info-mac@uw-beaver (01/25/85)
From: Steven B. Munson <sbm@Purdue.ARPA>
In addition to what was mentioned a while ago about what happened
in the stockholders' meeting, I also heard that Apple's 512K upgrade
for the Mac is now $700. Of course, we know where to get it for less
than that, don't we?
This brings up an interesting point. I am getting less and less
satisfied with my 128K one-drive Mac, and I have been trying to figure
out how to improve things. An external floppy drive ($500) seems like
only a miniscule improvement; it doesn't speed things up much; it just
eliminates most of the disk-swapping, which I am kind of getting used to
anyway. A 512K upgrade with ram-disk (~$700) would speed things up,
and, unlike the external floppy drive, the extra memory could be used
later (possibly much later) when a hard disk makes the ram-disk
obsolete.
But it seems to me that what the system really needs is a hard disk
(there is something in me that cringes at the thought of using memory as
a disk). Of course, we are now talking megabucks (or are we?), but I
haven't even payed off my Macintosh yet, so I might as well dream big.
It seems to me that it is very desirable to have a mountable hard disk
rather than a fixed disk, since any disk, no matter how big, will
eventually fill up. Of course, there is still that internal floppy
drive for taking files off of a fixed disk.
So far, I have no copy-protected software, and I have no intention
of buying any, so there will never be any problem moving files around.
Could someone that knows about one or more of these features please post
a comparison of them?
Steve Munson
sbm@purdue
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