I shouldn’t really call it an upgrade per se but I managed to find some time yesterday (vacation day) to rebuild my home desktop personal computer with Windows 7 (64bit) replacing my Windows Vista (64bit) installation.

I backed up all my files to an old server I had setup running Openfiler, it’s amazing how much space all those home movies and pictures take up. I reformatted my primary hard drive and ran through the installation. It took longer than I expected but I later found out that I had left the floppy drive enabled in the BIOS (there was no floppy drive in the desktop) and that may have had something to-do with the longer than customary installation time I experienced.

Now I’m left with re-installing all the different applications that I use from time to time. When I was younger I didn’t mind this task so much because it generally translated into a significant increase in speed and performance of the desktop (at least for a while). These days though I find myself not having the same excitement I once had in the past. I guess I’m getting old and grumpy…

While I’m rambling on let me say that Ubuntu (specifically release 10.1) is really becoming a strong alternative desktop operating system. While it still took some messing, the installation of some basic tools such as the Java Runtime Engine, Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash was much improved over previous releases. I was very impressed with the performance as well.

So my question for folks… what if anything are you using at home to store your home movies and pictures? Are you using an old PC running some open source solution? Did you go out and purchase an all-in-one solution?

I  just started using an old IBM xSeries 345 with 1GB of RAM and ~ 300 GB of disk space across 6 drives. I’m concerned that my electric bill is going to go threw the roof next month if I run this thing 24×7 as my media storage server. It might be cheaper for me to just purchase a Drobo or something along those lines from an kWh  perspective not to mention the space. cooling and noise issues created by running and IBM xSeries 345 in your basement. I had accidentally forgotten to connect both power supplies when I first turned it on. The beast sounded like a jet engine running full blast until I connected the second power supply and the fans slowed down to their normal operating speed.

Cheers!