Eagle, ID — Now that I have more time on my hands (with no work and all) I decided that I’d build my next computer. I justified it by telling Heather that I’d be saving $300 off of buying a similar machine from Velocity Micro, who I respect for workstations. I’m building a workstation which is a computer good for 3D applications. I started dabbling in those last winter and really enjoyed it. Plus, I wanted a computer that would work well for Windows Vista, the next version of Windows that is due out by the end of next year.

I priced all the parts and found that I could get almost everything from NewEgg.com. I frequent sites like FatWallet.com so a few of the items had decent rebates that would help keep the costs low. The build went well and now I have a rock’n Athlon X2 4400+ machine, overclocked to 2.4 GHZ. It’s got 2GB of quality memory (although I didn’t go with ECC…to big a price hit) and two 74GB Raptors in RAID 0. I know a lot of people look down on RAID 0, since if one drive dies, your data is lost. But I have a daily backup strategy that always leaves me only 1 day away from restoring the whole system.

I think people freak out because they don’t understand statistics. Let’s say a single raptor has a 1 in a 200 chance of dying in three years. That means two raptors in a RAID 0 system would have a 1 in 100 chance. Sure it doubles the chances, but even at a 1 in 200 chance, you still want to have a solid backup strategy…so why not go with the faster system if expenses allow? The same goes for health risks, just because a study finds that taking a certain drug doubles the likelihood of, let’s say, heart attack, doesn’t mean you’re going to have one. Most cases they’re talking about probabilities of 1 in a 2000 going to 1 in 1000. One in a thousand is still a pretty small likelihood and that increase is typically outweighed by the drug’s benefit. Just like most things in life, it’s all about benefits and risks.