Masonry Magazine November 2002 Page. 38
Industry
TRENDS
enough, it then has to find space in the hard drive, at a much slower access rate. The more capability you can load into RAM, the faster the system will work in normal operation.
Internet buying
SO WHERE ARE WE? A moderately priced basic system from a typical Internet retailer will have a 1.5 GHz processor, 128 Mb RAM and a 133 MHz bus speed. Bus speed? That's the rate of data transfer between the components to and from the drives and the RAM or processor depending on the application Again, speed is nice, but not necessary for every application or user.
Add a CD-RW (read, write and rewrite capable), an 80 Gb hard drive, video/monitor card, network interface card (NIC) and a modem-not necessary if you connect to the Internet via the network card using cable or DSL (digital subscriber line). Careful selection should be able to get you that system partially assembled and tested for less than $500. You'll have to install the drives and cards, none of which is heavy lifting. Typically, the drives, such as the CD-RW, will come with the necessary cables to connect them to the system. The instruction sheet, rarely more than one page long, will explain the settings for "master/slave" operation and which connector on the cable goes where. And, if you run into trouble, just ask the local computer whiz your son or daughter or the teenager next door.
Open the Windows
AH, THE OPERATING SYSTEM. Since upwards of 80 percent of the office PCs today run an Intel or compatible processor and Microsoft Windows, the two are often considered interdependent. That's not absolutely true. AMD has competitively priced, high quality processors, and you can run several other operating systems, including versions of UNIX - one of the oldest small computer systems - and Linux. What you can't run is Apple's Macintosh operating system, currently Mac OS-X.
A decade ago, the trend was toward "open systems." UNIX was one, Windows wasn't. Not one to watch market share slip slide away, Microsoft developed their "New Technology" OS, Windows NT that combined many of the attributes of open systems-but did so in a still proprietary way. In a few years, Windows NT, and subsequently Windows 2000 and XP/Professional, had displaced UNIX in all but a few high-performance systems and environments. Most systems administrators complain about the "bugs" and the crashes, but Windows is the default OS on the desktop.
It can be said with confidence that whatever applications you need to run your business, they are available on Windows. Many are only available on Windows. So unless you feel the urge to spend months reprogramming an application that you need so it runs on an OS like Linux, bite the bullet and plan on installing a Windows variation.
Filling that box
IF YOU HAVE lots of money to spend on custom software, that can be an option. Meidl notes, "Some customers still have the custom software mentality. They pay us to make changes to our programs so they can use them in ways we didn't intend. They can justify spending $2000 for custom programming changes when somebody else is choking on $5000 to buy the whole program."
An application like Tut, designed for the mason contractor and how masonry businesses are operated, makes a good base for the specialized office functions such as accounting, payroll and scheduling. Add a suite product like Microsoft Office or Corel WordPerfect Office, and you'll have all the common applications in place.
As Meidl points out, simple isn't bad when you start out. "If you haven't had any computer, any generic program that lets you go from manual to computer will be pretty neat for awhile. It will allow you to do a fair amount of work. Then, as your business grows a bit more, you begin to realize there are a lot of things that you have to do that the basic system doesn't do. Once you know enough about computers to know what it could do it if it was programmed right, once that light flashes on, you go out in the market and look for programs that are more specifically tailored to your industry. That's when you look at programs that inherently operate closer to the way you operate."
That also can be said of the "box" in which these applications reside. Think of it as a tool-if you know how to use it right, it makes the job a lot easier. What's physically inside that box isn't as critical as what is run on it. We can all assembly a full functional computer in a matter of hours but it takes a lot longer to make it do what we want, run the business and help us make a profit.