

Why you should insist on USB 3 - Bit-tech

Why you should insist on USB 3