Commodore 64 1 KayPro 3 CP/M machines 2 XTs 20 286s 50 % Mac 25 %
386 2 486 50 % Pentium 50 % Pentium Pro 1
CP/M 1 DOS 20 % Win 3 30 % Win 95 30 % UNIX 10 NT 10 MAC 10
The majority of PCs are now being 'home' built.
Get you motherboard with as much as possible built in: IDE, I/O cards etc
On site mail order service contracts are more or less worthless. You will almost always have to return the PC to the retailer.
Many people have had serious problems with laptops, far fewer with desk tops.
The majority of laptops being bought are Compaq or Toshiba.
Laptops are now becoming available with Pentiums and 11" or 12" screens.
Memory to upgrade laptops is 2 or 3 times more expensive.
Laptops can be bought for under $2,000.
Memory is HOT ! 8Mb can be bought as low as $85.
How much memory is standard ? 16Mb for most, some on 32Mb.
Memory doublers can make extra resources available for Win 3.1, although memory is cheap. Do not use them with Win95.
Memory stackers are good because you can reuse old memory, although there are some technnical drawbacks.
Screens: split between 14" and 15" are standard.
What is the easiest way to get 20" for DTP ? UNIX workstations have 20" monitors so find someone who is upgrading, and Photon sell a card for $300 which will drive it.
The Gateway Dimension is an awesome machine. P133, 30" screen, radio control keyboard and mouse. Price $5,000+
Laserjet are standard stock printers. Mostly HP, but others bought for cost for single person use.
Colour are usually inkjet. Make sure you have separate cartridges for each colour. Only the Canon 610 is under $1,000 with this feature.
A few people are still buying dot matrix. OKIdata are the most reliable. There are few 14" printers available.
Combined fax/scanner/copiers ? Mixed feelings. Good for small offices.
Best value scanner ? Logitech Pagescan is $250 and does colour. It just plugs in and goes ! Older Logitech scanners had problems, but this model is great.
For OCR, use OmniPro for Windows
Flatbed scanners ? HP4 is only scanner supported by Win NT.
Almost everyone is using 3.5", 1.4Mb.
ZIP drives used by 30%. Colorado 1400 is $200 for 1Gb+.
Everyone should find someone who is using exactly the same backup device as you are. It is probable that the manufacturer will not be able to help you.
A very few people have not had a good backup for over a year ! Most are under a week.
There are a few beginning to backup to CD-ROM.
HP6000i will backup 5Gb+ at 60Mb/minute for about $1,000. Best value for high speed backup.
Bill recommended that you audit your backups at 6 month intervals as a minimum. Take one of your backups and try and recover some of your essential files to a different drive.
Additionally, you should get a clean machine and do a complete restore.
Pete does not recommend NovaStor because it was destroying his backup tapes after verifying them. [Webmaster's (jrd) Note: there was a mistake in the original notes. Originally the notes here said NovaDrive, corrected on Oct 13, 1997 after conferring with Pete.]
Arcada is the HOT backup software.
1Gb minimum, some are buying 2Gb.
Disk partition size: on Win95, get the plus pack and use disk compression.
Stacker does work. However, do not use it under Win95.
PC Anywhere, Timbuktu, Laplink.
Netscape is free for non-profits.
Microsoft is about to spend $10m on flooding the market with CDs containing Net Explorer.
Just about everyone has received free disks from AOL.
DPD is hot (full length films on a CD, up to 17Gb on a single CD)
Everyone is buying 28.8 modems.
Do not use RPI protocol with a modem. You can check whether your modem is using RPI by sending an ATI4 command to it.
Do not use a WinModem.
MAF recommend ZyXel ($300). They perform very well in difficult areas.
Telebit Worldblazer is still very good ($500).
Most are using MS-Office (Pro).
Microsoft employees can buy software at about 15% of list price.
Pre 1987 386s cannot be upgraded with just a processor chip.
Win95 is faster than Win3.1
Win95 is not supported on 486sx.