DVD capacity question

I can do much better than that. I worked in the development team at
Northern Telecom Data Systems at Hemel Hempstead developing the very
first commercial/business client-server system (the Vienna system). The
server was an 80286 machine running Microsoft Xenix (yes - Microsoft did
then have a Unix-variant OS). The workstations were DOS 1.1 running on
8080s with 128K memory (later upgraded to 384K). Green screens but for
MDs secretaries a very expensive Nokia paper-white screen monitor option
was soon introduced. Office Automation was initially
Wordstar/Calcstar/Datastar - each of which would run on 64K of memory.
The reason memory was upgraded was to allow Quadratron Q-Office to be
able to be run on both client and servers. Networking was with another
Microsoft product, MS-Net. Printers were Qume daisy-wheels - those
things were guaranteed to keep the office girls awake .

All very high-tech

He's also reputed to have said "there's no future in the Internet".

 

(Un)fortunately this is no longer true. The latest catalogue I received
from Novatech had DVD burners for £50. When I think what I paid for mine
last year! It's now obsolete, slow, and not worth selling.

 

I speak from my own experience and that of others in my company. We use
Access a lot and upgrading it is such a pain in the arse that we try not
to unless it really has to be done for reason such as compatibility with
a major customer.

The actual tables and forms are not a problem, but as soon as you start
coding then you will get problems if you upgrade later.

Access can do that, to an extent. I think MS are quite open about what
to worry about when doing an upgrade.

Access cannot do that, full stop. (depending exactly which version you
are going between)

Sounds pretty typical of some large software houses actually.

I am using 95 at work at the moment. We have access to a 2000 upgrade
but the advice is not to do it if Access is a big part of your work as
you will have problems with legacy databases, advice which some of my
colleagues wish they had followed.
--
Keith Laws

What's my solution?

.....NOISE POLLUTION

 

I don't see how me pointing out that upgrading Access is not as
straightforward as you seem to believe makes me either a liar or
incompetent.



--
Keith Laws

What's my solution?

.....NOISE POLLUTION

 

Perhaps you just need to correct the mistake and not dismiss the use of
tape....

 

You are putting up a very good argument......

.....for....

........ archiving in analogue rather than digital - either tape or
optical disc - if a recorded digital signal is so fragile !

Remember that an optical disc relies on the laser beam being reflected by
the disc, when disc's degrade that fails to happen correctly - result data
loss.

 

ISTM that upgrades of Access (as with many other applications) raise
issues of *backward* compatibility rather than those of forward
compatibility.

Anyway its out of context for this newsgroup.

 

For us its a case of databases that have code modules and macros in them
just not working properly once they have gone through the upgrade
process.

Access is not like Word or Excel, it doesn't have filters to read/write
older version's files, it does a wholesale upgrade to the data files to
bring them in line with the new version.

true
--
Keith Laws

What's my solution?

.....NOISE POLLUTION

 

Unless you have all your tape logs on a Access data base that is!

Grins, ducks and runs...

 

Given a high bandwidth analogue recorder that is not a problem.

Not really, digital tapes have a higher coercivity than compact
cassettes so they are less prone to print-through (or erasing due to
being left on top of TVs for instance). Also the print through would
have to be more than an echo, it would have to be strong enough to flip
a 1 to a 0 or vice versa.

--
Keith Laws

What's my solution?

.....NOISE POLLUTION

 

So you did not correct the mistake, you gave up !

Just changing one list of problems for another is not sorting the problem.

 

I don't think PC users are completely to blame. Home users who don't have
access to a central backup point via lan are left to use whatever there PC
is equipped with. Once hard drive size's got beyond say 100mb, it was no
longer feasable to backup using floppy. But did the manufacturers act
resposibly and include an alternative? Once hard drives got to say 20 GB did
Microsoft make data managment easier by making the OS install routine
partition the disk? By now with +100gb disks being the norm software
installers for anything other than hardware supporting apps should be
looking to install on another partition than C!

So the PC industry is largely to blame for not making data management and
backup as important as it should be.

 

Yet.

Some of us don't have the

Some of people don't have the time (nor can spare the money it would cost if
things go wrong) to try out unproven technology.

But it has not been proven viable, like tape, optical disc's have not been
around long enough....

 

Opps...
That should read .......viable, unlike tape, optical disc's have not
been......

 

There we'll agree. How easy it would be to provide a utility to provide
a backup facility with the options:

1. Total backup of all but Documents and Settings.
2. Incremental backup of all but Documents and Settings.
3. Total backup of Documents and Settings (and nothing else)
4. Incremental backup of Documents and Settings
(and nothing else).

All zipped, with default to CD-ROM (with option of resetting to DVD).

And a little addendum to the documentation explaining what to do, and a
sequence of how to restore using the various disk (sets). You could even
dispense with the documentation and provide a Help with the utility.
They could even auto-run the utility at the end of Windows installation,
putting focus on (1) - though it would be better to run after
application software was installed.

At most, one or two man-days to implement.

 

As a home PC user I only have access to whatever I fit to my own PC. I have
gone through 3 tape back up systems, each of which failed. Prior to failure
each system started to have read errors with tapes which had only been used
5-10 times. I admit I was only paying about £150 for these drives but I
consider that price to be the limit a home users would pay for a device
which only does back-ups. Arguing that pro units would be more reliable is
plain daft for home users. These tape systems have been the items of PC
equipment to need replacment due to failure. When my last Travan tape deck
died I decided to replace it with a recordable DVD drive.

Since I believe in partioning hard drives and keeping essential software
seperate from non essential software I can keep the size of backup downs as
I only backup essential software. I use Drive Image to create temporary
images on my large video drive and then copy them to DVD. Leaving the images
on my video drive means I can return my main partitions to those baseline
states in about 10 mins!

 

Obviously that's fine for you - if you're happy with it. Backup strategy
is only as good as it becomes after a disaster

It's just that after a lot of years experience, I know that "new" is not
always the best. I try, for instance, to avoid upgrading OS until SP1 is
released.

Time was when software was not released until it had been *extensively*
beta-tested. These days software seems to be rushed out with no concern
about stability and functionality. The really classic example is
Pinnacle Studio 8 (which was released to "fix outstanding problems with
Version 7"). It wasn't until twelve releases later (version 8.12) all
seemed to be working as it should - then within a couple of months they
released Version 9.

 

AFAICS the problem with that policy is that programs rely on registry
entries, and if you have registry entries that aren't matched by the
appropriate programs you can have trouble.

 

And Users should be educated about why they need to make backupups. I've
never had a head crash or drive fialure but that is the scenario which I
always have in the back of my mind. Most users are more likely to have there
whole PC nicked which is just as bad. I personally try out alot of software
and don't care to trust "uninstall" or "System Restore" to return my system
to it's previous state. I'd much rather using imaging software to return my
system to it's previous state.Equally Imaging software can recreate your
pc's software on a compleltely new PC if one was required due to fire, theft
or failure.

 

Hang on a moment you are talking about data backup / archiving, the original
argument was about (digital) video files and using either a camcorder or VTR
deck to record digital video back to tape. Are you saying that your camera /
camcorder fails as above?