The DA* 18-250 is out of production btw and Tamron now has a 18-270 on the market which seem to preform quite well, here is a review of the lens link

I have a 18-250 myself and it's quite a nice lens the only drawback I've is that it doesn't have quick-shift and I'm really missing that, for the rest it does his job well.

There is also an option for just 2 lenses, the kit lens or 16-45 with the DA 55-300. They both aren't heavy which the 18-250 is and the IQ is better. The 55-300 would be fine for almost all outdoor things and the 16-45 for the indoor activities. That would be my kit I think.

You can't go really wrong with that lens I believe, the DA* 50-135 is also an option, it's just what you want and need.
I really don't think it can take that long before the 60-250 is here, it is already in the systems of the shops and they have an advice price.

I've made some shot with the demo model of the 60-250 too bad I didn't had my camera with me or else I could show you some shots

They were pretty quick with the release date of the DA* 55mm btw I didn't knew of it after the road map but the DA* 60-250 is really taking a long time and we are still waiting

The Pentax is the better lens of the two and for that money difference I would get the Pentax.
btw. the Tamron 70-300 is a better lens than Sigma and it's a lot cheaper, the only problem the lens have is that it suffer off CAs.

The end price was £30 minus the bottle of wine £5 = £25 and the waiter gets £2 so that makes a total of £27

Just wait a bit it really can't take that long anymore, I hope

The DA* and Sigma are quite comparable no real diffrence really.
Pentax would be weather-sealed and probable have better contrast, colours and bokeh.
other options in that range would be the 70-200 f/2.8 of Tamron or Sigma, both also fine lenses I've been told.

Norton 2009 is a real improvement, read this link and look more here av-comparatives.org/

Here are some numbers of the Terabite external drivers link
The firewire 800 just limits the drives so if you've firewire 800 just stick with that since there isn't much reason to get an eSATA card for it.
If you don't have a firewire 800 then get an eSATA card since it's just a bit more expensive then a firewire 800 card.
firewire 800 card £37.50
eSATA card £40.07

It's just a hardware problem and there is nothing you can do against it.
Banding noise is most visible at high ISO speeds and in the shadows, or when an image has been excessively brightened. Banding noise can also increase for certain white balances, depending on camera model.
So check the white balance and see if anything has to do with it.

To soften the pain all the other manufacturers cameras also suffer.
The problems with the Nikon D300 were fixed with and firmware upgrade so maybe there might come a solution in the form of that

Thank you Lilly, glad it was helpfull and no worries about the 3 topics running

You also posted also in the other topic but will combine them into one here.

The WD studio is formatted for MAC but you can easly chance that so that it works on Windows so no worries there. You simply need to Format the disk to another kind of sytem file. MAC use HFS+ and Microsft use NTFS

Now about the connections, there is a nice table here link
if you have normall firewire, USB2 would be faster but like Shim said you can buy PCI cards with eSATA that you can connect to your motheroard.
eSATA card you can also save money like Pete said and get the cable I showed you link but that won't be Plug & play like he said

To give you some times, your backup of 75GB (76 800MB) will take theoratically;
USB2 = 21 minutes
Firewire 400 = 26 minutes
Firewrie 800 = 13 mintues
eSATA = 4.5 minutes
Like I said these are theoratical numbers, so it will take some longer in the real world.