In computer news this week, 06/13/2000

What's your computer worth? It's worth a lot more than you think....

Ok, you paid maybe $ 2000 for that computer you run your business on a few years ago. So what's it worth now? Before you start figuring age and depreciation, let me give you a hint. The operative words are - "that you run your business on ...".

You bought the computer for $ 2000. Then you copied or created your business files on it, so it's actually worth a lot more than what you paid for it. That computer is worth whatever your business is worth. People just don't seem to understand this concept.

Here's one of the most depressing computer facts of life; computers die suddenly, sometimes for no reason at all. They have a tendency to die just when you need them the most. Just before that big deal you've been working on closes; just before the auditors come in; just before the most important time that you are going to need your computer.

Having worked in this industry for 23 years now, I would say the most overlooked necessary task related to owning a computer is backing up. If you don't back up, and if your computer dies suddenly, you might go out of business. I've talked about this before; I'm talking about it again. This keeps happening to businesses on a regular basis.

And there are really no excuses for it, but it happens. When you buy a computer, particularly for business, you should buy a backup device with it that can do a complete backup on external media. At this time I still think a tape drive is the best way to go. You can buy one for under 200 bucks, which backups up to 20 gigabytes on one tape. You can schedule the backup to be done after hours, and when you come in all you have to do is change the tape for the next backup. You also want to have multiple copies of the backups, in case one was bad, or in case you get infected with a nasty computer virus.

There was talk of using cdroms for backup, but I don't think they work very well. Biggest problem is they can only hold so much data, maybe 650 megs. That's not enough to begin backup up a modern day computer. You also have to be there to put in other cdroms as they fill up, so forget that.

How about a zip drive? With them backing up to 250 Megs now, you can use them to backup your most critical data, but again, that's not enough. To backup an average computer that might have 4 gigs of business files on it, you'd need a whole lot of zip disks, and you have to be there feeding it disks during the process. And if you only backup the critical datafiles, and your computer dies, then you have to find all your orginal programs and operating system and start from scratch; really an ugly time-consuming job. Most businesses can't find the original software either.

Gee, how about these internet companies that say you can backup data to their computers and store it there? Well gee, are they going to disappear in the middle of the night, like so many other internet startups? Not a good alternative either.

Here's an important concept: A television set has really nothing in it - it is dependent on television stations or cable companies to transmit programs to it. Your computer, on the other hand, has everything inside. If it dies, there are no outside sources to transmit your critical data back. If you haven't backed up that data, you are in a world of hurt. And this is going to happen to you some day, if you don't backup properly.

And as you look at your dead unrecoverable computer, you will find out, the hard way, what that computer was really worth to you.

For Raw Bytes, this is Frank Delaney

POB 222

Spangle, WA 99031

(509) 245-3736

fdspokane@aol.com