Re: filmscanners: yet *another* low cost way to avoid the future

["Anthony Atkielski" <atkielski.anthony@wanadoo.fr>]

Pat writes:

> Performing an upgrade install of Win2K would take
> about an hour.

Upgrading the OS itself is almost always trivial.  Getting a hundred different
applications to run under the new OS is not, and there's the rub.

> Since you back up your system (I presume that's
> what you are doing with your tape drive), the
> risk of a failed upgrade is zero.

A failed upgrade would have my system down for days at a time.  I can't afford
that kind of downtime.

> The overdrive processor will give you a substantial
> performance increase ...

An overdrive processor greatly increases the likelihood of hardware failure,
which is unacceptable.

> I'm really baffled by your attitudes.

I probably would have been, too, twenty or thirty years ago.  I'm not now.

> Also, your use of the term production system is
> conveniently fluid.

A production system, in this context, is a mission-critical system, without
which the business cannot operate, not even on a short-term basis.  In other
words, a failure of this system is a failure of the company or business as a
whole--it is a "loss-of-life" failure, for the business.

> ... but the systems other people run billion
> dollar businesses on aren't production, for some
> undefined reason.

Not true.  Such systems exist, but the individual desktops used in many large
companies are not in this category.  The mission-critical systems are often
invisible to most employees--including the ones responsible for the desktop PCs.
I know, I've seen this time and time again.  I've seen PC technicians in large
corporations who never once stopped to wonder how their paychecks got printed
... it never occurred to them that there had to be _other_ computers
somewhere--besides the little PCs they had on their desktops, or the server in
the back room--that processed mundane but essential things like paychecks,
inventories, online transction systems, and the like.  Two different worlds, and
very, very few people are familiar with both.  I'm one of that tiny minority.

> But that aside, since your own production system
> is so critical, then it follows that you must have
> excellent documentation on how everything is
> installed. That will certainly aid when
> you replace your PC.

I back everything up.  If something fails, I'll replace it.  I do not plan to
build a new system.  I'm even considering buying full replacement hardware bit
by bit in advance, just to provide for this (I already run continual backups and
keep the system on a fully autonomous UPS).

> You've been given several suggestions for
> alternatives that do run under SCSI, but instead of
> evaluating them, you return to the Nikon refrain.

The reviews I see all point to Nikon as the best in its class.

> The PPro was a good chip in it's day, but any cpu
> currently offered by Intel or AMD will outperform it
> in all respects.

Not important for me, since the 2x PPro does everything I require.

> If you aren't limited by the actual CPU speed,
> I can only assume that you don't perform
> any image editing, as a 200 MHz cpu is not
> as fast as any current CPU ...

I do image editing all the time.  The 2x 200 MHz isn't as fast as current
systems, but it is _fast enough_, just as it was when I bought it.  You are
falling prey to the misconception that a newer, faster system somehow makes
older systems inadequate--but an older system that has been adequate in the past
remains so in the future, unless your requirements change, and this is true no
matter how much faster the more modern systems become.