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From: mdr@reed.UUCP (Mike Rutenberg)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Faster networks
Message-ID: <6318@reed.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 13-May-87 00:20:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: reed.6318
Posted: Wed May 13 00:20:13 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 16-May-87 03:22:58 EDT
References: <347@aucs.UUCP> <5777@eddie.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: mdr@reed.UUCP (Mike Rutenberg)
Distribution: na
Organization: Reed College, Portland OR
Lines: 28
Keywords: Networks, Appletalk, Ethernet, SCSI

Zigurd R. Mednieks writes:
 > The recipe for a university's Macintosh net? Since they get university
 > pricing, the Macintosh SE with the 20Mb hard disk is the right machine.

 > I read in a trade rag that Apple "does not believe in diskless nodes."
 > or something to that effect. The economics of small cheap disks is
 > probably the reason why.

For an private machine, a local hard disk is a wonderful idea - It
makes things faster.

Using shared machines with hard disks is a totally different story.

You have to make sure that a public machine is available to each user
in a "clean" state, so that everything they expect to be there is, and
there are no weird surprises.

File servers allow the person who is using a public machine to have
private files, and to feel confident that what they did the last time
has not been changed, moved, deleted or poked through.

It also allows them to use a different machine as needed, because the
files are not stored on a specific public machine.  This is important
when you don't have enough resources to get everyone their own box.

Mike
-- 
	Reed College -- Portland, Oregon -- 503/774-9192