new tech rave.... Was: rsync and fP - never mind. *sigh*

[GCC Consulting]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: filepro-list-bounces at lists.celestial.com 
> [mailto:filepro-list-bounces at lists.celestial.com] On Behalf 
> Of John Esak
> Sent: Saturday, October 30, 2004 2:28 AM
> To: Fplist (E-mail)
> Subject: OT: new tech rave.... Was: rsync and fP - never mind. *sigh*
> 
> > Now I have to demand more disk.  :)
> >
> > mark->
> 
> Yeesh, disk space is SO cheap these days... ask for 140GB!  
> It's unbelievable.  Hell, I just got 2GB on a usb jump drive 
> the size of a big peanut for about $400. Of course, a 
> non-moving media device is too slow for most things we do, 
> but it is sure good enough to carry around whole filePro 
> systems and applications.  As for the latest 140GB and higher 
> SCSI drives...
> yeesh, they are so fast and probably half the price of the 
> 2GB memory stick.
> It amazes me that all that machinery, moving parts, 
> technology, etc. is half the price of the single chip in the 
> peanut plastic shell of the jump drive... you would think it 
> would be the other way around... eventually, I bet memory 
> becomes almost completely negligible in the price of any system.
> This just puts a virtual zero in that equation from the 70's 
> form the Xerox PARC guy... (forget his name just now...) but, 
> soon, if things progress as they are... it will presage the 
> speedup of technology rollovers to faster than every two 
> years and lower to every month or every day! Can you imagine?
> I am holding this cool little iPod in my hand and it is so 
> cool, with its 20GB drive... spinning, working, and I can't 
> even feel it.. it might as well be non-moving media... that I 
> can't even imagine what little devices kids will have at 
> their fingertips in just, say 5 years from now... I'm 
> thinking small spaceship time traveling devices at least. :-) 
> Okay, so maybe 10 years.  :-)  :-)
> 
> Seriously, the new color iPods are out this past week and the 
> power one can now hold in one's hand is just beyond belief 
> compared to say exactly 20 years ago today... (Sgt. Pepper 
> taught the band to play...) [sorry].  Heck, forget that, we 
> just ordered one of those little OQO or QOQ Windows CP 
> handheld thingies... I'll let you know if that is as cool as 
> it looks. One thing seemed bothersome, it has XP Pro on it 
> and only 256MB of memory...
> what's up with that... I would never provision a machine 
> running XP with less than 512... wonder why they feel it can 
> work well?  Who knows, we'll let you know. (unless someone 
> has one already) I assume we will get our order shortly.
> 
> Take care,
> John
-----------------------------------------

John,

Last weeks issue of e-week discussed the cost of storage.  And although the
price has been coming down, the physical limits of magnetic disk storage is
being reached.  They discussed holographic storage which about to come out.  IBM
also has some new technology in the offing.  However it is very expensive, for
now.

As for why that small computer has only 256MB, it may be a power and cooling
thing.  More memory=more heat+more power.  I have a number of clients running XP
Pro on 256MB.  The key here is all they run is FP 100% of the time. The machines
which need to do more have 512MB or 1GB of memory. 

I have found that fp responds to brute horsepower best.  Adequate memory for the
OS and a speedy processor alone with good i/o subsystems makes for happy
clients.  The cost of this keeps coming down.

As to you printer problem, I have a feeling the environment you were using the
printer in is electronically noisy.  I don't think that these WIFI printers were
designed to work in an industrial environment.  These are home printers. 

If you want to run a printer wirelessly, pickup a wifi print server.  

Richard Kreiss
GCC Consulting