Help! Caught in the upgrade treadmill...

[Alexander Von_obert <avobert -at- TWH -dot- MSN -dot- SUB -dot- ORG>]

Hello Geoff,


* Antwort auf eine Nachricht von geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca an All am 21.07.95

gg> When do we stop upgrading our hardware and software and say
gg> "this is good
gg>      enough... I don't really need more"? Can we do this?

There are people who think they want/must have the ultimate high-tech toy.
 That's not you and not me. I should add, that I'm one of those "power users"
 that play Lego with their computer parts. Just to explain my view...

When I buy a computer, I do not try to have "room to grow" in it. It should
 fit now and will be old in two years anyhow. But there are only two facts,
that
 could make me buy a computer:

- I need LOTS of software. At least here in Germany you get software
  really cheap when you buy a computer.

- There is a BIG technology gap to bridge. This might happen next year,
  when I step up (in one single step) to Win95, PCI, Plug&Play and
  what-do-I-know-now.

But I have not bought a computer for four years. What I did was to replace
 parts of the computer I earn my money with and hand down the replaced parts to
 my other PCs: Mailbox, "play" computer (where I can check something or run the
 program I write the documentation for). When I buy my Win 95 machine described
 above, my present workstation (486/40, 16 MB, 500 MB) will be merged with my
 present file server (386/40, 1 GB, 16 MB, Netware 3.11).

On the software side, I am completely customer driven. When I write articles
 for newspapers or journals, I prefer Word for DOS 4.0 :-)  - have used it for
 many years.

But I could not avoid Win 3.1. I upgraded it to 3.11, but not to Windows for
 Workgroups. I bought Winword 2 to write Winhelp. A customer forced me to
 upgrade to Winword 6, because he used it. BTW: If you only want to look at
 Winword 6 files or want to convert them to Winword 2, there is freeware at
 ftp.microsoft.com for that.

On the DTP side, I have PageMaker 4.0 and might update to PageMaker 6, when I
 should change to Win 95. The "open file" dialog and the clipboard are simply
 outdated right now.

gg>      Here's the problem: my current computer works just fine
gg> for what I'm
gg>      doing, and will always meet my needs so long as I don't
gg> upgrade and so
gg>      long as it keeps running.

A friend of mine, who has a small deli (if you come here, you MUST taste his
 cheese!), does his accounting on a 286/12 MHz. I "updated" his PC with parts
 that fell from the desk behind the smallest of my computers - it's no problem
 to outdo a Seagate ST225 20 MB/80 ms hard disk and he could even use some RAM
 in DIL packages :-)

He is quite happy with his PC, it is fast enough for him. But I might have
 made a mistake to give him a modem for Fax - there are hardly any DOS fax
 programs anymore. At these points, you definitely see the limits where a new
 computer is just behind the corner. Not even his case will do anymore, as it
 only has three drive bays. In those days, you only had to 5 1/4" disks and
 yould not imagine to have more than two hard disks.

gg> But if I don't upgrade, at some point in the
gg>      future the hardware will die (or the files I produce with
gg> the software
gg>      won't be accepted anymore at the publishing service
gg> bureaus),

Keep some backups! But converting data files across several generations of a
 single software package can be a pain. E.g., you need a special program to
 convert PageMaker 3 files for PageMaker 5.

gg> and I'll be hit with the whole upgrade price at once

Where's the problem? You will hardly pay more when updating in one big step
 than in all those little steps. Simply remember every month to put some money
 away for this big step.


Greetings from Germany,
Alexander

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