So, What is the Verdict on the Beatles Box Sets?

I agree with Herman. The cost is so low that putting together large HD's with Raid controlers for auto backup is easy.

These new releases are great-sounding. The stereo sounds artificial on the ones I've listened to so far, with instruments on one side and voices on the other. It's tempting to put my preamp in mono mode to listen to them.

But the clarity of the instrumental and voice lines is something to hear. Makes the Beatles sound like the fine musicians they were. Well worth it IMHO, it's a trip.

Yes, they sound better than the older 80's versions.
But, after listening to the Love DVD-A, I cant help wondering what they could have sounded like in Blu ray or SACD / DVD-A .

Hard drives might be cheap, but my time is too valuable to have to keep backing things up. Is it really too much to ask for some reliability these days?

Nothing is reliable in the sense that it will never break. Its really pretty amazing that they work at all if you ask me. You can get programs that back up your data automatically. The only time spent is setting it up so you would spend less time doing that than complaining about hard drives here :>)

The first hard drive I contemplated buying was around 1985 and it held 5 megabytes for about $500 which would be about $1,000 in today's money. That is $200 a megabyte versus .0001 dollars a megabyte today.