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From: haber@micah.cs.wisc.edu (Eben Merriam Haber)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: Being A Modern Mac User (was 16mhz Classic)
Keywords: hard drives, bicycles
Message-ID: <1990Dec14.173954.5693@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Date: 14 Dec 90 17:39:54 GMT
References: <7809@hub.ucsb.edu> <337@cti1.UUCP>
Sender: news@spool.cs.wisc.edu (The News)
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
Lines: 26

In article <337@cti1.UUCP> greg@cti1.UUCP (Greg Fabian) writes:
>
>Now hard disk drives are so cheap it is almost a SIN not to have one.
>Life is too short to spend your limited time on earth waiting for the Mac
>to boot off a floppy or read a really big spread sheet from it.  Unless you
>take particular delight in looking at a watch icon, you owe it to yourself
>to equip your Mac with a hard disk.  From what I see in the papers here,
>it will cost you an extra $400 for a 40 MB hard disk in a Classic. 
>
>I am sure you will rapidly make up the $400 in the frustration that you
>will avoid and the time you will save and enjoy the Mac a lot more.  Not
>to mention window replacement costs.
>-- 

Well I guess I've been a sinner for some time!  I've been using a mac since
fall of '84, and only got a hard disk last year.  My secret?  RAM disks.
I worked for years with a RAM disk booted onto my 1 floppy 512KE.  It ran
noticably faster than a hard drive, though booting up did take 35 seconds.
And, it was completely silent!

These days with a larger system you really need a megabyte for hold a RAM
disk, but it still works very well for anyone without a hard drive.  Sure
I like having lots (LOTS) of files at my disposal, but there's nothing I do
on a regular basis that couldn't still be done with a RAM disk (and faster!).

Eben Haber