 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Editorial Peter Smith |
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Training
Recently I had the opportunity to look over the overhead slides and handouts for the Ventura course (which will be nearly over when this issue of
PC Update reaches you). To say I was impressed would be an understatement the quality is as good as you get from the "professional" training
organisations. The way the cost of both printers and computers is coming down, DTP facilities are within the budget of more and more organisations. A word of warning just because you have the equipment does not mean you can produce a professional document. As with most subjects, the more you learn about DTP, typography, layout and so on, the more you realise you have yet to learn! So, start with a basic grounding in all these areas and develop your creative skills from this sound base. (I will not be at all surprised to hear that a third, fourth or even fifth Ventures course has been scheduled!)
How Big is a Hard Disk?
If you have not yet read the President's Page, please digress and do so now now you are back you may have some understanding of the heading to this paragraph. I see two major scenarios for hard disk users - simplifying somewhat they are the "social" and the "professional". In "social" I include everything that does not generate income for the hard disk's owner. As an ex-PM put it "Life wasn't meant to be easy", but according to me "computers are meant to make life easier". Making life easier and laziness often have a lot in common, but I will attempt to explain where some of the 150 MB in my hard disk has gone, and why. Those of you with contrary, or similar, views or suggestions could contribute them to the next "Byte Bob" (Letters to the Editor) - this topic probably has nearly as many opinions as there are members!
Back to the "mega-disk".
I am a professional project manager, programmer, analyst, designer, trainer, implementer, in fact I seem to do just about anything related to computers that my clients need. One of the many things on my hard disk is the full source code, object code and several runtime copies of a package that I maintain, install and train users in. Now this collection of data data is large, and rarely accessed - only when there is a problem. But, when there is a problem, speed is of the absolute essence. Clients expect fast results (they pay for them!), but do not expect to pay (anything up to $100 per hour) for me to be fiddling about re-instating a copy of their system, its source, etc from floppy disks or other external sources. So, in my case space (and therefore time) is money. A 150 MB hard disk costs about $1,500 more than a 40 MB disk - once I've saved 15-20 hours of time, it's paid for itself.
The other side of this coin is the backup problem. It is nowhere near as great as at first apparent. All that is absolutely essential to keep for this system (which consists of over 250 programs) is the source code and the compilers - from those, given enough time, everything else can be re-created. Whereas the entire source, object, runtime and user systems occupies some 40 MB, the Zipped source code is only about 1 MB. As I keep a second complete copy of all this data on another 150 MB hard disk, on another computer, at another site, I can sleep easily - the day the Editor's hard disk crashes will probably not cause reverberations in Werribee (the President, in Balwyn, may hear some slight rumblings as I dash past to the backup site in the city!).
On a more serious note, the point raised about backup, and what happens when a hard disk does fail, is one all users should have considered and planned for, before the fateful day hits. One of the golden rules of a successful Project Manager is "Plan for success, but anticipate Disaster - when you can meet a disaster head-on and come out in front, you'll be one of the real achievers! Sooner or later everyone will be struck by a disaster, the only thing you can be sure of - the less prepared you are, the sooner it will be!
My sort of operation is not typical of the "social" or home user. For these it is difficult to equate time and money, but easy to equate space and money. The average social user has different budgetary constraints and is, in general, less worried about having to use diskettes as "overflow storage" for information that it would be "nice" to have on the hard disk. Swapping data to and from the hard disk can also provide a limited form of backup.
Reprinted from the May 1991 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
