"Geoff Mackenzie" wrote

Thanks, Jim, you've summed it up. I keep my PC for word processing,
email, pictures for eBay and occasionally catching up with Radio 7. My
audio stuff is quite separate, and I'd prefer it to remain so. I asked
for comments on the Brennan in this NG a while back, and all the replies
pointed me towards a PC solution. My point is that while I've had a few
failures on the audio system(s) over the years - mainly blown fuses, an
arcing failure on the ESL, a burnt out valve etc - I've never had one
which caused me to lose my entire record/CD collection! Entirely
possible with a PC based solution, whether from a virus, unspecified bugs
or simply Bill Gates waking up with a hangover and deciding to render all
previous releases obsolete. I don't want "music on the move", I'm just
looking for a way of archiving the whole lot and giving me ease of access,
hence my interest in the Brennan (no, I'm not plugging it, I haven't
bought one yet) but if it really does what it says on the tin and works
straight out of the box then it takes away all the problems of software
compatibility and so on which do not interest me at all.


There's no guarantee a Brennan won't fail, and thus cause you to loose your
entire record collection. Unless of course you've kept the CDs/LPs, a
solution which works just as well with a PC-based playback system.

In some 15 years of using a PC at home I've never lost data due to an HD
failure. A couple of times computers have died on me and I've had to hook up
the HD from it to another computer to copy off data which I hadn't got round
to backing-up. But I've never not been able to do that, with a Brennan you
would have to send the failed unit back to the factory and get them to do
that for you, if indeed they would be prepared to do it. In addition I
always keep valuable and irreplaceable data (such as my digital photos) on
at least two HDs, RAID makes that easy. Of course both HDs could be
destroyed simultaneously in a fire or flood or suchlike, but then the same
fate could overtake your physical record/CD or photo collections.

David.