Masonry Magazine November 2002 Page. 37
High capacity is what everyone wants
The hard drive is the mass storage device. In the early days of the desktop personal computer (PC), storage was on a magnetic tape-literally a cassette from a music system-or magnetic sheet, formed into a disk and encased in a paper envelope. This floppy disk, and they were truly floppy in those days, was inserted into a drive that caused the disk to spin and the data to be written magnetically on the sheet.
Over the past two decades, "floppy" disks have become encased in hard plastic, have shrunk in size and increased in capacity. In many systems, they have also become obsolete, replaced by the CD drive. Very little software is distributed on floppy disks, but floppy drives can come in handy for system boot disks and virus definitions should your computer ever crash. These units can still serve a useful function day-to-day as a portable data storage device, allowing you to carry 1.44 up to 2.88 Mb (megabytes) of data in a shirt pocket.
Because they are enclosed in plastic-which will warp and even melt if left in the direct sun, fair warning-the floppy disk protects the data rather well. But high capacity is what everyone wants these days, partially because everything we do on a computer requires significantly more data than 20 years ago.
Filling the box
APPLICATIONS, the programs that we use to make computers worthwhile, have gained so much in capability, at the expense of increased data needs, that the CD, with a storage capacity of 650 Mb or more, has replaced the floppy in most situations. Luckily, without much fanfare, the cost of not only a CD drive for "playing" the data in the computer-but of a CD burner has dropped to well under $100. By incorporating the ability to read and write, or even write repeatedly, data to the CD format, a burner makes the system much more functional.
Back to the hard drive. My first computer with a hard drive, in 1985, cost more than $6,000 and the drive capacity was 5 Mb. Today, an 80 Gb drive-a gigabyte is 1,000 megabytes-costs under $100. Don't skimp on data storage, either in the hard drive or RAM. At today's prices, this is the easiest and cheapest way to a useful system.
The need for speed
SO WHAT DO WE HAVE in the box now? The motherboard with processor-typically rated in MHz-and RAM, connected to a floppy drive, hard drive and CD. In all cases, the "need for speed" will determine the cost. Still, a good system can be had for less than $500 by careful selection.
Take the processor speed. Power users especially those that play simulation games like Doom or Tomb Raider-want the fastest processor they can afford. Most office systems don't gain much in using the faster processors for the simple reason that users, and the applications commonly used in offices, don't require nearly the speed of data transfer fast processors offer. The term "overkill" comes to mind. It's like buying a new super stereo system and playing 20-year-old cassettes on it.
How fast is fast enough? Today's medium priced processors are rated about 1.0 GHz. Fast ones are...well, they change so rapidly, whatever figure I quote will be ancient news by the time you read this. And that is another reason to target the need of the user and his or her applications rather than seeking the fastest-today's fastest will be tomorrow's slug.
Does a desktop system really become obsolete when the newest fast processor comes out? Not right away, but the power curve does draw software vendors into a nasty habit of spiraling capability and, naturally, increasing power requirements. Sort of, "The speed and power is available, why not use it?"
The software footprint
Of course, not everyone has nor wants that newest, fastest, most powerful system-at least not until they find the newest, most powerful applications to improve the business only run on those speed demons. Jim Meidl, CEO of J. Meidl Systems and the maker of Tut Software, has been "playing with computers" since 1974. He told me, "When we first designed software, because disk space was so expensive, you had to key in the transactions, run an audit report, run the program and update. In the process, the detail was lost. Now, we can program the software to do everything automatically because the power is available. Even so, power isn't the answer to improving the business functions of the computer, careful planning and structuring of the applications is the key."
Indeed, the key to any technology is to know what you want to accomplish and finding the best way to do it. As Meidl says, "You've got to design a business solution. Remember, every business solution can be implemented by hand. There is nothing that the computer can do that you cannot do by hand if you had enough time. You can design solutions by hand, and then implement them with computers, taking advantage of the computer's speed."
So if you are going to be using your new system for word processing, accounting, scheduling and other normal office routines, let the needs of the software determine the speed of the computer. Overrate the system by 25 to 50 percent from where you are today to give it the headroom you'll need as your applications requirements change but don't waste money and effort on something that does more than you'll ever ask it to do for you.
One area to invest in, however, is RAM. The more you have, the faster the system will seem to operate. This is because the data transfer path starts with RAM and, if you don't have