Unfortunately, it doesn't always work that way because I can assure you that the folks they contract to run the gamut from good to worse that incompetent. I won't bore you with the disaster, other than to say Dell won't win any awards from me.

Got real excited about Drobo a few months back, did my research and discovered a LOT of continuing horror stories of total data loss and zero customer service. When it works as advertised, its' great. When it doesn't you are thoroughly screwed.

Currently looking as unRAID as a possible solution. Similar concept, perhaps better implementation. Could start off by re-purposing my existing computer as an unRAID server. Just started researching it.

<g> Easier said than done. I do a lot of different things, many of which require somewhat specialty software. Just the nature of what I do.

Some quick hints:
[*]RAID-1 reduces performance by requiring two operations for every write, but can slightly improve read performance. Using a hardware RAID controller with on-board memory can offset this performance loss.

[*]In my experience, systems with software RAID are more likely to experience failures than systems with no RAID. I'm not sure why this is, but I believe it has something to do with bad software drivers and timing issues.

[*]SAS (Serial-attached-SCSI) drives will provide much better performance than IDE, but again, are expensive.

[*]Avoid drives slower than 7500 RPM. Stick with 10K or 15K drives if you can afford them.

Skip RAID get a big NAS (2x or 4x the size of the computer storage)

disclaimer: My day job is in a government IT group that supports about 200 mixed servers (Unix, Linux, Microsoft) and about 4000 desktops and laptops (Windows). I used to spec the Microsoft servers. My opinions are my own.

background: We used to use Dell servers, 2400 series, and switched after the 2500 series was introduced because their RAID system was unreliable in our experience. The Dell 240 desktops were much more reliable, and we used them as servers where we didn't need raid. I built a Citrix farm out of them, about 25-30 servers. The Dell reps were surprised to see this, to say the least. On our next run of servers we purchased HP DL360's and 380's, which have been great for us. Dell support is uniformly lousy, IMO.

opinion: For all the vendors, product life cycles are very short, so testing time is short. There are models of computers by any manufacturer that have problems. For Dell 380's, it's bad DVD/CD drives. For a newly released model, nobody, included the manufacturer, knows how reliable it's going to be. Service at the consumer level sucks. It probably has to suck, because too many consumers have no clue of how to operate a computer, and the manufacturers are stuck fielding thousands of calls that have nothing to do with a problem in the hardware. The better their support is, the more calls they would get (conjecture).

suggestion 1: Buy a name brand pc with the most memory and slowest Intel processor you can find in their entry level line. The faster the processor, the more the heat, the more heat the more stress and reduced lifetime on everything. You won't notice a 50% improvement in CPU speed unless you're playing intense video games or doing multi-hour calculations. Every version of Windows ever written needs large amounts of memory.

suggestion 2: Buy a refurbished name brand business computer. Dell Optiplex's are what we use, and they've been very reliable for us. The parts in these business machines, IMO, aren't any better than those in a consumer PC. The benefit for the business is remote management and diagnostics, and theoretically faster repair because of modular design. A probable benefit is that they have a longer product cycle, and are more reliable because of that.

Best of luck with whatever you choose.

He wants to do video editing!!!

A 50% slower CPU or a single core instead of a dual or dual instead of a quad is night and day difference in video editing!!!