> if i'm streaming video, IDE is great.. if i'm ten users on a 
> unix box, doing mail,web, and nameserving at the same time, IDE doesnt
> work too well

Well, perhaps some $60 closeout special IDE drive made by JTS [*]
doesn't, but then it's possible to find poor quality SCSI drives too.

If you really believe that high-end IDE drives peform substantially
worse than high-end SCSI drives, you're seriously out of touch.
I've got a box doing exactly the things you describe, using a
Maxtor 60G IDE drive, and no one has complained about any performance
issues.  And that's not even one of the highest-performance IDE drives.

The IDE interface is terrible from an electrical point of view, and the
command set isn't too hot, but that has no bearing on seek performance.

The big problem with IDE is that the ATA standards require a maximum
cable length of 18 inches.  Just TRY to find an IDE cable that short in
a store.


[*] I think JTS has gotten out of the disk drive business.  At least,
I sure hope they have.