1. The last machine I bought came with a floppy boot disc with the CD
ROM drivers already installed. Seems a sensible move by the
manufacturer to me, Titan - which has an outlet in Exeter.
THere are benefits to local suppliers, like a 2 hour turnround on
replacing the previous dead machine.
2. I recently backed the patient referral letters up from Netware to
Windows 95(OSR2) and was impressed by the amount by which the free
space on the server increased, compared to the amount the free space on
the W95 disk decreased.
Even with FAT32 the overhead of wasted bytes with multiple small files
is severe in DOS filing systems.
Netware is quite efficient and OS/2 has the high performance filing
system which Microsoft have (oops oh what a pity but what do you expect
with these other suppliers) moved away from compatibility with.
NT I am told compresses files.
So server OSs may offer some advantages in storing lots of small files
over desktop OSs
If and when the overhead of the text files becomes a nuisance I will
just modify the letters viewer and suck them all into a database or one
file per patient or whatever.
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