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Upgrades, Part
II: Hardware Wars
The other day someone told
me they were thinking about upgrading their computer
system and asked me what I thought about the Macintosh
Duos. I told them Duos were great and then asked what
they planned to do with their existing computer. The
puzzled expression I got lead me to tell them they
weren't talking about an upgrade, they were talking about
buying a new computer. These are two entirely different
propositions.
Days
of Thunder
Let's say you've got a car
and you want to make it go faster or improve it in some
way. You might tune the engine, get a new carburetor,
change the tires, or get a new paint job. If you want to
get really radical you can change out the engine. My Dad
once converted a Toyota pickup into a dump truck by
having the bed separated and installing a manual
hydraulic lift.
In each of these cases,
the existing vehicle is still in your possession. If you
bought another car, that would not count as improving
your old car's performance. That would be buying a new
car and then having two. If you can use two cars and can
afford it, great. Otherwise you'd stick to working on the
old one.
The same is true of
computers. But one major difference is that the
capabilities of new computers keeps improving as the
price is driven down. This makes the idea of trade-ins
impossible. In order to get somebody to buy your old
system, you'd have to ask at most only half the price of
a current model. Fortunately, there are upgrade
possibilities. To illustrate, I'll tell you the story of
my Mac.TOP END
The
Way We Were
When the Mac was
introduced in 1984, it came with a whopping big 128K of
RAM and measly 400K internal drive. None-the-less it was
simply amazing. The compact case with built in monitor
had a personality that said, "Use me! I'm your
friend," and, oh, those graphics! It was love at
first sight.
I went to work for an
Apple dealer to be close to my new love--and to learn.
After a year and a half of long days and longer nights
honing my craft, I got my very own Mac. By that time, the
new model was already twice as powerful as the original
and they had come out with the ImageWriter II dot matrix
printer. I got one of each, cables, basic software and an
external 400K drive. Through acquisition of a personal
loan from the First Gramma National Bank, I bought this
state-of-the-art system at COST for around $2,200. Three
or four months later I got another loan (thanks Dad) and
got a LaserWriter Plus printer for about $4,500 (also at
cost). TOP END
The
Crying Game
Today for the same amount
you could get a color Mac with 4Mb of RAM and an 80Mb
internal hard drive with a 600 dpi printer, a 1200 dpi
color scanner, AND a 400 dpi color PostScript printer at
retail prices. If I were to compare the price I would
have had to pay for retail in 1986, there'd be room in
today's budget for a CD-ROM drive in there too.
Fortunately, I did not foresee this plummeting price
thing, otherwise I would have waited and I could not now
be saying I have as much experience as anyone in this
industry--nine years.TOP END
Driving
Miss Daisy
For my first upgrade, I
traded in the internal drive for the new 800K model with
twice the storage capacity. I could actually put system
files and applications on one disk. Manufacturers advised
against reformatting single-sided disks. Guess how many
people that stopped from doubling their floppy archive
potential for $0.
Having a higher density
internal drive created a problem for me, though. My
internal drive could read both single- and double-sided
disks, but the external drive could only handle 400K
floppies. This lead to upgrade #2.
This came in the form of a
20Mb external hard drive. No more eternal swapping of
disks! No more desk full of floppies cluttering up the
place. And, best of all, no more countless hours of
waiting: hard drives work at many, many more times the
speed of floppies. Ever the wily entrepreneur, I sold
that 400K external drive last year for $50. (With
performance numbers like that you'd think I'd be in
Washington.). TOP END
Mother,
Jugs & Speed
As Apple made the Mac more
powerful, software developers started creating
applications that took advantage of it. More to the
point, they required it. So, in order to get the latest
version of PageMaker which needed a MegaByte of RAM, I
had to swap out the motherboard of my 512 in favor of the
new Mac Plus board. This gave my system the power of the
latest technology. For instance, my Mac now had twice as
much ROM as the original Mac had in RAM. The upgrade cost
a lot less than what I would have had to pay for a new
Plus. It also meant I would not have to try to unload my
existing system.
A couple of years ago, I
bought a Radius accelerator and added on the maximum
amount of 4Mb RAM. This gave me the speed of a Mac IIci
without which I would have gone insane waiting for
FreeHand to redraw the screen. And, yet again, I had to
get the RAM upgrade in order to even run the latest
version of PageMaker.TOP END
Fatal
Attraction
Now Apple has started
putting out two or three or four new systems a year and I
have stopped trying to keep up with the pace. It's true I
lust after the billion color, warp speed Quadra, but the
attraction can be dangerous. All the bells and whistles
seem fantastic until they are weighed against the debt. I
have to ask myself, "what do I REALLY need?"
Time has taught me if I
bide my time, I will soon be able to obtain equal
performance for a lot less. The primary instigator of
upgrading is the need for increased performance on a
budget. My system is perfectly capable of satisfying my
needs at present. I also have a strong sentimental
attachment to my first Mac.
It can still handle a
CD-ROM drive or scanner, the prices of which have
nose-dived in the last year. It can also capture sounds
with an external audio box and grab pictures off a VCR or
CamCorder with a video interface. There are an unlimited
amount of bigger and faster hard drive options including
optical storage devices.
But it is not capable of
handling any more RAM or ROM which means there are some
limitations to the number of additional upgrades that can
be done. The limited ROM means the Plus cannot handle the
Apple 1.4 Mb Super Drive (if you have an SE, it is
possible to get the required chip). But with an external
dual drive DynaFile, I can transfer DOS disks straight
from the Finder without Apple File-Exchange.
The memory limitations
also mean no external large screen, gray scale or color
monitors. This rules out four-color processing jobs, but
not work requiring only spot color separations.TOP
Final
Analysis
For anyone whose computer
needs are changing the day will come when it is time to
bite the bullet and buy a new system. For this reason it
is good idea to keep abreast of the latest developments
in the industry. But if you already own one, you should
not spend an inordinate amount of time scrutinizing the
specs of the latest releases. The biggest headaches
belong to those who have yet to purchase a computer in
the first place.
Instead, explore your
hardware upgrade options thoroughly. Once you have
exhausted that search, make a tally of the amount it will
take to get your current system up to meet your needs.
Compare that amount to the price of a new system with the
same specs. If you have to spend more than two-thirds the
price of a new system, then you might want to consider
running a classified to sell your old one. If you get
one-third of the price of the new system you want, you'll
end up spending the same amount of money anyway. TOP
Bill Bricker
specializes in information architecture and computer
illustration. He designed the logo for Todd Rundgren's
Utopia reunion tour.
        
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