A
great many people have expressed an interest in donating
to the Traveling Terabyte Project. Some have made offers
of hardware. Others have emailed lists of their movies,
music, and TV shows that they would like to make available
to friends overseas. Still others have simply asked if they
can give money directly to us.
Our
preference is that donations be material rather than financial.
Sending and receiving money via the web is safe, for sure,
but can be a hassle when it comes to record keeping and
dealing with groups like PayPal. Instead of money, we prefer
that interested parties contact us and make arrangments
for shipments of hardware or content to reach us directly.
Thus,
all parties who offer assistance can be recognized (if they
so desire) and also can be secure in the knowledge that
their contributions went towards this project specifically,
and not someone's private hardware collection.
We
are happy to accept content on recorded media or on an external
drive which we can send back to you. Naturally, formats
like MP3 audio and DviX or XviD video are better than original
DVDs or CDs since content must be converted to those formate
for inclusion on the TTBs. Please note that no other formats
are acceptable... proprietary formats like WMV, RealVideo,
QuickTime, and MP4 aren't compatible across all platforms
and sometimes even support DRM. Formats like MPEG and FLAC
do not offer enough compression to make efficient use of
disk space.
We
also accept donations of hardware. People have sent us used
or privately refurbished hard drives, but for durability
and long life new (or factory-refurbished) drives are best.
External enclosures are a dime a dozen... but we are trying
very hard to keep exclusively to the look and functionality
offered by the Mini
Portable Disk enclosures described in the tech section of
our FAQ.
Actually,
hardware in general has become so inexpensive that an entire
TTB case can be constructed using less than $500 worth of
parts, and that includes all shipping charges. If you wish
to make a significant contribution to the TTB project, consider
offering up the means for us to create a whole new case.
Anyone who shows this much generosity will be allowed to
choose whether the new addition will be a tan or green TTB
and will also be its first recipient.
Contact
us directly if you are considering donating to the project.
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