Thinkpad v. Mac for law school Forum

[03121202698008]

Deluge might be of interest to you. It has a web front end for remote access.

Also I like rsync.net for remote storage/backup. $0.80 per GB per month and they are total hacker ninjas. It's more or less enterprise quality. They offer student discounts, too I think.

Windows access with:

- Our simple, powerful Backup Agent
- Map as a drive letter for simple drag and drop access
- WinSCP, CuteFTP, or any other ftp/sftp/scp application
- The cwRsync version of the powerful rsync backup utility (rsync.exe)

Macintosh access with:

- The powerful rsync tool built into OS X
- Connect in the Finder for simple drag and drop access
- Fugu, Interarchy, Fetch, Transmit, or any other ftp/sftp/scp tool

UNIX access with:

- rsync, scp, sftp, ftp, rdiff-backup, Unison, duplicity
- standard unix commands over SSH
- Use as a local mount point with sshfs

Drag and drop means WebDAV. For WebDAV on XP, use the old version of Novell NetDrive available here. Avoid WebDrive. For Vista/Win7, use the new NetDrive. Multiple WebDAV clients are available for iOS and Android. Probably BB and Symbian, etc too.

Facilities

How do you secure your facilities ?

Our physical facilities are manned by live technicians 24 hours per day. Biometric access controls are employed at our locations, as well as video recording and strict entry/access logs.

How is the filesystem fault tolerant ?

All data is housed on hardware RAID arrays providing _at least_ RAID-6 protection. DO NOT trust your data to anyone running software raid, or anyone using RAID-5 (even if they utilize hot spares, etc.) All power is conditioned and backed by battery banks which are backed by diesel generators. Physical machines are connected to at least two distinct power circuits.

rsync.net performs quarterly audits of power load and equipment failover, and we are quite strict as to what constitutes "passing".

How well connected are your datacenters ?

Our primary US location is connected to a quintuple-homed network. All global locations are at least triple-homed.

rsync.net performs quarterly audits of network throughput and network latency.

What other security measures do you employ ?

We employ network Intrusion Detection Systems as well as IDS on each individual host.

Each users' individual filesystem is in a chroot that isolates it from the rest of the system.

Finally, user filesystems all live on data partitions that are mounted noexec / nosuid / nodev which provides an additional level of safety against sophisticated attacks.

Bad-ass.

That's really nothing all that special. Dropbox has similar security/uptime.

[Duralex]

That's really nothing all that special. Dropbox has similar security/uptime.

Dropbox is a much more packaged solution. I don't think you can mount a dropbox filesystem via webdav or ssh for instance. If you want local access to have to mirror the dropbox locally and sync the mirrored folder. You can't access Dropbox over FTP.

I don't see Dropbox describing anything like the above on their site when it comes to details about data security, storage architecture, backups, bandwidth, etc. They say they use AES256 to protect files and HTTPS to protect traffic and that's about it for specifics.

Dropbox is also 2GB for free or 50GB for $10/mo. So if you want more than 2GB and less than 12GB, rsync would be cheaper.

I'm not saying Dropbox is bad, I'm just pointing out a lesser known company that I think offers excellent service that's enterprise quality. Look at it this way: rsync.net is SOX and HIPAA compliant. Dropbox is not (at least, they won't say so, and I wouldn't either.)

I have a Dropbox account too, used mostly to move files between my phones and other mobile devices--a lot of app developers build in dropbox these days to get around host OS restrictions.

[nickbentley]

TL;DR as well

HOWEVER

I would venture that this is almost a universal fact: Anyone who recommends buying a PC over a Mac, has NEVER owned a mac

False. I had a PC... I bought into the Machype from all of the Apple fanboys. I bought the highest end Macbook Pro from Apple earlier this year.

Within two months, I gave it to my wife and bought a PC again.

NEVER BEEN HAPPIER about my decision.

[03121202698008]

TL;DR as well

HOWEVER

I would venture that this is almost a universal fact: Anyone who recommends buying a PC over a Mac, has NEVER owned a mac

False. I had a PC... I bought into the Machype from all of the Apple fanboys. I bought the highest end Macbook Pro from Apple earlier this year.

Within two months, I gave it to my wife and bought a PC again.

NEVER BEEN HAPPIER about my decision.

You sir are definitely the exception. In fact, I'd venture that you would have benefited from some training in how to use it to it's full capabilities.

[ResolutePear]

TL;DR as well

HOWEVER

I would venture that this is almost a universal fact: Anyone who recommends buying a PC over a Mac, has NEVER owned a mac

False. I had a PC... I bought into the Machype from all of the Apple fanboys. I bought the highest end Macbook Pro from Apple earlier this year.

Within two months, I gave it to my wife and bought a PC again.

NEVER BEEN HAPPIER about my decision.

You sir are definitely the exception. In fact, I'd venture that you would have benefited from some training in how to use it to it's full capabilities.

Not everybody wants to get into the UNIX-rigors to learn their system well. It does good for tech guys or power users, but I'd wager that's not the market he's in.

It's not an exception. I've seen many people who bought into the hype and returned or sold their MB/P's because OSX just isn't their type of OS or they can't stand the keyboard, etc.

Maybe they don't want to be targeted by thieves while walking out of a coffee shop... each to their own, ya know?

[beach_terror]

This thread needs to drift into the abyss. You can only argue in circles for so long.

[LAWYER2]

I picked up an IBM Thinkpad T42 with extended battery for 250 on craigslist. it will do everything I need to for law school. email, one note, ms office suite, and adobe pro. I don't see the point in spending a lot of money on a laptop for law school. If I was going to grad school for graphic design, maybe. But, I just need something that will have a decent battery and make it 4 years (going PT). After that I will invest in a Macbook, I have an iMac at home and love it.

By far the smartest post that I've read on TLS in a LONG time. People get so caught up in having the latest greatest stuff that everybody else has that they fail to even use common sense!
That T42 is a work-horse! My kids use them and literally keep them on 24/7. I am a Lenovo/IBM certified tech and thinkpads ARE the professional grade, no-nonsense laptop that you need!
By the way I have T42's and a T60 for sale if anyone needs one w/ extended batteries. PM me in interested.


**ETA** and for those scared of HD failure, I will be using a 16gig thumbnail drive (smaller than typical flash drives), for redundancy

[ResolutePear]

This thread needs to drift into the abyss. You can only argue in circles for so long.

You sound like somebody who would dislike politics

[beach_terror]

This thread needs to drift into the abyss. You can only argue in circles for so long.

You sound like somebody who would dislike politics

Ironically, I was a polysci major and I've worked on a few political campaigns.