Slowly but surely over the past eight months I've been coming back up to speed on computer hardware--specifically networks and network storage technology.
By saying "coming back up to speed", I have to admit that I've sunk a long, long way down the computer knowledge evolutionary chain since the days when I had a subscription to "Byte Magazine" and boxes and stacks of "PC" and "PC World" magazine laying around in my office and lurking in the dust and cobweb covered corners of my basement.
I also hate to admit that I haven't opened the cabinet of a PC in over ten years to replace a hard drive or add memory or some type of display driver/expansion card. This from a guy that upgraded the guts of my old machines with new CPU's and mother boards on a regular basis back in the days when I was
It wasn't really about saving money, it was the thrill of tearing a machine apart, putting it back together, and having it re-boot successfully while only having a few screws and unknown parts left over when the dust settled.
Today things are quite different.
Gone are the days when your computer came home in separate boxes with you after an evening in the computer store spent buying the "system unit", the graphics card, the monitor, the sound card, extra memory, a vertical stand for the "system unit", and possibly a tilt and turn base for the new VGA 19" monitor the size of a house and with the weight of a Volkswagon Bus.
Did I mention the lovely copy of Dos 3.0 you had to install from 57 5-1/4" floppy disks which produced the lovely "C:> prompt" once the wheels had finished whirling and banging around while 80 Mb of SCSI hard disk drive executed "Autoexec.bat" and "config.sys" upon executing a BRS (Big Red Switch) maneuver (If you're under age 40, "BRS" also means turning the power to the computer system unit to the "ON" position.)
Then, as old dedicated IBM PC users like me know, you spent a sleepless night and possibly the next couple of days scratching your
Instead of "plug and play", back then it was "plug", "not play", and "pay pay pay" as you hang on the telephone with kids out in Silicon Valley and Seattle trying to attempt to tell you what you already knew and your Hippie/Artie Fartie friends had already told you.
BUY AN APPLE....Not!!!
Fast forward to today, and now all you have to do when you want a new computer is jump on line, click a few mouse buttons, enter your credit card number, then go out on the front porch and wait for FedEX or UPS to arrive.
Then fifteen minutes after you've opened the box and retrieved your new baby from it's foam and plastic wrapped packaging, you've connected the color coded cables to the components, turned everything on, and are checking your Yahoo E-mail with a big grin on your face and a song in your heart.
Am I wrong to be afraid that things are a little different when it comes to Terrabyte RAID hard drives using "hot swappable" components?
THAT would be too good to be true--particularly when it comes to the initial RAID format set up and the network configurations.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Then there is the new HD Camcorder technology I'm in all worked up in a lather over which makes the pending addition of video storage capacity to my massive original photo archives an infrastructural necessity.
Did I mention the new 1500 VA APC smart back up uninterruptable power supply to protect all of the aforementioned goodies??
It will arrive here in a foam lined box on Wednesday. My bellybutton's busy puckering and unpuckering in anticipation.
(please excuse that mental image if you need to...)
Now it's time to grab a shower, comb my every greying, ever balding head, and
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