After working with FreeNAS as a free storage solution for small businesses I came across Lime Technologies unRAID, which takes a completely different approach to storage.  It’s a software RAID type solution that uses your largest disk as a parity drive that isn’t used for storage, and then all other drives of any size as storage.  You can lose the parity drive or one of the data drives and not crash the system, but two drive loss is bad.  unRAID splits data across your drives in a variety of ways, …

FreeNAS seems to be making a lot of news and tech sites lately; it’s a free network attached storage operating system so you can make your own NAS box out of whatever hardware you want.  I haven’t been interested because of how great works for me, but I had a friend who needed network storage cheap as in free.

He had a Pentium III 700 MHz PC, Asus CUSI-M SiS motherboard with a 20 GB hard drive and 512 MB of RAM and a CD-ROM.  Since it had to be …

Received an email from DC Comics today letting me know issue one of Madame Xanadu was available in PDF format as a free download.  I checked it out and it pointed me to a list of free issue one Vertigo comics: 32 and counting.  An excellent free resource to whet your appetite for Vertigo.

To create some buzz for the upcoming Red Alert 3 Electronic Arts has released the original Red Alert for free.
Command & Conquer Red Alert

Originally published June 28th 2002.
Like most computer obsessed users I have a home server running at home. It handles my internet connection, stores my files and hosts my web, FTP, email, Certificate and VPN servers. No matter where I am I like access to my files, because you just never know. As well I like to play with a lot of different technologies and try to get an understanding of how they work. There are lots of connection options available to me, but what do you do when something stops …

Available for free are the original MechCommander, MechCommander Gold and MechCommander 2, as well as the manuals. I have fond memories of these the first time around and they’re a great addition to the growing list of free PC games.
MechCommander.org

Everyone needs to create a PDF file at some point for distribution, archiving, whatever.  The open source and free way to do it elegantly and simply is to use PDF Forge.  Installs as a printer driver and has lots of options for the finished product.
PDF Forge

This is a multi platform media player, completely open source and full of playback goodness.  I was thrilled with in on my Pocket PC, and it’s ready for fourteen other platforms.
VLC Media Player

SUPER is a nice GUI for a bunch of freeware and open source encoders that lets you convert multimedia files from one type to another.  The interface is a it busy but it handles everything you need.
SUPER (Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer)

No, not for calculating the best way to work during rush hour.  PRTG Freeware Edition is a relatively simple way to monitor up to three devices for bandwitdh usage, such as your router (internet traffic), server or suspected issue.
PRTG Traffic Grapher