Another Way to 'Keep' Food

Or should I say, another way to 'deal' with food.  We can keep food in the ground in the garden, in the fridge or freezer, we could possibly 'can' or bottle our own, we can air dry things like herbs, and we can bake but the other thing I never really paid much attention to is drying food, as in, with a food dehydrator.

This post on the Milkwood blog got me thinking and then oops I clicked on this link and I was stuck.  Exacalibur indeed.  Another thing to add to my 'dreams are free' list.  With the Excalibur, such a short use of resources (electricity, which can be offset somewhat by grid solar) in a long term use machine (the dehydrator) using food you are happy to use (organic apples, say) and that results in a much more economical outcome - for example instead of $40 a kilo for shop bought dried apples (and their numbers in them) you can pay even maybe $10 a kilo for organic apples and you still come out waaaay in front even if you include the electricity cost.

I would probably have a crack at fruit leathers, dried apples, prunes, semi-dried tomato and whatever else I think we would eat.  My only question is how to store the dried foods for, and how long they store for?  Do you dry foods and if so how?